A few hours ago, the latest versions of Apple’s mobile operating systems began rolling out to all supported devices. We are of course talking about iOS 16.2 and iPadOS 16.2.
With these releases, Freeform makes its debut. This is a new app designed for “creative brainstorming and collaboration,” according to Apple. It lets you organize and visually lay out content on a “flexible canvas” with built-in sharing and collaboration capabilities. “A wide variety of files” can be added and previewed inline without ever leaving the board. Freeform boards are stored in iCloud so they sync across devices.
Free form
In addition, Apple Music Sing, the previously announced karaoke feature, is also built into these releases. There’s a new option that expands the total number of iCloud data categories protected via end-to-end encryption to 23, including iCloud Backup, Notes and Photos, new settings that let you hide the wallpaper or notifications when Always -On-screen is enabled on iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, new sleep, medicine and activity widgets and SharePlay support in Game Center for multiplayer games, so you can play with the people you’re on a FaceTime call with .
Apple Music Sing
You also get a bunch of bug fixes and various improvements, including better search in Messages, news articles in Weather relevant to that location, participant markers in notes so you can see live indicators when others update shared notes, AirDrop returns automatically to contacts only after 10 minutes to prevent unwanted requests to receive content, and Crash Detection optimizations on iPhone 14 and 14 Pro models.
iPads gain external display support for up to 6K resolution on iPad Pro 12.9″ (5th generation and later), iPad Pro 11″ (3rd generation and later) and iPad Air (5th generation), the ability to drag and drop files and windows to a connected display and back, and support for using up to four apps on the iPad display and four on the external one.
An issue that caused multi-touch gestures to become unresponsive while using the Zoom accessibility feature has been fixed, and tracking notifications now alert you if an AirTag that has been separated from its owner is nearby and has recently played a bell to indicate that it is moving.
These updates also address more than 30 security vulnerabilities, making it even more important to install the new software as soon as possible. Since Apple generally doesn’t do incremental rollouts, iOS 16.2 and iPadOS 16.2 should already be available to everyone. If you haven’t received a notification yet, you can manually check for an update and it should start downloading immediately.
