The future of iOS has arrived, and it’s packed full of new features and improvements. Here’s everything we’ve learned from the WWDC 2017 keynote.
iMessages are now being stored in the cloud, which means syncing between devices won’t take as much storage space to pull off–only the most recent conversations are stored locally.
There’s also a new messaging app drawer to store all your stickers and other iMessage apps.
Apple Pay has been added to the Messaging app, allowing you to send and receive money from other iMessage users.
As the image above shows, Siri can now translate on the fly. That’s not all that’s coming to Apple’s digital assistant, though: It’s getting new male and female voices too.
At launch, real-time translation will only be available from English to a few select languages. Apple says it plans to add others in the future.
SiriKit is getting some additional features–if you’ve been stuck wishing you could develop that killer Siri app now’s your chance.
Search subjects, things you read, and news you follow will start mattering in other apps, which Apple hopes will make your iOS experience feel more interconnected.
Do a search for the correctly accented spelling of the delicious French g\u00e2teau cake and it will get added to your autocorrect dictionary. Read a news story on a Parisian baking competition and suddenly you’ll start getting suggestions for other Paris-related stories.
If you’ve been missing out on HEVC video recording you won’t be missing out for very much longer: It’s coming along with iOS 11.
Say goodbye to JPG images from your iOS device–they’re being replaced with the high definition HEIF format.
iOS 11 also brings better low light image capture to smartphones and tablets–a welcomed change for those tired of failing to get good pictures in darker rooms.
New automatic album types, event sorting, and other machine learning tricks are coming to the Photos app. Hopefully it’ll make digging through multiple gigabytes of pictures a bit easier!
I’ve discovered that I like live photos far more than I thought I would, and this new feature makes me even more excited about them: They can now be edited!
Talk about different–the Control Center has had a total overhaul, including the addition of 3D touch controls. Do a firm press on a button and you’ll get more controls and options.
Apple said it wanted to merge the lock screen and notification center. Now when you swipe down from the top of your screen you’ll see a duplicate of the lock screen with only the most recent notifications displayed. Swipe down from there and you’ll see the rest.
You can now get maps of specific malls, albeit very few. Apple says more are coming with time.
Other new features in maps include an on-screen indicator of the local speed limit and lane guidance so you know where to be on the freeway.
These airports are getting detailed local maps, just like the aforementioned malls. Again, more will be coming in the future.
iOS 11 will use a combination of active Bluetooth connections, GPS, and Wi-Fi doppler effect to determine if you’re in a car. If so, you’ll have the option to turn on a new form of Do Not Disturb that completely blacks out the phone until your trip ends.
You can also set up automatic responses to text messages so people contacting you know you’re in the car.
Along with the announcement of the HomePod smartspeaker comes HomeKit support for other Bluetooth smart speakers. These are the brands that are supported in iOS 11.
Your friends can now get in on your music listening experience by adding their own tracks to the Up Next view in Apple Music, provided you’re in the same place.
Just be sure you have the same tastes before allowing someone else to add music willy-nilly.
App developers can now make use of the Apple Music service with the new MusicKit. Third-party listening apps here we come!
Let’s be honest: The App Store was starting to look pretty dated. Apple knew it too, so it’s giving it a complete overhaul in iOS 11.
Apple talked about three ways to view the new App Store: the Today view, which comes up when you open the store, a Games view, and an Apps view.
Today will be more about discovering featured apps and reading reviews, how-to’s, and short app-related articles, while the Games and Apps views are more like what you’re used to seeing in the current App Store.
Individual apps are getting new pages too. They’re not totally different, but you can definitely see a few tweaks.
Apple is adding a Vision API that does what many other photo-based machine learning apps do.
There’s also a new language learning API, which lets apps do tokenization, name recognition, and other tasks.
The new Apple Augmented Reality Kit (ARKit) is pretty exciting. Apple developed it to give AR apps the ability to better place objects in the world and make them look more natural and dynamic.
In the demo presented at the WWDC keynote, a lamp and coffee cup were generated. The ARKit used surface recognition to plant the cup in a natural place and at an appropriate size.
Apple’s new AR platform uses the device’s camera, CPU and GPU, and motion sensors to appropriately place objects and allow for manipulation.
There’s simply a ton of iOS 11 features to talk about, but let’s not just discuss what’s coming–head on over to Apple’s beta site to get your hands on the developer preview, which is live now.
iOS 11 will be released this fall.
Brandon is a Staff Writer for TechRepublic. He's an award-winning feature and how-to writer who previously worked as an IT professional and served as an MP in the US Army.
