12 iOS 8 Tips Every Apple Fan Should Know

1) Diverse Emojis

Apple has taken some heat over the years for its integrated emoji keyboard only supporting the skin color of Caucasians (or actually, more like Springfieldians; the default yellow hue matches best to Homer Simpson). With iOS 8.3, many emojis now have diversity: hold your finger on an emoji of a face, hand, or figure with visible skin and you'll get a choice of five new colors. (This doesn't work on smilies or cats or the famous poop emoji.)
In fact, Apple added over 300 new emoji, and not just to put diversity on existing pics. There are also new items like the Apple Watch (of course), but also new family configurations, such as same-sex couples.
Also new on the emoji keyboard: continuous left/right scrolling, making it easier to get to the images you want.

2) iCloud Photo Library Is Open

You can keep all your iPhone photos in iCloud (if you've paid to have enough space on the service). Go to the Settings > iCloud > Photos and turn on iCloud Photo Library. This isn't the same as Photo Stream, which syncs photos (no video) across all your iOS devices for 30 days or 1,000 photos. Apple iCloud Photo Library syncs everything, and also allows you to sync with MacOS. In fact, if you turn on iCloud Photo Library, your Photo Stream "disappears"—it's still there, it just isn't made visible in the Photos app. Once it's on, access the uploaded photos on your iOS device by going into the Photos app and tapping the Photos tab (at the bottom).

Because any image you upload via iPhone Photo Library gets downloaded to your other iOS devices, you get extra options in settings to Optimize iPhone Storage (use smaller, lower-quality images) or Download and Keep Originals (higher quality images that take up more space). Choose wisely, depending on the space on your iPhone.

3) Shazam via Siri

When that unrecognizable-yet-oh-so-familiar song comes on, you don't have time to go searching for the Shazam app to make it listen in and tell you who's singing. Thankfully, Shazam's primary function is now integrated with Siri. Just ask your pocket A.I., "Siri, who's singing?" and she'll let you know, complete with a little Shazam logo.

4) Scan Credit Cards with the Camera in Safari

Making an online purchase, but don't want to type your credit card number? In iOS 8, if you're using Safari and run into a CC field, you can take a pic of the card to scan the number. It's automatically added to the credit card field.

5) Recent/Favorite Contacts are a Double Tap Away

The double tap on the home button brings up the App Switcher, a list of your current running or "multitasking" apps (swipe them up and away to close the app). Now, the double tap also shows your most recent contacts at the top; swipe the contacts right to see your Favorite contacts. Tap the contact's icon to make a call, send a message, or contact via FaceTime.

This feature is also a bug, at least when it comes to recent contacts. If you have one visible that you do NOT want to show up there—say, your hated ex—even if you delete your last conversation or all voicemails or evidence of their calls, they still show up. You can turn off either the Favorites or the Recents or both in Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Show in App Switcher.

6) Hide Photos and Videos

You take a lot of pictures, but when someone grabs your phone, it might be nice if they didn't see some of the, uh, more private shots or vids. In the Photos app, hold a finger on the item in question and select "Hide." It'll look like it disappeared, but you can still access it via the Albums button at the bottom. (Hiding also doesn't prevent apps like Flickr, Carousel, OneDrive, IFTTT, etc. from auto-uploading your images if you've got that auto-backup feature activated.)

7) Really, REALLY Delete Photos

Did you take some photos on your iOS device and delete them and assume they'd never see the light of your screen again? Be careful. The new iteration of the Photos app added a new Album called Recently Deleted to act as the equivalent of the desktop Trash—deleted images and videos are sent to this album for a 30-day quarantine before truly going away. This is great if you're prone to deleting things and then regretting it—which is why Apple put it in. But if you really, really need to make sure an image is gone from the phone for good, go to that album. You'll see a countdown of days until each image expires; click Select to choose pics to delete entirely (or to recover back to the Photos app.)

8) Go Gray Fulltime

If you're colorblind, don't waste your beautiful iPhone screen showing millions of colors. Go into Settings > General > Accessibility and turn on the Grayscale setting. Tell everyone it's "artsy."
When you do go gray, it's only on the screen. For example, any pictures you take, even screenshots of the "gray" screen, are still in full glorious color. The image above had to be edited with the built-in iOS photo-editing tools to show you what you get when monochromatic.

9) Quickly Adjust all Type

Hate the small font size on iOS? In version 8, go to Settings > Displays & Brightness > Text Size and use the slider to bump it up (or down, if you don't have bifocals) (shut up). Any app that uses the master fonts of the operating system will follow your choice.

10) Send "Temporary" Videos

This two-minute auto-delete works for video you send via Messages, too—they now default auto-delete if you make them from the Message app by holding the camera icon. You can change this time limit at Settings > Messages > Video Messages. Remember, if you attach a pre-created video to a message it doesn't get auto-deleted. This isn't like Snapchat—the person at the other end of the message can save the video (or audio) if they want.

11) New Swipes for Mail

The iOS Mail App now has new features when you swipe a message in the inbox. Move your finger right and you mark a message as read or unread, whatever is opposite its current status. Move your finger left to instantly trash a message, or flag it. Best of all, click More and you get a menu that includes a new feature: Notify Me. It'll bring up an iOS notification if that message thread gets a new reply. You can change what happens when you swipe by going to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Swipe Options.

12) Find Your Phone's Final Resting Place

You better have activated Find My iPhone by now (even if you use an iPad). It's the best way to find a lost or stolen iOS device. With iOS 8, there's a new feature, which is important if your missing device battery was close to dead at the time it went missing. Go to Settings > iCloud > Find My iPhone and turn on "Send Last Location." That way you can always find the phone's last ping, even after it's gone dormant—or at least where it was when the battery was "critically low," which on an iPhone could be 20 percent.