Every operating system has its share of annoyances, and iOS 8 is no different. From an obnoxious U2 album to recent contacts appearing where you don’t want them, here’s how to fix some of the worst annoyances.
A number of the annoyances left over from iOS 7 are still there, but the old fixes still work. On iOS 8, there’s a whole new set of obnoxious new features to deal with.
Turn Off Predictive Text
The new predictive text feature in iOS 8 puts a menu above your keyboard that predicts the next word you’re going to type so you can type faster. It’s supposed to get better over time, but if you’re not a fan, you can disable it. Just head to Settings > General > Keyboard and set the “Predictive” toggle to off.
Hide Recent Contacts
When you double-tap the home button in iOS 8, you’re shown the multitasking menu and a new Recent and Favourites menu for your contacts. This can be a privacy issue if you don’t want people to see who you’re contacting. To disable this feature, head to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and scroll down to “Show in App Switcher.” Set the toggles to off, and the recent contacts will be removed.
Get Rid of the U2 Album
When the release date for iOS was announced, Apple also gave away a free U2 album. Instead of just making it available to all, Apple pushed the album to everyone’s iPhones. If you don’t like U2, this is pretty lame. Thankfully, Apple eventually released a tool to remove it. Just head to this URL, type in your Apple ID information, and the album will be deleted.
Actually Delete Photos
iOS 8 now has a trash bin for photos. This is handy if you’re accidentally deleting photos somehow, but most of us probably don’t have that problem. If you want to actually delete photos from the Photos app head into Photos, then tap the “Recently Deleted” album. Tap “Select” then “Delete All”. There’s no way to permanently disable this function right now.
Avoid Quick Reply Overload
iOS 8 introduces quick replies to the messaging app. This allows you to quickly reply to a text message without leaving the screen you’re on. Unfortunately, if you have notifications set to “Alerts”, this function doesn’t work that well. If you start replying to a test as an alert and someone sends you another text message, iOS 8 completely deletes the message you’re typing. Weirder, with Alerts, you can’t just jump over to the Messages app to reply. Right now, the only real fix is to change notifications to “Banners”. This way, you can tap the banner to head to Messages, or pull down on the notification to quick reply.
Disable Auto-Destructing Videos and Voice Messages
One of the new features in iOS 8’s Messages is the ability to send video and voices messages that delete after a set period of time. Although we couldn’t even get this feature to work in the first place, it’s still kind of obnoxious if you want to actually save those messages. To fix this, Head to Settings > Messages then change the Audio Messages and Video Messages expiration toggles to “Never.” It’s still not totally clear what will happen to those messages if you have it set to delete never and the sender has it set to delete after 2 minutes.
Not every annoyance in iOS 8 is fixable. The new Tips app is pretty obnoxious to most of us, but there’s no way to delete it, and there’s no solid way to make quick replies really work properly with Alerts. Still, at least you can deal with the worst of the new system’s issues.
Comments
11 responses to “How To Fix iOS 8’s Biggest Annoyances”
Buy an android,
ehe…
All I can say is I’m sooo glad I got rid of that U2 album. Permanently!
Before iOS 8 you could delete accumulated predictive text, basically starting the predictions a new. Can you still do that? Or is it now just off,on?
Also before IOS 8 you could delete individual texts messages in a conversation. Now it appears that your only choice is to either delete the entire conversation or nothing at all. Am i missing something??
You’re still able. tap and hold on the message you don’t want, select “more”
if you press and hold the message you want to delete, it will bring up screen. Click on More then you can 🙂
That worked in iOS7. In iOS8, even if you have messages selected in the More… view, at least for me, the button that used to say “Delete” says “Delete All,” and I just confirmed (oops) that it really does delete all messages in that conversation.
when you click more just select the part of the convo you want to delete on the left and then click the trash can at the bottom left of the screen to only delete what you have selected
…are any of you that are replying to the person’s above Text Delete question actually using an iPhone 6 with iOS 8.0.2? They are correct in that you can’t delete individual texts. When you hold the text bubble and touch “more” it brings up a empty circle for you to touch and add a “check” to it, seemingly to select individual messages for deleting. However, the only option at the top is to Delete All. …at the bottom I understand that there should be a trash can that you should touch after checking individual texts for deletion, but there is no trash can! Instead of a trash can being in the bottom left corner it the camera icon that’s usually there. …if anyone is getting the trash can icon when trying to delete individual texts while on iPhone 6 with iOS 8.0.2 please confirm, but I’m betting you trashcanless as well…
It’s a bug. It was in 8.0.0 too. Sometimes it works properly, often it does not. The messaging app is seriously flawed.
Often – probably 1 in 3 attempts – when I try to take a photo ‘inside’ a message, the camera screen comes up in the conversation window instead of full-screen; I can’t take the picture, since the shutter button is obscured by keyboard, and there’s no way to cancel the camera.
And when trying to delete individual messages, probably 60% of the time the trash can disappears as described above.
Killing the app fixes it…temporarily. I can’t imagine how this passed testing.
it is horrible bug… I have to turn off the phone, and after turning on, the trash can ‘magically’ appears. After few send/deletes it go back to ‘Deletes All’ and trash can disappears from bottom left corner. The camera image, Subject and Text Message on the bottom doesn’t go away.
EXACTLY, I get the same problem since updating and have to turn my phone off about 5-6 times a day to have the trashcan reappear! ANNOYING!
Restart your phone works. I had that happen and shutting down the phone and restart appears to solve this issue. Sounds like a fix by Apple to deal with that bug….
I installed IOS 8 on my iPhone 4S and am sorry I did. Don’t want most of the built-in Apps I had previously and certainly don’t want the new extra built-in apps! Used so much space also! Tried to remove it by following steps I looked up online but did not work. Looks like I’m stuck with it -waaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!
Apple should not have supported it on iPhone 4S. I am still on 6.1.3 and it is so magical and fluid. Facetime does not work but that’s about it.
So Tired of Apple changing to a Galaxy!
Since upgrading to iOS 8, my email will not respond to tapping on the screen to move the cursor. I have to delete the in progress email into a draft, then reopen. Not good.
Come on guys, why everyone is so unhappy with Apple throwing us a Bono? There are other free things on iTunes more worthy to complain about.
Thanks. Just what I was looking for. Here’s another if you also have an iPad. Now it rings when you get a phone call on your iPhone. Disable under FaceTime, iphone cellular calls. Things in the settings are not always where you think they’d be.
Ever since I updated my phone to iOS 8 my phone synced 2600 photos and over 1700 of them dont have any form of delete option available. Anyone have any suggestions or have the same issue ?
What a piece of crap! Oh for Steve Jobs. He was Apple. Iam so very very unhappy with this dreadful software.
Although we can’t delete the TIPS app yet, I find out how to make it stop annoying you. Go into Settings > Notifications > from there you can turn off all sorts of annoying notices, including the TIPS
Can someone help an old bloke out please I’m trying to delete in sms but this thing won’t bring up the trash sign to get rid of the shit
It is the end of November and i have not read any current issues about the text messaging trash can. I am still dealing with that problem, turning my phone off whenever i want to delete specific texts. Has anyone found a solution? Is Apple aware of the problem? Are they dealing with it? iOS 8 is the worst system Apple has released, at least since the first iPad, if not before. The missing trash can is a significant issue, yet it was not addressed when 8.1 or 8.1.1 “bug fixes” were released. Still waiting . . .
I have a 6 plus running 8.1.1 I think & I’ve never had a problem deleting individual messages. Trash can is always there.
I have a new iPhone 6 and am experiencing the same problem with trying to delete individual text messages. After a few times of working well the trash can no longer appears and I am only able to delete all or none. It is extremely annoying and I hope this will be fixed QUICKLY. Please respond if you have found a permanent fix. Thank you.
STILL having the same old issue. I have the Iphone 6. It Might show the trash can when I go to delete individual text messages, but most of the time it doesn’t. What a PITA to have to turn the phone off then back on again when I want to go in and delete. The texts- especially pictures- use too much space, but they make it awfully cumbersome to delete, Apple needs to fix this!!! They’ve known about it for over 4 months according to the above threads, Maybe they don’t care if people go to Android… you know, the ones with the better cameras, too/