There are so many unsung features of iOS 17 that Apple didn’t reveal in its keynote, and this is definitely one of my favorites.
Yesterday, Apple kicked off WWDC with its usual keynote and officially unveiled iOS 17, the next version of iOS that will launch in the fall. While the public beta won’t be available until July, developers have already gotten their hands on the developer beta and are digging around to find what new features were excluded from the keynote.
Aaronp613, a contributor to AppleDB, found one of those features, and wow, is it a great one. Digging into Settings, the user found a new feature that will clean up verification codes. If you’ve been using these codes, you know that they are a real pain to clean up. While they do usually autofill on the website or app, which is fantastic, you still have to manually delete those messages or emails. Even worse, for messages, I’ve found that I have to delete those verification messages from every device (iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch) separately.
Enter iOS 17! In the first developer beta, users will be able to turn on a feature for verification codes called “Clean Up Automatically.” According to Apple, the feature will automatically delete verification codes from the Messages and Mail app as long as you insert the code using the AutoFill feature instead of entering it manually.
AutoFill is so convenient that I personally use it every chance I can get. It makes sense that Apple can’t and likely wouldn’t want to know if you decided to enter this manually — that’s a privacy restriction they are clearly unwilling to sacrifice.
I’m definitely stoked for iOS 17, knowing this feature is on the way. There’s a ton more to get excited about as well, but not having to manually delete verification codes is going to be one of those seemingly small features that make for a huge quality-of-life improvement.
