Advertisement

iOS 8's Favorites & Recents: A fast way to get in touch

iOS 8 Feature: Favorites & Recents

In our countdown to September 17 -- the day iOS 8 will be released to the public -- we've been covering a lot of the features of the new mobile operating system. One of my personal favorites so far is "Favorites and Recents", a fast and easy way to get in touch with your friends and family from your iOS device. Let's take a look!

Say you're in the midst of doing something on your iPhone or iPad, like creating a song or editing a photo. You decide that it would be a good idea to contact a friend to get some details on an upcoming party. Rather than dump all the way out of the app to get into Messages or maybe jump into Contacts to get an email address, all you need to do is double-tap your home button and you'll see all of those people you've recently contacted peering at you from the top of your screen in small circular buttons.

If those people have a photo associated with their name, you'll see their actual face -- a great way of recognizing a person's button at a glance. Tap that button, and a myriad of little white buttons appear, providing one tap access to phone numbers (indicated by phone icons with the type of phone number -- home, work, etc... below them), messages (a voice balloon icon), FaceTime Video (a video camera icon) and FaceTime Audio (a phone icon with the word FaceTime beneath).

iOS 8 Feature: Favorites & Recents

But where are your favorites, those people who you've tagged by opening the Contacts app and tapping "Add to Favorites"? They're just a swipe to the right away. As with the Recents, tapping the image of one of your buddies will display all of those little white buttons for instant contact.

Favorites and Recents in iOS 8 are just two ways that iOS 8 can save you time and make you more efficient. Be sure to check out our other iOS 8 feature articles before Wednesday.