iOS 16 will help Brits explain why 30°C is too darn hot

By Oliver Haslam
published

Ios 16 Features Tiles
Ios 16 Features Tiles (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

  • Apple is adding new and easy unit conversion in iOS 16.
  • People will be able to convert timezones, speed, currencies, and more.
  • Apple's iOS 16 is set to be made available this fall.

Apple made iOS 16 available to developers earlier this month and we're still learning things about it. One of those things is built-in unit conversion including temperature, currency, distance, and more.

If you're someone who lives in a different timezone, or a Brit tired of explaining to Americans why 30°C is too hot because they need it in Fahrenheit, iOS 16 has your back. As MacStories editor-in-chief Federico Viticci shared to Twitter, those with iOS 16 installed later this year will be able to instantly convert these kinds of things without ever leaving the app that they're in. That means that if someone sends you an iMessage that says something like "100KM," you'll be able to tap it and convert it to miles. The feature works in apps like Notes and more and could save valuable seconds Googling how hot a temperature is or what time it is in a particular timezone.

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While the App Store is already full of apps that can convert just about anything to almost anything else, having this kind of feature built right into iOS 16 will be a huge boon for those of us who talk to people across the world, where different units are used for different things. It's also a great example of a feature that might not seem huge but could make a big quality of life improvement over the life of your iPhone.

Apple announced iOS 16 earlier this month during its WWDC22 opening keynote and almost immediately made the first beta available to developers. The public beta won't land until next month, while the final release isn't set to be made available until later this year — likely in or around September. We do know that it'll be the best iPhone software to date and that it will likely be installed on the upcoming iPhone 14 when it ships around the same time, too.

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Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.

4 Comments
  • Wouldn't it be easier and better if the USA - literally the *only* country in the world that still uses Fahrenheit - just switched to the proper standard? I mean, except for temperature, England is the world's hot bed of ridiculous, out-of-touch, antique measurement systems. If even *they* are ahead of you on this issue, then it's basically time to give up, right?
  • LOL. "Who" says Celsius is "proper"? Much of the world also likes soccer, but I prefer "Football", a real sport. Try building a house in France in metric measurements, and you'll soon find out the majority of builders shift things to "semi-Imperial" measurements to do so because the variations in metric don't work out so well. I'll be sitting in my 102 F hot tub here in the US waiting for your "proper" reply.
  • 30°C too 'darn' hot?? That's when life just begins. T-Shirts, Shorts and convertibles are real fun at 30°C. The sea and/or pools are finally making sense. Sitting in coffee shops OUTSIDE at 30°C is pure joy.
    Who the heck finds 30°C 'too darn hot'? Oh wait, right, Apple is from California. The country where people are watching the beach from across the road in sterile Starbucks behind tinted glass in A/C'ed rooms :).
  • I would agree that a "too darn hot" day is more like 40, but 30 degrees is definitely a "hot day."