There’s a tendency among high tech savvy people (you know, nerds) to approach new features with a tired feeling and see it all before. This is especially true when Apple announces new iPhone features with a lot of fanfare and self-congratulations. Then, Android fans will point out that this innovative achievement existed on a Nexus phone seven years ago, and the first three versions of it were bad, but now it’s fantastic.
Undoubtedly, this attitude could be applied to one of the central pieces of iOS 16: the new lock screens. At a high level, this update adds more customization to the lock screen, with more wallpaper options and the ability to add widgets. These are not innovative things, considering that Android 12 allows you to easily customize your entire user interface to match your wallpaper, down to the colors of the app icon. But since I’ve been using the beta for developers over the past few weeks, the new lock screen has impressed me more than I imagined. It’s a simple update, but it’s one that will probably be noticed and widely adopted by iPhone users: nerds or others.
There are many more things you can do with the lock screen in iOS 16. Previously, you could change the wallpaper and … in fact, that’s it. That’s all you can do. In iOS 16, there are more types of wallpapers, such as emojis grids and real-time weather animations, along with different clock fonts and customizable font colors. You can add widgets for more information at a glance, such as when your next meeting begins or the possibility of rain that day (vital information here in Seattle).
Fill your wallpaper with your favorite emoji. Animated weather wallpaper: for when you can’t look out the window.
Apple has made some subtle tweaks to the lock screen to make your wallpaper take center stage. Like the face of the Portraits watch introduced in WatchOS 8, in certain images, the watch may partially float behind a human or animal subject. It’s a subtle but significant change: nothing hurts a child’s photo lock screen as beautiful as having the time set in the middle of their forehead. Notifications have also been moved to give more space to photos. Instead of piling up in the center of the screen and darkening the wallpaper, they now appear at the bottom of the screen.
sometimes a pink wallpaper with a grid of bursting emojis is the best way to calm down
You can now have multiple lock screens, and you don’t need to dive into a setup menu to change them. It sounds like a simple thing, but it fundamentally changes the way you think about the lock screen. Being able to have more than one eliminates the pressure of choosing a single wallpaper or photo that you will see at any time of the day in all kinds of situations. You can have a lock screen for the weekend, one for a particular mood, for a vacation or the time you want. It’s easy to switch between your lock screen collection when the mood is displayed, but if you link the lock screens to focus modes, they will automatically switch when this focus mode starts.
One case in point: sometimes a pink wallpaper with a grid of bursting emojis is the best way to calm down when, I don’t know, the Supreme Court decides to eliminate your bodily autonomy. It didn’t restore any of my basic rights, but it made me feel better for half a second every time I looked at it. And when I got all the mileage I could get out of that lock screen, it was easy to go back to one of my usual photos of the “Tree Framed Mount Rainier” that people in the Northwest have to do by law.
Sometimes barfing emoji is the right emoji. License, registration and photo of Mount Rainier, please.
The most interesting thing about the new lock screens is Apple’s lack of it all. This is a company that likes to maintain rigid control over the appearance of its products; you may own your iPhone, but Apple is the HOA and has a very tight ship. Before, the best thing you could do to make your place a little more cozy was to put a wreath on the door. With iOS 16, it’s the open season for festive decorations.
Of course, Apple doesn’t let you go too far – there won’t be pink flamingo lawn ornaments in this neighborhood. You’re limited to eight font options and they all have a particular trend look – there’s no imitation of Comic Sans in sight. There’s also very little space allocated to widgets – the maximum you can pile up on the “shelf” below the clock is four. It keeps things simple for the person using the phone, but it also keeps some control over how the lock screen may look cluttered.
Setting up a new wallpaper with your own style is like putting on a new pair of stylish socks
Even within the confines of Apple, I found a lot of material to play with. Some of her automatically generated photo suggestions have worked very well – she seems to prefer landscapes and images of people or pets, although she overestimates how much I want to look at my (very rude) cat all day long. Not all of them are winners, but some hiking photos I had forgotten have made for surprisingly good wallpapers. I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit trying to mount a wallpaper with the right combination of funny emojis or finding the right accent color for a photo of this cat looking down from the couch.
There is also some visibility on the lock screen which increases its importance. It’s the part of the device’s interface that someone else is likely to see while I look at the moment or use Face ID. Setting up a new wallpaper with your own style is like putting on a new pair of stylish socks – it’s partly for my own fun, but there’s also the possibility that someone else will see it and be impressed / amused / baffled by my choices. It’s partly function, partly fashion and partly fun. Even the most tired of us can appreciate this combination.