iPhone 16 Pro: First Things To Do

Quick summary: Here’s what I set up first on my iPhone 16 Pro Max. It all applies to the iPhone 16 Pro too.

Control Center

1. Swipe down from the top right corner and tap the plus sign to edit.
2. Resize controls by dragging their corners, remove them with the minus, and drag them around. I’d move the camera wherever you like it.
3. Tap Add a Control to search for more. I think the most useful are the flashlight, music recognition and the QR code scanner. I added a stopwatch.

Home screen

4. Add widgets: press and hold the home screen, tap Edit in the top left, then Add Widget. Pick one (a Smart Stack, photos, a smart home control) and its size, then tap Add Widget.
5. Customize your icons: tap Edit > Customize and choose Light, Dark, Automatic or Tinted. With Tinted, slide the bars to pick a color and brightness, or use the color picker to match your wallpaper. Large icons remove the app names, which I don’t love. I went with a minty green tint.

Camera

6. 4K video: in the Camera’s Video mode, check the resolution and set it to 4K 30. You get great-looking video at a reasonable file size.

Settings

7. Stop Wi-Fi join prompts: Settings > Wi-Fi > Ask to Join Networks > Off. Join open Wi-Fi yourself when you want to.
8. Check for updates: General > Software Update, and pull down to refresh.
9. Faster charging: in Battery > Charging, I turn Optimized Battery Charging and Clean Energy Charging off so it charges to 100% as fast as it can. If you keep phones for years, you might want to leave them on. I upgrade often, so I turn them off.
10. Action button: choose what pressing and holding it does: camera, voice memo, translate and more. Mine is set to Recognize Music.
11. Display and brightness: I use Dark mode all the time (better battery on OLED). You can set it to Automatic (sunset to sunrise) or a custom schedule, and adjust text size or turn on Bold text.
12. Auto-Lock: 2 minutes. It’s long enough that the screen doesn’t turn off too fast, and short enough not to drain your battery.
13. Sounds and Haptics: change your ringtone, text tone and other alert sounds.
14. Turn on RCS: Settings > Apps > Messages > RCS Messaging. You get higher quality photos and videos and read receipts with friends and family on Android.

Related

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