Link Safe

Safari now lets you request the desktop version of a web site you visit. If you'd rather view the full desktop version of a site, tap the Search field and drag down to reveal Request Desktop Site. This new option will reload the page in Safari as the standard desktop site, which may offer more features than the mobile version.

Mail has enhanced swipe gestures for quickly dealing with messages by swiping left or right on them. You can  customise these options via ‘Settings> Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Swipe Options'. You can choose from None, Mark as Read, Flag, and Archive. For Swipe Left, your choice appears in the list of shortcuts that swiping partway reveals, but swiping all the way always deletes a message.

Notes now sports rich text editing functionality so you can create more elaborate notes. Tap and hold on text to reveal the menu, and tap More and the BUI’ formatting icon. This reveals the Bold, Underline and Italics options that you can use to stylise your text. These are the only options available so far (we would like bulleted and numbered lists too) but they're a useful improvement over standard plain text.

Battery Usage By App 

The new Battery Usage feature enables you to identify, and potentially remove, apps that are taking too much battery life. Click ‘Settings > General > Usage Battery Usage' to view the stats. You can view Battery Usage data by Last 24 Hours or Last 7 Days using the two tabs. The figures in the Battery Usage feature show the percentage of your battery that is used by each app when your iOS device isn't charging.

Privacy advocates will be overjoyed to hear that DuckDuckGo is now available as a default search engine option in Safari. DuckDuckGo has a big emphasis on keeping its users' privacy intact. Tap ‘Settings > Safari > SearchEngine > DuckDuckGo’. Now when you tap the Search field in Safari it will return results from DuckDuckGo and not Google.

Power users of the iOS keyboard shortcuts feature will appreciate the new search and index function. Tap ‘Settings > General > Keyboard Shortcuts' to view the new features. Use the Search bar at the top to search for both the Phrase and Shortcut. On the right is an A-Z index for you to browse large shortcut lists.

Siri now supports Shazam and can identify music that is playing. Just activate Siri and say “what song is
this?" Siri also provides links to the iTunes Store so you can buy the track. Music tagged by Siri also appears in the iTunes Store app: tap the Menu item in the top-right and choose the Siri tab to View all the music you’ve tagged in Siri.

One absolutely welcome feature is the ability to create shared lists in Reminders right from iOS, so multiple people can add items to the list. Open the Reminders app and tap on the list; now tap on the Edit button and choose ‘Sharing > Add Person' and enter the name of the person, and tap Add. They will get an email message asking them if they want to join the shared Reminder list. Items can now be added and completed by both people.

A fascinating new option in Accessibility enables you to view your iPhone in black and white. If you fancy using your iPhone without any colour (or find that it’s easier to read the screen in monochrome), click 'Settings General > Accessibility’ and set the Grayscale option to On.

It’s now possible to mute individual conversations in Messages with a new Do Not Disturb feature. Tap on Messages and pick a conversation from the list. Now tap on Details and set Do Not Disturb to On. You will no longer get any messages from that conversation until you reset Do Not Disturb to Off. Note that it doesn’t turn off by itself, so if you forget about it you’ll get no messages at all. Also it only works on that device, so you will still get messages on your other devices (the feature can also be found in OS X 10.10 Yosemite so you can mute conversations on your iPhone, iPad and Mac).

One essential new feature in Accessibility is called Speak Screen.With Speak Screen activated you swipe two fingers down the screen to speak the contents of any app. In Safari, you can get a vocal reading of a web page. To activate it, go to ‘Settings > General Accessibility > Speech’ and set Speak Screen to On. Open Safari, navigate to a web page and pull two fingers from the top of the screen.

The Speak Screen option is also outstanding when used in conjunction with iBooks or the Kindle app. Activate the Speak Screen options in accessibility and open a book in iBooks or Kindle. Now pull two fingers down and iOS 8 will start to read the book out loud. It will turn pages automatically and will even read out the whole book if you want it to. You can use the hare and tortoise icons to speed up or slow down the reading speed.

There is a new app called Tips in the Extras folder. Open it to find a bunch of new tips for iOS 8, and tap on the Menu item in the bottom left to view all the tips. These are updated on a weekly basis so you can keep checking back with the app. You can’t delete the Tips app, and it will send notifications to you. If you find these annoying, you can turn them off by visiting 'Settings Notifications > Tips’, and setting Allow Notifications to Off.