The top 5 new features in iOS 13.3 for your iPhone and iPad [video]

Apple yesterday released iOS 13.3 and iPadOS 13.3 to the public. We thought iDownloadBlog readers might want to know what’s new so we’ve put together a nice little hands-on video walkthrough taking you through the best new iPhone and iPad features enabled by the update.

Video: the top 5 new features in iOS 13.3

Our video editor Harris Craycraft does a nice job walking you through the most important changes in iOS 13.3 in a relaxed manner so watch his video embedded right ahead.

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Continue reading for more detailed feature descriptions.

An overview of the top 5 features in iOS 13.3

Here are the highlights from the video.

Keyboard toggle for Memoji Stickers

You can now optionally get rid of the Memoji Stickers section in the stock emoji keyboard that tends to take up a significant portion of the keyboard screen real estate.

If you don’t care about using Animoji or Memoji while messaging, go to Settings → General → Keyboard and disable Memoji Stickers underneath the Emoji heading at the screen bottom.

Communication Limits in Screen Time

Parents now have another way to keep their children safer on their iPhone or iPad by setting up communication limits in the Screen Time settings and specifying there who their kids can and cannot talk to, both during screen time and downtime.

Set Up Communication Limits on iPhone

To get started, simply launch the Settings app on your child’s iPhone or iPad, then choose Screen Time → Communication Limits and go from there.

Liking stories in News

Aside from new layout for stories from The Wall Street Journal and other newspapers, the News app in iOS 13.3 and iPadOS 13.3 now finally makes it easy to like or dislike stories with a tap of the new thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon found at the bottom of the screen.

Also, there are now handy forward and backward arrows at the bottom for quickly navigating to the next or previous story. And if you’re located in Canada and like to read Apple News stories in the Stocks app, you can now enjoy them in either English or French.

Saving trimmed videos in Photos

iOS 13.3 has restored the ability to keep a trimmed clip alongside the original video.

Since iOS 13 enables non-destructive video editing in the Photos app, a trimmed video doesn’t need to be saved as a separate clip because you can restore the original, non-trimmed video with a tap. But if you want to, you can now save a trimmed clip as a new video (you’ll be asked to make your choice after tapping the Done button).

iPad hot corners

On iPad, you now get hot corners as a brand-new assistive feature.

What that does is similar to the macOS hot corners feature that has existed on the Mac for years. After setting up this feature in Settings and connecting a mouse to your iPhone or iPad, you will be able to move the cursor to a corner of the screen to perform a quick action you can configure, such as invoking the iOS app switcher or performing a custom Siri Shortcut.

TUTORIAL: How to use hot corners on your Mac

This is a major productivity boost that makes the iPad feel more like a traditional computer in terms of window management but, again, you’ll need to use a mouse.

Your take

To find out about all the other feature changes or additions, improvements and bug fixes in iOS 13.3 and iPadOS 13.3, read Apple’s release notes and check out the update’s security content.

What’s your favorite new feature afforded by the iOS 13.3 update, and why?

Let us know by leaving a comment down below!