Safety Check is a new iOS 16 feature to help people in abusive relationships

Ios 16 Safety Check Screenshot
Ios 16 Safety Check Screenshot (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

  • Apple's iOS 16 will add a feature that will make it easier for people to revoke access to things like their location, photos, and more.
  • Security Check will ship with iOS 16, iPadOS 16, watchOS 9, and macOS Ventura this fall.

Apple's big new iOS 16 update will include a new feature called Safety Check that's designed to help people who are in an abusive relationship and need a way to ensure they can't be tracked, revoke access, and more.

Announced during the WWDC22 event, iOS 16 brings with it a raft of new features including Lock Screen widgets, new customization, improvements to Mail, and more. But perhaps the most notable addition is Security Check, a feature that Apple says is designed to help people who are at risk from abuse and violence. The feature will allow people to quickly remove access to location data, photos, and more when needed.

A new privacy tool called Safety Check can be helpful to users whose personal safety is at risk from domestic or intimate partner violence by quickly removing all access they've granted to others. It includes an emergency reset that helps users easily sign out of iCloud on all their other devices, reset privacy permissions, and limit messaging to just the device in their hand. It also helps users understand and manage which people and apps they've given access to.

The vital feature will be part of iOS 16, iPadOS 16, watchOS 9, and macOS Ventura when all of the updates arrive this fall.

Apple's WWDC22 event saw the announcement of a raft of new software alongside a refreshed MacBook Air as well as an updated 13-inch MacBook Pro.

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.