Apple’s newest update to its iPhone operating system, iOS 16.1, will be available on Monday, the company announced in a press release Thursday.
It will launch for iPhone users with an iPhone 8 or newer models, and it adds quite a few features that weren’t available when iOS 16 launched back in September.
Here’s what’s coming.
Access Apple Fitness+ without Apple Watch
Apple Watch Fitness
Source: Apple Inc.
IPhone users with iOS 16.1 will be able to subscribe to and access Apple Fitness+ even if they don’t have an Apple Watch.
Fitness+ is a subscription service with guided workouts and meditations that costs $9.99 per month or $79.99 per year. Apple is offering three months of Fitness+ free with the purchase of a new iPhone, iPad or Apple TV.
If you work out on Fitness+ without an Apple Watch, you won’t be able to see metrics like calories burned, or your real-time heart rate.
Clean energy iPhone charging
Clean Energy Charging will be available with iOS 16.1
Sofia Pitt
The iOS 16.1 update will also include Clean Energy Charging. Apple says this will let users optimize charging for when cleaner energy sources are available, helping to decrease your iPhone’s carbon footprint.
Clean Energy Charging is an option you can select in Settings > Battery > Battery Health & Charging. Under the Clean Energy Charging option, Apple says, “In your region, iPhone will try to reduce your carbon footprint by selectively charging when lower carbon emission electricity is available. iPhone learns from your daily charging routine so it can reach full charge before you need to use it.”
iCloud shared photo library
Apple Shared Photo Library
Apple
IOS 16.1 will let you create an iCloud Shared Photo Library instead of a standard shared iCloud album.
This will allow you to invite up to five other people, or six in total, to a library where you can all add, delete, edit or favorite photos and videos.
The Camera app will offer a new toggle that allows users to choose to send photos to the shared library automatically. So, if you’re on vacation and taking a bunch of pictures at the beach with a group of friends, everyone can snap pictures with this option turned on and see all of the photos in the shared album.
Live Activities for third-party apps
Once you update to iOS 16.1 your lock screen will feature Live Activities, which shows information from sports games, ride-sharing apps like Uber, or updates on a food delivery order. So, you might see how long it’ll take for dinner to arrive at your house, with information on how soon it’ll arrive. Or, as the screenshot below shows, the score, inning and count of a baseball game with updates on plays. It’ll be most useful on the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, which have always-on displays so you can glance to see new information. You’ll start to see some apps on Monday but it requires developer adoption, so additional apps will come later.
Here’s what it looks like:
Live Activities on iOS 16.1.
Apple
Support for Matter accessories in the Home App
IOS 16.1 will add support for new Matter accessories to the Home app, which lets users control smart home accessories.
Matter is a new connectivity standard that’s trying to make it easier to use all of your smart home accessories, together, no matter who designed them. The idea is to let smart home devices connect with home hubs, whether the hub is made by Apple, Google or Amazon. It means you should be able to go to the store and buy a smart bulb, for example, without worrying if it’ll work with your system at home, so long as it supports Matter.
Paxton sued Google in 2022 for allegedly unlawfully tracking and collecting the private data of users.
The attorney general said the settlement, which covers allegations in two separate lawsuits against the search engine and app giant, dwarfed all past settlements by other states with Google for similar data privacy violations.
Google’s settlement comes nearly 10 months after Paxton obtained a $1.4 billion settlement for Texas from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to resolve claims of unauthorized use of biometric data by users of those popular social media platforms.
“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” Paxton said in a statement on Friday.
“For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won,” said Paxton.
“This $1.375 billion settlement is a major win for Texans’ privacy and tells companies that they will pay for abusing our trust.”
Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said the company did not admit any wrongdoing or liability in the settlement, which involves allegations related to the Chrome browser’s incognito setting, disclosures related to location history on the Google Maps app, and biometric claims related to Google Photo.
Castaneda said Google does not have to make any changes to products in connection with the settlement and that all of the policy changes that the company made in connection with the allegations were previously announced or implemented.
“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” Castaneda said.
“We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.”
Virtual care company Omada Health filed for an IPO on Friday, the latest digital health company that’s signaled its intent to hit the public markets despite a turbulent economy.
Founded in 2012, Omada offers virtual care programs to support patients with chronic conditions like prediabetes, diabetes and hypertension. The company describes its approach as a “between-visit care model” that is complementary to the broader health-care ecosystem, according to its prospectus.
Revenue increased 57% in the first quarter to $55 million, up from $35.1 million during the same period last year, the filing said. The San Francisco-based company generated $169.8 million in revenue during 2024, up 38% from $122.8 million the previous year.
Omada’s net loss narrowed to $9.4 million during its first quarter from $19 million during the same period last year. It reported a net loss of $47.1 million in 2024, compared to a $67.5 million net loss during 2023.
The IPO market has been largely dormant across the tech sector for the past three years, and within digital health, it’s been almost completely dead. After President Donald Trump announced a sweeping tariff policy that plunged U.S. markets into turmoil last month, taking a company public is an even riskier endeavor. Online lender Klarna delayed its long-anticipated IPO, as did ticket marketplace StubHub.
But Omada Health isn’t the first digital health company to file for its public market debut this year. Virtual physical therapy startup Hinge Health filed its prospectus in March, and provided an update with its first-quarter earnings on Monday, a signal to investors that it’s looking to forge ahead.
Omada contracts with employers, and the company said it works with more than 2,000 customers and supports 679,000 members as of March 31. More than 156 million Americans suffer from at least one chronic condition, so there is a significant market opportunity, according to the company’s filing.
In 2022, Omada announced a $192 million funding round that pushed its valuation above $1 billion. U.S. Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Fidelity’s FMR LLC are the largest outside shareholders in the company, each owning between 9% and 10% of the stock.
“To our prospective shareholders, thank you for learning more about Omada. I invite you join our journey,” Omada co-founder and CEO Sean Duffy said in the filing. “In front of us is a unique chance to build a promising and successful business while truly changing lives.”
Liz Reid, vice president, search, Google speaks during an event in New Delhi on December 19, 2022.
Sajjad Hussain | AFP | Getty Images
Testimony in Google‘s antitrust search remedies trial that wrapped hearings Friday shows how the company is calculating possible changes proposed by the Department of Justice.
Google head of search Liz Reid testified in court Tuesday that the company would need to divert between 1,000 and 2,000 employees, roughly 20% of Google’s search organization, to carry out some of the proposed remedies, a source with knowledge of the proceedings confirmed.
The testimony comes during the final days of the remedies trial, which will determine what penalties should be taken against Google after a judge last year ruled the company has held an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search.
The DOJ, which filed the original antitrust suit and proposed remedies, asked the judge to force Google to share its data used for generating search results, such as click data. It also asked for the company to remove the use of “compelled syndication,” which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones.
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The DOJ also proposed the company divest its Chrome browser but that was not included in Reid’s initial calculation, the source confirmed.
Reid on Tuesday said Google’s proprietary “Knowledge Graph” database, which it uses to surface search results, contains more than 500 billion facts, according to the source, and that Google has invested more than $20 billion in engineering costs and content acquisition over more than a decade.
“People ask Google questions they wouldn’t ask anyone else,” she said, according to the source.
Reid echoed Google’s argument that sharing its data would create privacy risks, the source confirmed.
Closing arguments for the search remedies trial will take place May 29th and 30th, followed by the judge’s decision expected in August.
The company faces a separate remedies trial for its advertising tech business, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 22.