News: The 10 Most Annoying Things About iOS 10 for iPhone

There's a lot of great things to be excited about with iOS 10 on your device. You can remove annoying stock apps, search emails better, remember where you parked, and much, much more. Seriously, there's actually more outstanding features in iOS 10 than in Apple's latest iPhone 7 models.

As with most major software upgrades, however, there are always downsides.

A few of the biggest complaints I've had using the iOS 10 betas were a missing "shuffle all" songs option (again, I know) and the missing date in the Notification Center, but these issues have already been fixed in the full-scale public release.

Also, there are some valid security concerns in iOS 10. For example, people might be able to reply to your messages from your lock screen (iPhone 6s and 7 models only), the screen turns on whenever you pick up your device (iPhone 6, 6S, SE, 7, and 7 Plus models only), and Spotlight remembers your search history, which might not be cool when others get a glance.

Besides these things, there are still a lot of bugs, gripes, and absent features that Apple needs to address for iOS 10 to really impress. (Update: I'm currently on the iOS 10.2 public beta right now and all of the below issues are still applicable.)

1. Unlocking Is Confusing

Some users around the web have complained about the confusing new process involved when unlocking a device with Touch ID enabled. I can see how it be baffling, now that there's "Press home to unlock" and "Press home to open" options at the bottom, as well as a new lock icon in the status bar. Plus, it's utterly confusing if you want to disable widgets on the lock screen.

It did take me awhile to get used to it in the betas, so give it some time, and there's a setting that lets Touch ID work more or less like it used to. If you don't use Touch ID, it's actually quicker since you don't have to "Slide to unlock" anymore to bring up the keypad.

2. You Need 'Reduce Motion' Off for Message Effects

The Reduce Motion setting has been a thing ever since Apple introduced the Parallax Effect in iOS 7, which makes the background and foreground seem completely separate, and moves independently of one another on the home and lock screens.

Reducing the motion kills this effect, as well some other motion effects. So if have this option enabled, and updated to iOS 10, chances are those cool new iMessages effects aren't working—either for sending or receiving. This feels like it should be its own separate toggle in the Messages settings, but for now, you need to disable Reduce Motion device-wide to use iMessage effects.

3. Removing Stock Apps Breaks Some Shortcuts

Some of the shortcut-style actions you can perform on your iOS device will be rendered useless if you delete certain stock apps, now that that's a possibility. For instance, if you tap on an email link in Safari or elsewhere, and you have the Mail app removed, it will ask you to restore Mail from the App Store. There's no way to change this action to be completed with another email app such as Gmail or Inbox.

4. You Can't Rate Songs Anymore

I've been using iTunes pretty much since its release, so my whole library is based on star ratings, which makes it's fairly annoying that they forgot this feature.

They've been weaning us off the star rating system ever since the love/heart icon came out with their Apple Music service in iOS 8.4. They moved access to star ratings in iOS 9.3 from tapping on the song name to the album cover, and now the love/heart icon is everywhere and stars are nowhere.

5. It's Not Easy to 'Love' Songs

So stars are going away... I'll manage with hearts somehow. But how about making it easier to actually "love" a song? Right now, you have to open the Now Playing screen, then tap on the little ellipses to see the "love" and "dislike" options. Why not put these buttons on the Now Playing screen somewhere, or at least the heart like you had before?

Furthermore, I listen to most of my music while the screen is locked, and there's no way to rate music from the lock screen, either in the main lock screen player or the Control Center. Back in iOS 9, you could "love" a song from the main lock screen player, and in an earlier iOS 10 beta, they changed it to tapping on an ellipses to bring up the "love" option. But in the final iOS 10 release, that's not even there.

6. You Can't Clear All Notifications on Older Devices

One of the best new features in iOS 10 is the ability to clear all notifications from the Notification Center. Except, of course, only newer devices get to enjoy this feature, since it only works with 3D Touch.

So, unless you have an iPhone 6s or 7 model, you're shit out of luck.

7. Optimize Music Storage Is Not Available for Everyone

In some of the early betas, anyone was able to use the new "Optimize Storage" feature for the Music app, which automatically deletes music you haven't listened to in awhile to clear up some space on your device.

However, they made this a feature that's only available with "iCloud Music Library" now. So unless you subscribe to iTunes Match or Apple Music, you won't be able to automatically clear up space on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch when your device gets full.

This is probably for protection against those people who sync all of their music from iTunes to their iOS device, then delete it from iTunes. It's kind of a failsafe, to make sure they don't lose their music forever, but for us more responsible people—we want it back!

8. You Still Can't 'Mark All' from a Mail Search

Apple, you've included a ton of great options in iOS 10 for searching and filtering emails, but why have you still omitted a "Mark All" button in a search? I like to clean up the junk every now and then, so I'll do searches for Groupon or whatever spam list I'm subscribed to so I can delete them all. Problem is, I have to delete them one by one. Petty gripe? Maybe. But it's something I wish I had every day.

And yes, I can set up smart folders to catch all of them and "Mark All" that way, but the main Mailboxes screen is already crowded as it is.

9. The Volume HUD Still Sucks

On our big wish list of things we wanted iOS 10 to include, better volume controls was up there at the top. And kudos to Apple, because they actually listened. Well, kind of... for like a second, anyway.

One of the earlier iOS 10 betas removed the big obtrusive volume HUD when playing videos in most apps, but they simply removed it and didn't replace it with anything else—so you had no idea what the volume level was unless you used the Control Center, which is even more obtrusive for videos. In the final iOS 10 release, though, the volume HUD is there in all its un-glory.

10. Visual Voicemail Needs Work

Aside from voicemail transcriptions not being available to everyone (I have Verizon Wireless and I can't get them), there's a serious bug that Apple forgot to fix in the Voicemail section of the Phone app. I've actually reported this bug to them during the betas, but it doesn't seem like a priority issue for them, for some reason. It was actually the only bug I reported, so I feel pretty unappreciated. ¯\_(?)_/¯

Anyway, the bug happens when you try to view voicemails at the bottom of your list. The list has to extend past one static page, and it only affects the last few voicemails. It's kind of hard to explain, but you can see in the screenshots below what happens when selecting one of these voicemails—the playback and delete controls are completely useless. This may not affect all devices, so keep that in mind.

More Possibly Annoying Features...

While I've already laid out my list of annoying features, others around the web seem to have their own. For instance, some users don't like how the shuffle button in Music isn't obvious (I find it easy enough), and others want their Game Center app back (which was removed entirely in place of a simple Settings screen).

I also find it annoying that Safari likes to reload my tabs all of the time, but this has been an issue for a few iOS versions now, and isn't as big a problem with newer devices. I wish you could customize the Control Center, too, which I've been hoping for since iOS 7, but that seems like it'll never be something we can do.

See something that bugs you and it's not listed here? Share below!

• Follow Gadget Hacks on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and YouTube
• Follow Apple Hacks on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest
• Follow WonderHowTo on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+