There are three features that are absolutely worth enabling if you want to take advantage of all that iOS 8 has to offer, and keep yourself safe, organized, and productive at the same time.
1. Emergency Contact and Medical ID
This might be my single favorite feature in iOS 8: A medical ID card and emergency contact information accessible from the locked screen.
Say you keel over in the street. Decent human beings will rush over to help, and they might check your handbag and pockets for identification. If they don't, any EMTs arriving on the scene definitely will.
The locked screen has long had an "emergency" button on the lock screen that lets anyone make a call from your phone, but it never before contained any more information, or the name and phone number of your emergency contact.
If you have an iOS device running iOS 8, you can create a medical ID card with all your most important medical information that these strangers can see without seeing anything else in your phone. There's also a shortcut from the emergency screen that will dial your emergency contact.
Here's how to set it up:
Notice that with iOS 8, Apple has installed a Health app onto your device. It lets you add and import health and fitness information about yourself, both manually and from other devices and apps. Inside that app is the Medical ID.
Open the Health app, and you'll see Medical ID listed in the lower right corner. Tap Edit in the upper right corner and fill in as much or as little information as you choose. The data are things like Medical Conditions, Allergies and Reactions, Blood Type, and Organ Donor.
You can also add your emergency contact person here. That person must be listed in your iPhone or iPad's Contacts app and must have a phone number assigned for the choice to be valid.
Fill it out, and that's it!
2. Family Sharing
Family Sharing is a brand-new feature in iOS 8, and I am all for it! It's a great feature to enable, although you should understand how it works before making any assumptions.
Family Sharing lets families of up to six people share purchases from iTunes and the App store, as well as having a shared family calendar. In other words, if I pay for an app, my family members can all download and install it, too. If one of my family members buys an album on iTunes, I will be able to listen to it on my iPhone if I want. The shared family calendar will be the biggest draw for households trying to stay digitally organized.
Family members can all make purchases from one credit card—the one belonging to the account administrator, or "Family organizer," in Apple-speak.
"Family" is a loose term, thankfully. No one has to verify any actual blood or marriage relation. You can invite anyone to be in your family, provided they have an Apple ID or are willing to get one. Young children who don't have an email address yet can join, but the Family organizer will have to assign them an Apple email address during the setup process.
With children, you can turn on a feature called Ask to Buy, that lets parents yea or nay purchases as the children try to make them.
Everyone else you invite to Family Sharing (people who already have an Apple ID) is considered an adult. You can give other adults authority to accept or reject Requests to Buy, but you cannot enable Ask to Buy on adults.
Also, very important to know: When adults join your family, they will be granted permission to use your credit card (they can't see the card digits though). So invite your friends to your "family" wisely.
You can kick people out of your family at any time. When you do that, your credit card disappears from their payment options.
I've outlined complete instructions for how to set up Family Sharing here.
Tip: If your emergency contact is someone you call frequently, you can speed-dial him or her from the locked screen, even if it's not an emergency.
3. Restrictions
I can't believe the new Restrictions feature isn't tucked into the Privacy area of the Settings in iOS 8, as it is indeed a feature that increases your privacy. You can find this feature in Settings > General > Restrictions.
Restrictions let you hide apps, disable purchases, and cut off someone else from doing anything sneaky with your phone, like posting to Facebook or Twitter on your behalf. It's a much simpler way to limit what a child can do with your iOS device than the Guided Access feature (which is hidden in the Accessibility settings, but also worth learning how to use if you have kids).
Restrictions let you hide apps such as Safari, Camera, FaceTime, iTunes Store, and iBooks Store. If they're hidden, no one can launch them or make purchases from them—unless they know the unique passcode to unlock the Restrictions anyway. You can also restrict the ability to install and delete apps, use Siri, and enable CarPlay and AirDrop.
There are a lot of features, apps, and content that you can limit from Restrictions.
Stay Safe on iOS 8
Enabling and learning to use these three features in iOS 8 will help you keep your digital life in control, and make it more enjoyable, too.
If you haven't yet upgraded to iOS 8, I recommend reading up on the 8 security tips for a safe iOS 8 upgrade.
Get Organized is a weekly series of articles on PCMag.com to help you keep your digital files and online life organized. Check back every Monday for new tips. For more from Jill Duffy, follow her on Twitter @jilleduffy. And check out the Get Organized book:
"Get Organized: How to Clean Up Your Messy Digital Life" by Jill Duffy on Ganxy