It might have been an unfortunate autofill. Or a moment of emotional duress. Or simply poor beverage management skills. But we’ve all, at one time or another, hit send on a text or email message that we later desperately wanted to recall.
While Apple unveiled a slew of nifty innovations for its iPhone, iPad and computer operating systems at the Monday kickoff event for its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, a couple of the new features are likely to find instant fans among the company’s over 1.6 billion active device users.
The ability to haul an errant text or email back into the barn among them.
What’s done can be undone: Apple says its new iPhone operating system, iOS 16, will allow users to edit or recall recently sent messages, though the new feature comes with a caveat — you have 15 minutes after sending to change your mind.
The iPhone system upgrade also creates new options for recovering texts you’ve deleted from the archive, allowing users 30 days to exhume deleted texts before they’re gone forever.
Apple is also adding a feature to Messages that will allow the app to function as a shared viewing or listening space.
SharePlay, Apple says, will make it possible to enjoy synced content like movies or songs and shared playback controls all while chatting in Messages.
You’ve got mail, or not: The iOS 16 upgrade will also allow emails composed in Apple’s Mail app to be intercepted, but will only be “given a moment” to cancel delivery of a message before it reaches a recipient’s inbox.
Another cool Mail upgrade is new onboard intelligence that will help detect if the user forgot to include an important part of a message, such as an attachment. And, Apple says iOS 16 includes an overhaul to Mail’s search function that will deliver more relevant, accurate and complete results.
See and be seen: Apple says Live Text in iOS 16 is able to recognize text in images across iOS, and it is now expanding to include video. Users can pause a video on any frame and interact with text. Live Text also adds the ability for users to quickly convert currency, translate text and more.