Apple’s iOS 15.2 Replace Provides New iPhone Options for Children, Music and Your Digital Afterlife

Google’s Android is the most-used smartphone software program across the globe, however iOS stays extra in style within the U.S. Together with up to date capabilities, the newest software program variations usually include bug fixes and different tweaks that enhance the iPhone person expertise.

Typically it pays to attend a couple of days to improve, although. Set up can take longer than anticipated, particularly at launch when many individuals attempt to obtain it directly. And if there are any glitches within the software program itself, these often come to mild inside a couple of days of the iOS launch.

If you’re able to get iOS 15.2 in your iPhone, go to Settings > Basic > Software program Replace. From there, select Obtain and Set up, then observe the prompts.

iPad and Mac customers get related updates. (Mac customers are additionally now capable of entry the SharePlay function for watching movies, listening to music or figuring out with buddies collectively over FaceTime.) You’ll be able to obtain MacOS Monterey 12.1 by going to System Preferences > Software program Replace > Replace Now. For iPads, you possibly can observe the identical course of as on the iPhone to get iPadOS 15.2.

Listed below are the notable additions within the software program updates:

Apple Music voice plan

Apple’s new $4.99 subscription tier for Apple Music lets customers management playback by Siri.  The month-to-month plan doesn’t embrace entry to touch-screen controls, lyrics, music movies or offline playback—however it provides you entry to the complete library by Siri-enabled devices together with iPhones, iPads and the HomePod Mini.

You’ll be able to subscribe to the Apple Music Voice Plan by saying, “Hey Siri, begin my Apple Music Voice trial.”

Legacy Contacts

A giant challenge right this moment is determining what occurs to your digital life if you die. Relations will need to entry your photographs and different information, and this permits them.

Apple will help you establish 5 individuals you’d wish to have entry to your iCloud knowledge, together with your Photographs, Notes and Messages. Let these individuals know they’re your legacy contacts, and Apple will give them a digital key that solely works after you have handed.

Security and privateness instruments

A brand new instrument for Apple’s Messages app will warn children underneath 18 earlier than they ship or open messages containing nude photographs. Dad and mom activate it within the Household Sharing settings. As soon as enabled, flagged photographs will seem blurred and current warnings earlier than permitting customers to proceed.

Apple received’t notify mother and father when this occurs, nonetheless, as our colleague Julie Jargon famous in early December. Take a look at her column for extra info on how the instrument works.

Apple additionally up to date the methods to get assist in an emergency. Now you can press the aspect button a number of instances, or maintain the aspect button and the amount button collectively to set off an emergency name.

iPhone customers who obtain iOS 15.2 can even achieve entry to an App Privateness Report detailing how typically apps entry their delicate knowledge like photographs, contacts and site. The opt-in report additionally lists the place that info is being shared. The report builds on Apple’s App Monitoring Transparency function, which it rolled out in April.

Write to Dalvin Brown at dalvin.brown@wsj.com