Apple hosted its second all-virtual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in two years. And as always, iOS updates were one of the main talking points of the event.
Here’s a look at all iOS 15 features the company announced today at the event:
- Apple is introducing spatial audio to facetime to make you feel like you’re sitting in the same room as the other callers.
- A new voice isolation feature will separate your voice from background noise. And wide spectrum mode will let your mic pick everything around you.
- Facetime will also have portrait mode to blur your background.
- You can now schedule calls with Facetime Link, and your friends join in from web and Android.
- SharePlay will let you listen to music and watch movies or videos together on apps such as Disney+, TikTok, HBO Max, or Hulu.
- Apple’s News app will have a “Shared with you” section that’ll pick up articles your friends share with you via iMessage.
- Apple Music and Photos also picks up content your contacts shared with you in your iMessage conversation.
- Shared with you also works with Safari, Podcasts, and Apple TV.
- New notifications will have larger icons for apps and larger pictures for contacts.
- A new notification summary to catch up with notifications from your apps at your own time. However, notifications from people won’t show up in this.
- As rumored earlier, you can set up profiles such as home and work. Under these profiles, you can set up custom apps and contacts that can get through you when a particular profile. These notification permissions will be reflected across all your devices.
iOS 15 new notifications
- A new Live Text feature lets you scan and copywritten text anywhere — something Google Assistant does pretty well.
- You can scan your existing photos to look for information such as the breed of a cat or a location of a restaurant.
- Spotlight search will now allow you to search for photos and even text within them.
- Memories in the Photos app will now let you sync music from Apple Music to create clips.
- Apple Wallet will let you add keys to your home and hotel room and sign-in cards to your office.
- The company will let you add government-issued IDs in selected states in the US.
- Apple’s new version of Maps is coming to Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Australia later this year.
- The driving mode has details such as biking lanes, turn, and bus lanes.
- Now you can scan buildings to give you transit directions in AR — just like Google Maps.
iOS 15 will roll out later this year.
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