iOS 16 Beta 5 Brings Back Battery Percentage, Adds ‘Copy and Delete’ Option for Sharing Screenshots: Report

Apple has just released its iOS 16 developer beta 5 and it brings a much-awaited battery percentage to the battery icon in the status bar. The battery percentage feature was removed after the launch of Apple's iPhone X smartphone, which also introduced the large display notch (that houses the hardware needed for Apple's Face ID facial recognition) and left little space in the status bar forcing the company to remove the battery percentage icon, which was placed alongside the battery icon. iOS 16 beta 5 also introduces a new ‘Copy and Delete' option while sharing screenshots.

The new layout for showing battery percentage in the status bar, as detailed by The Verge, now looks very different from older layout (currently visible on all iPad models save for recent Pros) with the battery percentage displayed to the left of the battery icon in the status bar. The new layout now shows the battery percentage (in numbers) inside the battery status icon, which is very similar to what is visible on Oppo, Vivo, and Realme smartphones available in India. As per the source the new battery percentage feature is not enabled by default, but needs to be switched on by heading into Settings>Battery>Battery Percentage and tapping the toggle for the same. The toggle is also missing on iPhone 11, 12 mini, and 13 mini as per Apple Software Updates (@AppleSWUpdates), which claims that it's probably due to the lack of space.

With a majority of iPhones being shipped with Face ID and the notch (save for the iPhone SE and SE 2022) over the past couple of years, battery percentage can today only be accessed by performing an additional swipe down to Control Center. The ability to view battery percentage was first introduced on the iPhone 3GS model in 2009 with the iPhone OS 3.0 software update.

As reported by 9to5Mac Apple has also introduced a new “Copy and Delete” option when sharing a screenshot. The feature has shown up only on the iOS 16 beta 5. The new feature basically lets a user copy a screenshot to clipboard and not automatically save it to Photos, reducing the need to delete a screenshot manually (appears upon tapping the Done button) after sharing it to an app. This also helps reduce the clutter of screenshots in the Photos app as the screenshot remains in clipboard but does not get saved in the Photos app.

The iOS 16 developer beta 6 also brings plenty of other bug fixes and updates as detailed in the changelog. But one needs to keep in mind that the above-mentioned features have popped up in the developer beta builds, so there's a good chance that they could be pulled out of the final build depending on user feedback.