Download Apple’s iOS/iPadOS 16.1 Now

One of the biggest additions to iOS 16.1 is the iCloud Shared Photo Library. With the long-awaited features, you can share photos and videos with up to five other people.

Another great feature is third-party support for Live Activities. That allows you to keep track of live events, like a game or Uber ride, directly from your lock screen. Anyone with an iPhone 14 or iPhone 14 Pro Max can also see the information in the Dynamic Island.

Here are the complete release notes:

This update introduces iCloud Shared Photo Library making it easy to keep your family photos up to date. This release also adds support for third party apps in Live Activities, support for Apple Fitness+ on iPhone even if you don’t have an Apple Watch, and includes other features and bug fixes for your iPhone.

iCloud Shared Photo Library
– Separate library for seamlessly sharing photos and videos with up to five other people
– Setup rules allow you to easily contribute past photos based on start date or people in the photos when you set up or join a library
– Library filters for quickly switching between viewing the Shared Library, your Personal Library, or both libraries together
– Shared edits and permissions let everyone add, edit, favorite, caption, and delete photos
– Sharing toggle in Camera lets you choose to send photos you take straight to the Shared Library, or enable a setting to share automatically when other participants are detected nearby using Bluetooth

Live Activities
– Live Activities from third party apps are available in the Dynamic Island and on the Lock Screen for iPhone 14 Pro models

Fitness+
– Apple Fitness+ is supported on iPhone even if you don’t have an Apple Watch

Wallet
– Key sharing enables you to securely share car, hotel room, and other keys in Wallet using messaging apps such as Messages and WhatsApp
– Savings account enables Apple Card customers to grow their Daily Cash by depositing it in a high yield savings account

Home
– Matter, the new smart home connectivity standard, is supported enabling a wide variety of smart home accessories to work together across ecosystems

Clean Energy Charging
– New setting that can try to reduce your carbon footprint by selectively charging when lower carbon emission electricity is available

Books
– Reader controls are automatically hidden as you start reading

This update also includes bug fixes for your iPhone:
– Deleted conversations may appear in the conversations list in Messages
– Dynamic Island content is not available when using Reachability
– CarPlay may fail to connect when using a VPN app

The delayed iPadOS 16.1 offers all of the major features of the iPhone software including iCloud Photo Library Sharing, Message editing, and more.

But the headlining feature only for iPad users is Stage Manager.

With the new multitasking feature, iPad users can resize windows and see multiple overlapping windows in one view.

Using Stage Manager, you can also easily switch between apps and create different groups of apps for a specific project.

Later this year, anyone with an iPad sporting an M1 or M2 chip can take advantage of external display support. You can see multiple apps on an iPad and external display. It will also be possible to drag-and-drop files and apps between screens.

That feature will support displays with up to 6K resolution.