Apple has taken some heat over the years for its integrated emoji keyboard only supporting the skin color of Caucasians (or actually, more like Springfieldians; the default yellow hue matches best to Homer Simpson). With iOS 8.3, many emojis now have diversity: hold your finger on an emoji of a face, hand, or figure with visible skin and you’ll get a choice of five new colors. (This doesn’t work on smilies or cats or the famous poop emoji.)

In fact, Apple added over 300 new emoji, and not just to put diversity on existing pics. There are also new items like the Apple Watch (of course), but also new family configurations, such as same-sex couples.

Also new on the emoji keyboard: continuous left/right scrolling, making it easier to get to the images you want.

You can keep all your iPhone photos in iCloud (if you’ve paid to have enough space on the service). Go to the Settings > iCloud > Photos and turn on iCloud Photo Library. This isn’t the same as Photo Stream(Opens in a new window), which syncs photos (no video) across all your iOS devices for 30 days or 1,000 photos. Apple iCloud Photo Library syncs everything, and also allows you to sync with MacOS. In fact, if you turn on iCloud Photo Library, your Photo Stream “disappears”—it’s still there, it just isn’t made visible in the Photos app. Once it’s on, access the uploaded photos on your iOS device by going into the Photos app and tapping the Photos tab (at the bottom).

Because any image you upload via iPhone Photo Library gets downloaded to your other iOS devices, you get extra options in settings to Optimize iPhone Storage (use smaller, lower-quality images) or Download and Keep Originals (higher quality images that take up more space). Choose wisely, depending on the space on your iPhone.

Do you get a lot of spammy messages via iMessage or SMS text? There’s a new feature under Settings > Messages called Filter Unknown Senders. Turn it on, and in the Messages app, you’ll now get buttons at the top for “Contacts & SMS”—that’s for everyone you know who is listed as a contact—and “Unknown Senders.” That way you still get the messages, but they’re not part of the regular list. The latter also don’t get an alert sounds/vibration when arriving.

Got a really annoying spammer? Messages threads with people not in your contacts get an extra link at the bottom, which you can use to report junk senders directly to Apple.

With iOS 8.1, Apple finally turned on Apple Pay for iPhone 6/6 Plus (you need a device with NFC). Apple Watch, however, will provide the NFC shopping feature for iPhone 5/5s users.

To use it, go to the PassBook app—the one typically used for tracking loyalty cards and boarding passes. Tap the + sign in the upper right, click Set Up Apple Pay, and choose to use the card that’s already on file with iTunes, or to enter a new Debit or Credit Card. (Remember, you can use the camera to scan in the number on a credit card!)

While shopping, look for a terminal with the universal tap-and-pay symbol (pictured) or one that says ApplePay to be doubly sure, hold the iPhone next to it, enter a pin or use your fingerprint to confirm the transaction, and the purchase is complete.

Want to talk to Siri but don’t want to push a button? If the iPhone is plugged in (and you’ve got “Allow ‘Hey Siri”‘ turned on in Settings > General > Siri), you can just say “Hey Siri.” The microphone vigilantly listens for the words, even in standby, and will spring to life to help with your audio query.

Originally, if you asked Siri to place a call, she would—but if you needed it on speaker, you still had to hit a button. Not very hands-free friendly. Now simply add “on speaker” to a request—like “Call Lindsay on speaker”—and Siri will send the call directly to the speaker phone.

When that unrecognizable-yet-oh-so-familiar song comes on, you don’t have time to go searching for the Shazam app to make it listen in and tell you who’s singing. Thankfully, Shazam’s primary function is now integrated with Siri. Just ask your pocket A.I., “Siri, who’s singing?” and she’ll let you know, complete with a little Shazam logo.

Maybe the smartest update of iOS 8: In the new Health app (now required by iOS 8—you can’t delete it) is a feature called Medical ID. It’s simply a spot for you to fill in pertinent info about yourself—allergies, medications, blood type, vital stats, medical conditions, and emergency contacts—that emergency medical services (EMS) might need to access. If you allow it in the app, anyone can get to it—even if your iPhone is locked with a fingerprint. On the log-in screen with the number pad, anyone can click the “Emergency” link, either to make a 9-1-1 call, or to tap “*Medical ID” to get your info.

Fill it in now. Your future healthcare provider will thank you.

Making an online purchase, but don’t want to type your credit card number? In iOS 8, if you’re using Safari and run into a CC field, you can take a pic of the card to scan the number. It’s automatically added to the credit card field.

The double tap on the home button brings up the App Switcher, a list of your current running or “multitasking” apps (swipe them up and away to close the app). Now, the double tap also shows your most recent contacts at the top; swipe the contacts right to see your Favorite contacts. Tap the contact’s icon to make a call, send a message, or contact via FaceTime.

This feature is also a bug, at least when it comes to recent contacts. If you have one visible that you do NOT want to show up there—say, your hated ex—even if you delete your last conversation or all voicemails or evidence of their calls, they still show up. You can turn off either the Favorites or the Recents or both in Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Show in App Switcher.

You take a lot of pictures, but when someone grabs your phone, it might be nice if they didn’t see some of the, uh, more private shots or vids. In the Photos app, hold a finger on the item in question and select “Hide.” It’ll look like it disappeared, but you can still access it via the Albums button at the bottom. (Hiding also doesn’t prevent apps like Flickr, Carousel, OneDrive, IFTTT, etc. from auto-uploading your images if you’ve got that auto-backup feature activated.)

When you’re in the Messages app, click the camera icon. You still have the option to take a photo or video immediately—but you can also click Photo Library and select a bunch of images/videos to attach and send at all at once, rather than the old one-at-a-time tactic.

In older iOS versions, you took a picture, then had to open it from a favorite image-editing app to do much more than apply a filter to it. Now you can immediately view the pic, click Edit, and crop, rotate, or adjust the light, color, or grayscale. Filters are still an option, too.

Did you take some photos on your iOS device and delete them and assume they’d never see the light of your screen again? Be careful. The new iteration of the Photos app added a new Album called Recently Deleted to act as the equivalent of the desktop Trash—deleted images and videos are sent to this album for a 30-day quarantine before truly going away. This is great if you’re prone to deleting things and then regretting it—which is why Apple put it in. But if you really, really need to make sure an image is gone from the phone for good, go to that album. You’ll see a countdown of days until each image expires; click Select to choose pics to delete entirely (or to recover back to the Photos app.)

Yes, the iOS 8 Camera app finally has a timer. Set it to 3 seconds or 10 seconds, hit the shutter button, then wait. The app provides an on-screen countdown; if you’re using the rear camera, the flash will blink, getting faster as it gets closer. There is no audio cue option, unfortunately. The camera takes a burst of 10 images. (A timer is nothing that hasn’t been on third-party apps like Camera+(Opens in a new window) ($1.99) for years. About time, Apple!)

The opposite of Slo-Mo, which debuted with the iPhone 5 and iOS 7, is Time-Lapse (which is now possible on iPhone 5 on up with iOS 8). That’s the ability to take a really long video and compress it down to just a few seconds. You know, the kind of videos that show a building being constructed or a long highway trip from the dash-cam in just seconds. The new video option is accessed by opening the Camera app and swiping right to the end. You don’t control the speed much—iOS tries to pick the perfect duration for you. So a 10-minute video might come out displaying 2 frames from every second, totaling 15x in speed; an 80-minute video might show only 1 frame every 4 seconds, or 120x. All output is made with the goal of a 15- to 40-second video clip suitable for sharing.

If you want some more control, stick with the free app HyperLapse, from Instagram, which gives you more speed control, from 1x to 12x, and now supports the front camera for time-lapsed selfies—a selfielapse. Or pay $4.99 for Frameographer(Opens in a new window), which adds the ability to do stop-motion video. Just make sure you’ve got space to take all the video.

If you’re colorblind, don’t waste your beautiful iPhone screen showing millions of colors. Go into Settings > General > Accessibility and turn on the Grayscale setting. Tell everyone it’s “artsy.”

When you do go gray, it’s only on the screen. For example, any pictures you take, even screenshots of the “gray” screen, are still in full glorious color. The image above had to be edited with the built-in iOS photo-editing tools to show you what you get when monochromatic.

Hate the small font size on iOS? In version 8, go to Settings > Displays & Brightness > Text Size and use the slider to bump it up (or down, if you don’t have bifocals) (shut up). Any app that uses the master fonts of the operating system will follow your choice.

Sorry, Voxer. iOS 8 users can now send audio over the Messages app, even to users who haven’t yet upgraded to iOS 8. (Note that those older versions of the OS have to download the audio to play, so it takes longer to access, and of course they can’t reply with audio.)

To send, click and hold the microphone icon next to the message box, record a quick message, then swipe up to send it (or swipe left to the X to delete and start over). By default, the audio messages are only stored for two minutes after they’re played. Click the tiny “Keep” link under the audio player to keep the message stored. Go to Settings > Messages > Audio Messages-Expire to change that to “Never” to keep them all. (It might not say Never—it could say “30 days” or “one year,” but that depends on your overall “Keep Messages” setting, found on the same screen.)

This two-minute auto-delete works for video you send via Messages, too—they now default auto-delete if you make them from the Message app by holding the camera icon. You can change this time limit at Settings > Messages > Video Messages. Remember, if you attach a pre-created video to a message it doesn’t get auto-deleted. This isn’t like Snapchat—the person at the other end of the message can save the video (or audio) if they want.

You don’t have to launch the full Messages app to reply to a message (text) if it came in on the lock screen via Notifications. Just swipe down and a reply box will appear. This interaction option works for a lot of items, from the calendar to email.

You’ve always been able to see which apps are using the most space on your iPhone. With iOS 8, the software will tell you which are hogging the battery as well. Go to Settings > General > Usage > Battery Usage for a listing of the power usurpers from the last 24 hours or the last 7 days.

Emojis is no longer the only extra keyboard worth installing. Third-party “plug-in” keyboards are now available for iOS, some paid (Fleksy(Opens in a new window) and Swype(Opens in a new window), each $0.99, both famed for their “swipe don’t type” approach), some free (SwiftKey(Opens in a new window), known for learning what you’ll type plus a swipe-typing feature it named Flow). You turn them on after downloading by going to Settings > General > Keyboard > Keyboards > Add New Keyboard; you access them by clicking the globe key on the on-screen keyboard.

Also, keep in mind, Apple updated the iOS 8 integrated on-screen keyboard. Now dubbed QuickType(Opens in a new window), it supports predictive text, guessing what you’ll type as you go, a lot like SwiftKey. Turn it on by holding down the globe key and toggling the switch marked Predictive. If you find the predictions annoying, swipe them down to minimize.

Nothing is worse than sharing an Apple ID with family members, so you can all use the same apps—and having your kid/spouse/partner/Uncle Chester go nuts and spend a bunch of money on games and apps. People can lock that down now, but with iOS 8 you get a new option—share your apps, iBooks, and iTunes purchases with family members. Parents can even approve purchase made by kids (or Uncle Chester). Sharing extends to the calendar (track all those soccer games and orthodontist appointments—as a family), photos (create a true family album), and location check-ins. It’ll also speed up finding lost iPhones and iPads.

One member of the household has to be the “organizer” (admin) of Family Sharing(Opens in a new window); it should be the person with the purse strings. The organizer can invite up to 5 other members—kids under 13 can now get an Apple ID so they can participate—then set up the permissions for other family members.

Remember, this is about sharing, not privacy. If you download something, everyone on your Family Sharing list gets a notification of what it was. For more, see How to Set Up Family Sharing in iOS 8.

The iOS Mail App now has new features when you swipe a message in the inbox. Move your finger right and you mark a message as read or unread, whatever is opposite its current status. Move your finger left to instantly trash a message, or flag it. Best of all, click More and you get a menu that includes a new feature: Notify Me. It’ll bring up an iOS notification if that message thread gets a new reply. You can change what happens when you swipe by going to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Swipe Options.

iOS notifications have never had the strength of Android’s, but Apple is trying to loosen its notoriously tight grip. Now it supports widgets from select apps. You can get quick access to functions this way: Want to take a picture or make a note to store in Evernote from the lock screen? Access your current Kindle app novel? Check Buzzfeed or NYTimes articles? See your most recent Dropbox uploads? You can do all of that with Notification Widgets. To add them, swipe down to get Notifications, click Today at top, scroll down, and click Edit. Any widget options you have can be added or subtracted here; tap the three lines next to each and hold, then drag to re-order them.

But Apple isn’t quite ready to give up control. It suspended Launcher, a quick launcher that gets you to some frequently accessed iOS features even faster, for a long six months. Now it’s back(Opens in a new window) and has more features than ever.

We are big believers in password manager apps at PCMag. Apps such as 1Password(Opens in a new window) and LastPass(Opens in a new window) have long been available on iOS. In version 8, they’re far more useful, as they’re full App Extensions to Apple’s Safari (the official iOS Web browser) and even have support in Google’s Chrome browser. That means, rather than go to the password manager and copying a secure-but-gobbledygook password to paste into the browser or app, that ultra-strong secret word is auto-magically passed on to the browser. You can even use your iPhone 5s or 6’s fingerprint sensor as your master password. Expect to see password-manager support to become an option in even more iOS apps in the future.

How do you get that password manager to pass on the goods? You need to add it to the tools options of the browser. When in Safari, for example, click the share icon (the box with the up-pointing arrow) and swipe the entire bottom row of tool icons (Copy, Add Bookmark, etc.) to the left. You’ll see a More icon (three dots)—click it. Under Activities are options to turn on the password manager (or any other inactivated tools) for use by the browser.

This also works for sharing with other apps—that first row of icons. Swipe left until you get another More icon and you’ll be able to activate all the apps that can work with whatever app you’re in. Try all the different combos that work for you.

In any Messages conversation, click Details at the top. You now have the option to name the conversation (it doesn’t have to just say “Group”), send all the conversation members your current location, activate a Do Not Disturb to mute notifications (you’ll still receive the messages), and best of all, see a complete list of attachments. Save any pictures, video, or audio clips you didn’t save before.

With iOS 8, Apple has given developers unprecedented access to the hardware inside, and that goes especially for the camera. Now, third-party apps like Camera+(Opens in a new window) (pictured above), Manual(Opens in a new window) ($1.99), ProCamera 8(Opens in a new window) ($3.99), and others offer a slew of D-SLR-like manual shooting modes. It’s the pro control the pros really want. Shutter speed, aperture, ISO, it’s all user controllable. iOS devices are no longer just point-and-shoot cameras; but we still don’t think you should use a full-size iPad as your primary camera.

Got a message from someone who isn’t in your contacts list? The iOS email app makes that info easy to capture. At the top of the message, the app displays the address and phone number, if available, with a button to ignore it or Add to Contacts.

The Spotlight search has a few new tricks in iOS 8. Remember, you access it by touching anywhere on the home screen and swiping your finger down (if you swipe from above the screen, you get the Notifications window). When you search with Spotlight, you are looking inside anything you have marked off in Settings > General > Spotlight Search. (If you want to be tracked less by Apple and its partners, toggle off “Spotlight Suggestions” and “Bing Web Results.”) New this iteration to Spotlight: a quick Wikipedia search (which defaults to the site, rather than the app, but oh well.)

You can have up to 15 pages of apps on the modern iPhone (though with folders, that would be ridiculous… right?) If you are more of a minimalist, you can make the first page totally blank in iOS 8. Simply move all the apps over one page (you know how: hold down an app icon, and when they start jiggling, start dragging them to the right). You’ll need to leave at least one app in the menu bar tray, but otherwise, the first page will be empty except for the beautiful wallpaper. (Image and tip via Lifehacker(Opens in a new window).)

There’s a Bookmarks button on the bottom of the screen in Safari. Click it, and you’ll see icons at the top—click the @ for the Shared Links. This will show you sites you’re “subscribed” to. Mine showed my Twitter feed, simply because I have my Twitter account linked—you see what’s linked by clicking Subscriptions at the bottom. Here’s the trick: when visiting a page with content that is subscribe-able (that is, it has an easy-to-find RSS feed), go to that same page and click “Add Current Site” at the bottom. It’s another option to find and read content later.

The built-in Notes app is nothing special, but it’s special-er in iOS 8. Now it supports rich text (bold, italics, and underline) and images—including animated GIFs—and videos.

Apple used to be friends with Google and used its search engine by default. That’s not the case anymore—now Apple is “friends” with Microsoft and uses Bing. Both of those search engines like to track your every move, so if you’re into some extra privacy, try the latest option for search in the Safari browser: DuckDuckGo(Opens in a new window), “the search engine that doesn’t track you.” Go to Settings > Safari > SearchEngine to make the switch.

You better have activated Find My iPhone by now (even if you use an iPad). It’s the best way to find a lost or stolen iOS device. With iOS 8, there’s a new feature, which is important if your missing device battery was close to dead at the time it went missing. Go to Settings > iCloud > Find My iPhone and turn on “Send Last Location.” That way you can always find the phone’s last ping, even after it’s gone dormant—or at least where it was when the battery was “critically low,” which on an iPhone could be 20 percent.