The Photos app is fulfilling a request some users have expressed at least five years ago. Starting with iOS 16, the "Hidden Album" section can be locked with your password or biometrics—and duplicates will now also be recognized.
In previous iOS versions, marking a photo as "Hidden" simply removed it from the main camera roll and placed it in a separate section of the albums list. However, this didn't protect it from prying eyes. There's now an entire ecosystem of third-party "secret folder" apps that address this shortcoming and allow you to protect special images with Face ID or Touch ID. Competing manufacturers like Samsung offer Secret Folder apps as default apps to meet precisely this need. Apple has finally closed this feature gap with iOS 16.
Locked, hidden photos
With iOS 16, you no longer need a separate app. The Photos app itself automatically locks the "Hidden" and "Recently Deleted" sections. By default, these sections require Face ID, Touch ID, or your iPhone's passcode to access. This feature was not announced during the WWDC keynote. announced. The introduction of shared iCloud photo libraries for families was highlighted. Starting with iOS 16, users can create a family library with up to five other people to automatically share photos with each other. The Camera app even allows you to send photos directly to the shared photo roll.
iOS 16 detects duplicates in the Photos app
If you take and save a lot of photos on your iPhone, it's very likely that you have a few duplicate images unnecessarily cluttering up your photo library, and that's where iOS 16 comes in. Apple calls the new feature "Duplicate Detection," and it works as expected. Using on-device machine learning in iOS 16 and macOS Ventura, your device now easily detects all duplicate photos in your library and groups them together in the "Media Types" section of Photos. From there, you can easily delete them to free up space on your device and declutter your photo library. Because the feature requires your device to scan and sort your entire library, it may take a while before your device offers you duplicates to delete. iOS 16 will be available to all iPhone users this fall. A developer beta is already available for download. To see if your device is compatible with the new software, you can find out here. (Photo by hadrian / Bigstockphoto)
