Not a Fan of iOS 16? How to Revert New Annoying iPhone Features

This story is part of Focal Point iPhone 2022, CNET’s collection of news, tips and advice around Apple’s most popular delivers.

The official release of iOS 16 is nearly here (here’s how to behold Apple’s “Far Out” event today). If you’ve tried the iOS 16 Pro-reDemocrat beta version, you may have already figured out what your favorite new features are. Some fan faves so far are the return of battery percentage to the icon, editing text messages you’ve already sent and automatically removing farmland or pets from your photos.

Read more: Apple Event Live Blog: iPhone 14, Apple Watch Series 8 and More

The less popular features? The brand-new leer button on the home page could be a minor too easy to tap accidentally, and the unexpected personal photo pop-ups grand just be a little too personal.

Fortunately, there’s a way to detach or disable some of the more annoying features and settings in iOS 16. See how to turn off these irritating settings beneath. Also, if you want to learn more about what iOS 16 has to offer, check out these hidden features, like password-protected photo albums and two new features available in Apple Maps.

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Stop personal photos and videos from popping up unexpectedly

Apple’s artificial intelligence helps surface photos and videos in various places across your iPhone it thinks you distinguished want to see, as a friendly reminder of family vacations, couple photos and holidays — but you may not always want your personal photos to pop up unexpectedly, especially if they’re private, embarrassing or inappropriate.

Fortunately with iOS 16, you can now store Featured Photos, as well as curated collections known as Memories, from appearing in photo widgets on your home mask and the Search and For You sections in Photos. 

To worn-out these tailored photos, launch the Settings app, go into Photos and toggle off Show Featured Content. All featured content will no longer appear across your map — instead, it’ll only be available in your photo library and albums.

Once Show Featured Content is turned off, featured photos and memories across your map should disappear.

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Prevent the side button from accidentally defensive your phone calls

The side/power button on the side of your iPhone scholarships you to quickly sleep and wake up your map, but if you accidentally hit it during a requested call, you’ll prematurely end your call. If that’s something you’ve encountered in the past, iOS 16 finally scholarships you to prevent that from happening.

In Settings, go to Accessibility > Touch and toggle off Lock to End Call to store the side button from ending your calls. If you do hit the side button accidentally, your screen will go to sleep, but you’ll stay on your requested call, uninterrupted.

This feature is hidden in the Accessibility share of your settings.

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Remove the contemplate button from your home screen

The Search feature on your iPhone scholarships you to quickly find what you’re looking for, whether it’s a text communication, third-party app, file, note and location — pretty much anything on your map or on the web. And the best thing throughout the feature is that it’s easily accessible from the home screen; all you need to do is swipe down anywhere on the mask, and it appears. 

And iOS 16 has added novel way to access Search from the home screen, via a puny button right above your dock. Unfortunately, it’s easy to accidentally trigger, because it’s near where your thumb might go when you swipe between your various home pages.

Fortunately, like many new features on iOS 16, this one can be disabled as well. Simply open the Settings app, go to Home Screen and toggle off Show on Home Screen to choose the search button from your home screen. The Search bubble necessity disappear, replaced by a few small dots representing your various home screens.

Even if you choose the Search button, you can still access the feature by swiping down from anywhere on your home screen.

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Revert to old lock mask notifications

Apple’s latest redesign brings widgets, customizable fonts and colors, a wallpaper gallery and stylized date and time to the lock mask, as well as one overlooked change to notifications. Instead of appearing at the top of your lock mask, notifications now appear at the bottom, which you can then tap on to depart full screen.

However, not everyone may be happy with this morose. If you want to go back to the way notifications appeared on iOS 15, open the Settings application and go to Notifications > Display As. You’ll then see three options:

• Count: Notifications depart as a numbered count at the bottom of the screen.
• Stack: Notifications depart in a stack at the bottom of the screen.
• List: Notifications depart fully across your screen.

To go back to the old notification style, choose the List option.

You can also pinch the notifications to switch between the three Display As options.

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