iOS 13 has been good so far for me with only a few annoyances. I recommend the upgrade if your device is compatible. As with any software upgrade, please back up your device first.

I recommend making an encrypted backup with iTunes (or Finder in macOS Catalina), if feasible, for the quickest restore if something goes wrong.

Dark Mode

One of the headliner features of iOS 13 is Dark Mode. As someone who encourages reduced brightness and blue light exposure for more easeful screen experiences, I love how Dark Mode puts less strain on my eyes, especially in the early morning and nighttime hours.

Additionally, Dark Mode extends battery life. You can easily have Dark Mode activate at sunset and deactivate at sunrise. Just visit Settings > Display & Brightness.

Share & Reply Sheets

Share sheets are vastly improved in appearance and ease of use. The top row has common destinations, such as AirDrop and message recipients. Next is other applications that can open the shared content.

Then come lots of actions with easy-to-read labels and descriptive icons. Keep scrolling down for more. At the bottom, you can tap Edit Actions and choose which “favorite” actions you want at the top of the list, such as Copy in the screenshot above left.

One of the first things you’ll notice in Mail is that the actions on a message have been consolidated into fewer buttons: Trash and Reply.

The Reply button contains all the missing options, such as Flag and Move Message, as well as new Mute and Notify Me actions. Like the share sheet, this pane also has nice labels and icons.

Rename on Save

It’s now really easy to rename an item when saving it to your files. For example, when I captured the screenshots for this newsletter, I saved them to my Desktop—synced via iCloud—instead of to my Photos Library.

When doing so, I found I can tap the file name and name the file to be saved.

There are tons of advancements and refinements in iOS 13, and I didn’t even mention the fancy features of iPadOS 13. Perhaps these will take form in another edition.

What iPhone or iPad tips have you discovered? What functions would you like to learn more about?