iOS 9.0.1 Tips and Tricks: 9 of the BEST features you REALLY need to know



Apple has added a slew of new features into iOS 9, here are SEVEN of our favourites

THINK you know everything there is to know about Apple's iOS 9? Think again.

 

Apple rolled out the latest version of iOS across the globe last night, despite a minor hiccup from the firm's servers.

The Cupertino company has talked about a number of new features bundled with the update – but iOS 9 still has some tricks hidden up its proverbial sleeve.

Quickly Select Photos and Videos

Grabbing a batch of images or videos within the Photos app has become much faster.

Users can now quickly select dozens of photos from within an Album by hitting the Select button in the top-right of the screen then tapping and dragging across your chosen images.

 



Holding and dragging across images is a faster way of selecting photos and videos



You can then share the selected images, move to another album, or batch delete.

New to iOS 9, you can also hide selected images, by tapping Share > Hide.

Knows Your Music Taste

Apple has added a generous helping of predictive intelligence to iOS 9, including the ability for the device to get to know your music taste.

Or rather, your taste in music app. Apple will then begin to learn your habits, based on the time of day and your current location, and try to anticipate them. 

For example, if you plug in your headphones every morning and launch Spotify for your morning commute, your iPhone will add a quick-link to your chosen app as soon as you attach your headphones.

 

Apple prompts you with a shortcut to what it thinks is your favourite Music app

This appears in the bottom left-hand corner of the lock-screen, in the same place as Hand Off services.

Simply tap-and-hold the App icon, then drag upwards to unlock your device and launch the app.

Alternatively, if you don't have a lock-screen PIN enabled (which you really should) just hit the icon to launch the music player.

 

Apple picks the Music app based on your location, time of day, or your predictable smartphone habits

Change the Keyboard Keys

Apple rolled out a major update to its iOS keyboard with iOS 9.

iPad users can now tap and hold two fingers on the keyboard to grey-out the keys and use the surface as a giant trackpad.

Swiping and moving around the character-less keys will move the cursor around a document and allow you to quickly navigate and select text.

Unfortunately this feature is not available to iPhone users, unless you have an iPhone 6S or iPhone 6S Plus which consigns the same functionality to a 3D Touch.

But no matter what Apple device you are using with iOS 9 – the keyboard characters have been updated.

 

If you are not happy with the new iOS 9 keyboard, Apple has included a way to change it

For the first time in iOS, Apple has changed the characters on the keys between uppercase and lowercase depending on the status of the Shift key.

But if you long for the good old days when the keys were always in uppercase, like a physical Apple keyboard, and only the greyed Shift gave a clue to whether characters would be lowercase or not, then you change it.

To re-enable the uppercase keyboard head to Settings > General > Accessibility > Keyboard and then toggle off Show Lowercase Keys.

Intelligent Internet 

If you live in a house or work in a building with middling-to-unreliable wifi, this next feature could save you from ripping out your hair.

Wifi Assist allows your iPhone to automatically juggle between a mobile data connection and wifi – depending on which one has the fastest connection at any given time.

It means you should be able to continue watching a YouTube video without interruption or stutter, even if the wifi connection drops out.

 

At the bottom of the Mobile Data settings menu, toggle on Wifi Assist

 

To switch on Wifi Assist, go to Settings > Mobile Data then toggle on Wifi Assist (its hidden right at the bottom of the menu). 

Offline Viewing

Safari now boasts the ability to save a website as a PDF.

Simply navigate to your chosen webpage, then tap the Share icon in the middle of the toolbar at the bottom of the display.

In the second row of icons, there is now the option to Save PDF to iBooks, which save images and text ready for offline viewing.

 



Boarding a flight, no problem! Save the article you're reading as a PDF



 

Mail Management 

iOS 9 comes with a slew of new features to Apple's default Mail app.

You'll likely be pleased to know that the Cupertino technology firm has finally added a way to quickly delete all of the messages clogging up your inbox.

In iOS 9, navigate to the Mail app and pick a particularly problematic inbox – note this won't work in the smart Unread inbox – then tap on the Edit button in the top-right of the display.

This should reveal a new Delete All option at the bottom-right, which will trash all of those pesky spam emails.

 

Tap and hold on the Compose icon in Mail and a Drafts menu appears

Another new feature which is sure to speed up your email management is a shortcut to the Drafts folder.

While navigating to your Drafts from the main menu in Mail is far from slow, you can now tap and hold on the Compose icon – the small pen lying on a piece of paper icon int he bottom-right – to bring up all your draft messages.

There is also the option to Start A New Draft too, which is perfect for when you are working without an internet connection.

Quickly Disconnect Bluetooth 

Until now, its always been a bit of a headache to quickly disconnect a Bluetooth device from an iPhone.

Previously you had to pick between switching Bluetooth off entirely, or forgetting the device you wanted to momentarily disconnect.

Thankfully with iOS 9, you can toggle each individual Bluetooth device.

This is accessed by heading to Settings > Bluetooth then tap on the round "i" icon next to the gadget you'd like to disconnect, then hit Disconnect. 

    

iOS 9 adds the ability to draw, annotate and sign email attachments without leaving the Mail app

Tap and you a new menu opens and allows you to pick a colour for your drawing, add text in a number of different fonts, or add a hand-drawn signature to paste at the bottom of a PDF, or image.

Hit Done and iOS 9 will insert your creation in an email reply automatically. Simple.

Apple also allows a greater choice of attachments in the latest operating system update.

Previously restricted to just images from your Camera Roll, the improved Mail app supports a range of file types.

Hit Add Attachment to pick a file from iCloud Drive, Dropbox or Google Drive.