Even if you didn’t rush out to buy an iPhone 15 on release day, if you’ve got an iPhone in your pocket, you may have woken up to an upgrade. 

iOS 17, the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, was released on the same day as the latest handsets, and it’s available on devices going all the way back to 2018’s iPhone XR, so there’s a good chance you’re included. 

If your iPhone doesn’t have a Home button, in other words, you’re probably eligible (unless you have 2017’s iPhone X, in which case you narrowly miss out). You may need to force an update manually, though: do this by heading to the Settings app, then tapping ‘General’ and ‘Software Update’. 

Once you have, here are five neat new iPhone tricks to try out.

1. Automatically delete 2FA codes

If you have 2FA (two-factor authentication) enabled on any sites — and you absolutely should if possible — then you’ll be familiar with the confirmation text message security mechanism. You’ll be texted a code, you type it in to prove you’re who you say you are, and you’re good to carry on with whatever you’re doing.

With iOS 17, your iPhone can automatically trash these text messages after the code has been used. To enable this, head to Settings, then ‘Passwords’, then ‘Password Options’. Then just toggle the box next to “Clean Up Automatically”. 

2. Bank your speech style with Personal Voice

Personal Voice is an accessibility feature that will make a digital replica of your speech patterns, meaning that you can type phrases to be spoken in your voice (or a slightly roboticized version).

Why would you want that? As mentioned, it’s an accessibility feature, and it’s aimed at those at risk of losing the ability to speak, to ensure that they can still communicate as they used to. Voice Banking would once take hours and require specialist software, but now with your iPhone and iOS 17, you can do it in fifteen minutes.

To get started, open Settings and then tap ‘Accessibility’ followed by ‘Personal Voice’. Press ‘Create a Personal Voice’ and follow the instructions — you’ll have to read 150 phrases aloud. Once done, you’ll have a secure version of your voice saved locally on your iPhone: invaluable peace of mind, should the worst happen.

3. Require Face ID to access private browser tabs

If you routinely use your mobile internet without wanting to leave a trace (no judgement here), you’ll be familiar with Safari’s Private Browsing mode. But with iOS 17, Apple has made it so your private tabs have an extra level of security, requiring Face ID to reveal your open webpages.

To set it up, once again head to the Settings app, then tap ‘Safari’, scroll down and toggle ‘Require Face ID to Unlock Private Browsing.’ Now your private tabs will be safe from prying eyes, even if they know your passcode.

4. Make full screen posters for your top contacts

This one is purely aesthetic, but worth doing for contacts that regularly phone you. Rather than just their name and number appearing on your home screen, you can make it light up with a custom picture — their face, a Memoji or just a fancy way of showing their initials.

It doesn’t take too long to do, but you probably don’t want to do it for all your contacts if you have a lot. All the same, here’s how to set up a contact poster in iOS 17.

5. Lock your iPhone in style, with StandBy

With iOS 17, if you’re just charging your iPhone you can now choose for it to sit in StandBy mode, where it becomes a digital clock and calendar — not unlike the Amazon Echo Show and Google Nest Hub smart screens. 

This isn’t something you need to set up. Just plug in your iPhone to change and rest it in landscape mode and it should appear. You can choose for it to show widgets, photos or a clock with a simple swipe. 

Note that if your iPhone lacks an always-on display (iPhone 14 and 15 Pro models only) then it will turn off after 20 seconds — though it’ll come back with a tap. 

With the launch of the iPhone 15, Apple has rolled out iOS 17 to handsets going as far back as 2018’s iPhone XR. 

It includes new features like StandBy (which turns your iPhone into a little home hub when idle), interactive widgets, and the ability to teach the phone to speak like you with Personal Voice. 

But one of the more fun new iPhone tricks is Contact Posters, which give you a full screen poster of the person calling you. Here’s what they are and how to set them up for each contact.

What are Contact Posters?

With iOS 16, Apple let users customize their lockscreens like never before, adjusting fonts, pictures and filters to create some truly arty backdrops when the phone was idle.

Contact Posters are a bit like that, but localized to each individual contact. That means if they call you, you’ll get a stylish picture of your choice, with their name written in the size and style of your choosing.

Do I need to make one for every contact?

You don’t need to set them up for anyone if you don’t want. But no, given you only see them when someone calls you, it probably only makes sense to create them for people who you’re in regular phone contact with.

It’s not like it takes a hugely long time to do, but if you never see it, there are probably better ways to spend your time!

How to set up a Contact Poster in iOS 17

It’s pretty simple, as long as you’ve updated to iOS 17 (the option won’t appear if you haven’t). Just repeat these steps for as many contacts as you want to customize.

1. Open the Contacts app

You can either open the Contacts app directly, or simply press the green phone button and switch to the contacts tab.

2. Find the contact you want to edit

Scroll through your list of contacts until you find the person you want to create a poster for, and tap their name.

3. Tap “Contact Photo & Poster”

It’s the top option, right below the various icons you can use to contact them (message, call, video, mail and pay).

4. Choose the background you want

Now it’s time to start getting creative. You have four options to choose from to form the basis of your poster:

• Camera. This opens up the iPhone camera so you can take a photo of them (or something to represent them) directly.
• Photos. This will take you to your Photo Library, letting you pick a pre-existing photograph.
• Memoji. This will let you sub in a Memoji — Apple’s custom emoji — if you prefer something a bit more cartoony to represent your contact.
• Monogram. This lets you simply display the contact’s initials as the background image (but you can edit how they appear).

5. Edit your poster

Once you’ve selected the picture you want, you can customize it to your liking. There are a few things you can do here:

6. Preview your Contact Poster

Once you’re happy, tap ‘Done’ to see a preview of how it will look.

7. Update the contact photo

You don’t have to do this, but once you’ve passed all these steps, the iPhone will give you the option of having the contact photo match the poster. 

Up to you whether you want to, but the same cropping rules apply. If you don't want it, just tap 'Skip'.

If you're an iPhone user, there are some pretty exciting changes coming your way. That's because iOS 17, Apple's new operating system, is launching today (18 September) and it comes with some great new features that offer more personal and intuitive ways to use your phone. 

From enhanced ways to communicate with your contacts to the ability to customize what people see when you call, your phone just got better and more user-friendly thanks to these new iPhone tricks. The new tech system is compatible with all iPhone models from the SE 2nd generation or later and, as usual, the new system should automatically install while your phone is charging overnight ensuring you have automatic updates switched on in your settings. 

Here are seven new features coming to the iPhone today that we're excited about. 

1. Contact Posters 

We're all familiar with the fear of seeing an unknown number appear on our screens when we weren't expecting a call, but with iOS 17, you get a new way to express yourself with a personalized display screen that appears with incoming calls. You can customize your caller ID screen - or as Apple is calling it, your Contact Poster - with either a photo or a Memoji avatar so people know exactly who you are. This new iPhone trick doesn't only work across phone calls either, but messages and some third-party apps, too!

2. Live Voicemail 

Ever miss an old-school landline phone where your answering machine would read out your voicemails to you as they came in? Well, this new iPhone feature is somewhat similar. 

Pre 2010s, it happened all the time - letting your phone go to voicemail and then realizing it was actually a call worth answering. Well now we've done a full 360, but with a more modern twist. Live Voicemail gives you the ability to see a real-time transcription as someone leaves a voicemail, and the opportunity to decide if you want to pick up while the caller is leaving their message. If you don't want to be disturbed by unknown numbers, you can turn on Silence Unknown Callers so that numbers that aren't in your contacts go directly to voicemail instead. 

3. FaceTime video and audio messages

There's nothing worse than a missed Facetime and not knowing why your family member or friend (or worse, boss) made the impromptu video call. Now, instead of leaving them guessing why you called, you can leave a personalized message through audio or video to let them know why when they don't pick up to put an end to their anxieties!

4. Check In

How many times have you promised to text someone to let them know you’ve made it home safely and forgot? Especially if you're a woman, I can safely predict it happens often. Well, with iOS 17 you can now put your friends' and families' minds at ease with the Check In feature. 

Essentially, it's a new tracking setting that lets certain contacts know when you arrive at a destination. That contact with automatically be notified as soon as you arrive, and if you’re not making progress for whatever reason, your iPhone will check in with you. If you don't respond, useful information will be temporarily shared with the selected contact, such as the device’s location, battery level, and cell service status. It's a real innovation in the world of tech safety! 

5. NameDrop

Another clever new interactive feature is NameDrop. This lets you easily connect with new people you meet just by bringing your iPhones together, automatically displaying your name, photo, and Contact Poster. You can also select specific phone numbers or email addresses that you want to share too, putting an end to mistaken spellings. If you ever want to just receive someone else’s contact information and not your own, you can do that, too – simply tap Receive Only in your settings. 

6. StandBy

With iOS 17, there's also an innovative new display that's shown when your phone is set down and charging that Apple is calling StandBy. By turning your iPhone on its side while on charge you get a full-screen experience with glanceable information that's designed to be viewed from a distance. 

The display can be personalized with a range of beautiful clock styles, favorite photos, or widgets, and it supports Live Activities, Siri, and incoming calls. It's the perfect setting for when your phones on your nightstand, the kitchen counter while cooking, or while working at your desk. It's the iPhone's answer to Amazon Echo.

7. Autocorrect

Okay, so this one might just be a (long overdue) improvement rather than a brand-new feature, but we think it deserves a special mention. Autocorrect is now new and improved, and it will put an end to that particularly pesky F to D autocorrection that you don't need me to explain... 

It's all thanks to a new machine learning language model for word prediction, which improves the experience and accuracy every time you type. Autocorrected words are temporarily underlined so you know what's been changed while typing and you can go back to the original with just a tap. It really is the small things in life that make all the difference. 

Not an iPhone user and want to test out these features right away? You can get a closer preview the new iOS 17 via Apple's website. 

The best photo editing apps are game changing when it comes to the quality of your pics. Even the most expensive phones with their high-megapixel cameras can benefit from having these enhancing tools installed and ready to use. 

Yes, pretty much every phone you buy today will come with basic ways to cover cropping and some enhancements, but to really make your photography stand out on Instagram or Facebook, you’ll want a dedicated app. 

There are hundreds of possibilities on both Google Play and the iPhone’s App Store, but the options below are united by the glowing reviews they’ve garnered from experts and consumers alike. These are the best photo editing apps you can download for both iOS and Android devices today.

The best photo editing apps around 

1. Snapseed 

Usually with apps, you get what you pay for, but Snapseed is an exception that breaks that particular rule with its low, low price of free. You have Google to thank for that: it bought Nik Software, the creators of the app back in 2012, and it remains free to use on both Android and iOS without any intrusive adverts.

While it can do simple filters and fixes, Snapseed has a huge array of editing tools including selective edit brushes and sharpening capabilities to really bring out the hidden details of your snaps. Editing is non destructive, meaning each layer of edits can be adjusted or removed at any time, and you can save a selection of adjustments to be applied to any picture, or shared with other users.

Free | iOS | Android 

2. Affinity Photo

If you’ve got an iPad and take your photo editing seriously, then look no further than Affinity Photo. Yes, it’s a steep $21.99, but that’s a one-off fee as compared to the monthly subscription that you need to keep using modern versions of Photoshop, and it’s every bit as powerful.

It’s amazing just how fully featured this app is, thanks to its feature parity with the desktop version. There’s support for unlimited layers, and you can edit live filters, adjustments, effects, blend modes and masks non destructively. It supports a vast impressive array of file types, including RAW format and Photoshop PSDs.  

If you want to try before you buy, the desktop versions for Mac and Windows have a free trial so you can see if it’s to your tastes before you put any money down. 

$21.99 | iPad

3. Pixelmator Photo 

If you’d rather take a backseat and let your iPhone or iPad take care of optimizing photos on your behalf, look no further than Pixelmator Photo: an editor that lets artificial intelligence have a first parse at improving the quality of your snaps with machine learning trained on 20 million photographs.

This doesn’t produce brilliant results every time, but you’ll regularly be impressed with the improvements it makes without any additional involvement. And crucially the modified image can just be a starting point, with the ability to make additional human edits yourself, adjusting the white balance, lightness, saturation and colors according to your own tastes. Edits are non destructive, so you can keep fine tuning until your results truly are picture perfect. 

 $7.99 | iPhone and iPad 

4. Adobe Lightroom Mobile 

If you subscribe to Adobe’s Creative Cloud, then using Lightroom Mobile is something of a no brainer, given it gives you instant access to your entire cloud-stored photo library from your phone and has the added advantage of familiarity. But even those outside of Adobe’s ecosystem should give it a look, given it's free to use (there are in-app purchases, but this is to give you access to cloud storage that you may not even need.)

If you do give it the time, you’ll find a very flexible bit of photo editing software here, where a series of sliders give you granular control over light, color, effects and detail. The changes are instant, and you can always undo things you don’t like as edits are non destructive. 

Free | iOS | Android

5. VSCO 

VSCO is a slightly unusual beast in that it’s actually more comparable to Instagram than the best photo editing apps. Yes, it’s predominantly pitched as a social network for arty pictures, and you’re duly met with a stream of other peoples’ snaps when you boot up.

But it has some solid, easy-to-use editing options built in as well. These appear in a bar along the bottom of each photo and let you speedily make changes on the fly. Pleasingly you can save ‘recipes’ — baskets of tweaks that you can apply to any photo you import once you find a style that you like.

But the real prize is the selection of filters which are a cut above most. Inspired by vintage film, you only get a handful with the free version, but subscribing for $19.99 per year gives you access to over 200, along with more editing tools and the ability to tinker with videos as well as photos. 

Free / $19.99 per year | iOS | Android

6. TouchRetouch 

While most serious photo editing apps give you the tools to manually remove unwanted clutter from photos — a surprise photobomb or a stray object ruining the shot — TouchRetouch automated solution is certainly the most user friendly. Just paint over the thing you want removed, tap the ‘Go’ button and the app will attempt to clean up the image on your behalf.

The results aren’t always perfect, especially if there’s a complex pattern behind the offending person/object, but it’s usually good enough for a quick fix, especially if you’re dealing with plain backdrops. And the ease of use and low price makes this an essential photo editing app to have in your arsenal.

$1.99 | iOS | Android

7. Google Photos 

Okay, Google Photos’ editing tools are pretty basic: there’s a handful of filters, and sliders to adjust contrast, color and light, along with the usual cropping tools. While that may be enough for your needs, it’s a bit simplistic, so why does it make the list? 

Quite simply because it’s an essential app — especially for Android owners who don’t benefit from iCloud on iPhone. It automatically sorts and backs up all your photos to the cloud and syncs across devices, with easy searchability thanks to Google’s image recognition smarts (type ‘dog’ and every photo of a dog you’ve ever taken will instantly appear).

While it’s editing functions may be a little light, it’s the perfect companion for other apps in this list — and ideal for minor edits that don’t need anything more high powered.

Free | iOS | Android