iPhone 14 Pro Max – Top 10 Settings You Need to Know 

With the introduction of the all new iPhone 14 series devices, specifically the iPhone 14 pro and iPhone 14 pro max, there are a bunch of new features. Top 10 settings you need to know and that you might want to change on your new device. 

10 – HDR to SDR:

With the 14 pro in pro max, we have a super bright display this year that goes up to 1600 nits in HDR video.

However, maybe it's late at night, and you don't want to watch HDR video as it's too bright. There's an easy way to disable this brightness.

So, if we tap the little gear settings icon, you can see the different resolutions up to 2160p or 4k in HDR. 

However, an easy way to disable this and get back to SDR footage is just turned on low power mode. So, if you turn on low power mode whether that's in the control center, your battery settings go back. 

If you go back and reload, you’ll be on the same video, here tap the little gear icon and the HDR options are now gone.

Now, we can watch it in SDR. It won't be as bright and will be easier on our eyes later at night. That's a tip for anyone using an iPhone or an iPad, just put it in low power mode, and it disables that all together.

So, it's really nice, especially if you're posting HDR footage, and you want to see what it looks like in SDR as well.

9 - Advanced Siri Features:

Now, if you're someone that uses Siri a lot, with iOS 16 they've added a couple features that are very helpful. The first one is, you can use Siri to send a message, but you no longer have to confirm that message again within your settings under Siri search.

You’ll have some new options to automatically send messages, tap on automatically send messages, and then turn on that feature, which says ‘Siri will automatically send messages unless you ask to change or cancel’. 

It can work either with headphones or with CarPlay. It’s super helpful, you can just confirm a message when you're replying to someone, and it will send automatically.

Also, Siri can hang up phone calls this year. You'll see, in the same main menu, call hang up option. This allows you to hang up your phone call using Siri and then the word ‘hey’ in front of it.

That's supported during phone calls or FaceTime calls and will be very helpful that Siri couldn't do before.

8 - Car Crash Detection:

With the introduction of the new iPhone 14 series models, all of them have a new car crash detection mode along with Apple Watch.

On the new apple watches, it uses the accelerometer barometric pressure as well as the microphone to detect when you're in a car accident or a crash.

Based on that information, it will place a call to emergency services. If you don't want it to do this, you can actually disable this by turning it off. 

If you want to do that, go into settings, go down to emergency SOS and within emergency SOS, you'll see it says ‘Call After a Severe crash’, turn that off, and it will disable that feature.

However, the sensors will still be picking that information up as those are always active. But it is not recommended to disable emergency SOS features unless you absolutely have to. There is no battery savings with that, so just keep that in mind.

7 – Haptic Keyboard:

Anytime you type, you can actually feel feedback from the keyboard.

So, if you type, ‘hi how are you today’, you can feel every single tab, and if you want to enable that, go into your settings, go to sound and haptics then scroll down, and you'll see keyboard feedback, under keyboard feedback, enable haptic, and you'll be able to feel that.  

If you don't like it, of course you can just turn it on, and it goes back to how it always was, but it's something highly recommended trying out.

6 – Dynamic Island:

With the introduction of the new pro models, apple replaced the notch with the dynamic island. You may want to hide this. So, if you really don't like it, you can easily do that by changing the wallpaper.

If you move over using our lock screen to the astronomy wallpaper, it completely hides it. So, if you go home, you can't see it at all. 

It is suggested using a completely black wallpaper at the top, which hides all the pixels and hides the dynamic island almost completely. Except for the camera lens, you'll swap back.

You may or may not already know how to use the dynamic island. So, if you're playing some music, for example, you'll just play a song and if you swipe home, it goes to the top à if you tap on the dynamic island, it opens the app back up that you were using à if you long press, it will open up the media player.

5 – New Battery Indicator:

One thing you’ll notice on all the phones with iOS 16 is battery percentage in the upper right.

You may not have this enabled by default and if you want to enable that yourself, go to your settings, scroll down, find battery under battery, you'll now see battery percentage, enable it, or you can leave it off. 

Also, you can go into your control center to see your battery status, if you want to enable it, turn it on, and you'll have the new battery indicator.

4 – Aspect Ratios Within the Camera:

Within the camera, if you're taking photos, there's something you may want to consider changing if you post to social media a lot. Or maybe you're making a thumbnail for YouTube, you'll see the aspect ratio under, tap the little settings arrow on the other side of the camera, and then you'll see the aspect ratio, choose 16x9. 

You’ll also have options for 1:1 or 16:9 or 4:3, you can use either of the camera modes for different aspect ratios.

3 - New Action Modes within the Camera:

We have a new action mode this year. Within the camera, under video settings, tap on the little settings arrow, and you can enable action mode.

Make sure that you're at 4k when you're using action mode, as it will compress everything down. You can change that to HD, but make sure that you're on 4k to get the best settings out of this. It works really well. 

For example, if you're running across a yard, shake with not using it or when you're enabling this, it actually takes a lot of that. Shake away. It's pretty amazing and definitely something you need to try.

There's also one more part to the action mode where you can use it in low light. But you have to turn on a setting and below formats under record video, tap on that setting, scroll down, and you'll see a new setting for action mode. 

Lower light action mode will decrease the stabilization to optimize for less bright scenes. So, you can still use action mode even though you don't have a super bright light.

Whether you're being indoors or outdoors or the sun is going down, and you want to capture some footage, turn on that mode, and it will help you out with that.

2 - New Cinematic Mode:

Also, we have a new cinematic mode that's improved and goes up to 4k whereas before, it was 1080p. 

If you always want it to default to 4k, uder your photo or camera settings, go to record cinematic, and change this to either 4k 24 or 4k 30 whatever you prefer, and it will always be enabled.

1 - Camera Upgraded to 48 Megapixels:

With the 14 pro and 14 pro max, we have a major upgrade to the main sensor. This year we have a 48 megapixel camera, but in order to get the most out of that camera we need to enable some settings.

Typically, when you're taking a photo with the main sensor it will take the images in 12 megapixels, taking 48 megapixels worth of information and condensing them down into 12 megapixels. 

If you want the full image, go into settings, scroll down to your camera settings, under camera, tap on formats, you'll see ‘apple pro raw’, enable apple pro raw, and select the resolution from 12 megapixels to 48 megapixels.