iOS 13 to bring system-wide Dark Mode, tabs, enhanced Live Photos & Home screen, more

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and Debby Wu published a new report on Wednesday in which they outlined some of the changes coming to iOS 13.

From the report:

Apple’s next operating system update, iOS 13, will include a Dark Mode option for easier nighttime viewing and improvements to CarPlay, the company’s in-vehicle software.

It’s not just for “easier nighttime viewing” because Dark Mode, as expertly explained by The Wall Street Journal, could improve battery life on OLED devices like the iPhone X/XS series.

That’s because unlike with LCDs, the OLED pixels light up individually instead of using a power-hungry backlight module to illuminate every millimeter of the display. A system-wide Dark Mode would keep most of the OLED pixels switched off so that any part of the screen that’s supposed to be black actually just stays off.

There will also be iPad-specific upgrades like a new Home screen, the ability to tab through multiple versions of a single app, like pages in a web browser, and improvements to file management.

So, I’m guessing this means that iOS 13 will remove a few major obstacles to fulfilling Apple’s vision of iPad being a viable PC replacement.

The way I read it, iOS 13 will let us plug storage devices like USB flash drives or digital cameras to our iPads in order to copy files to the tablet (“improvements to file management”). Plus, we should be able to open documents in tabs within an app and cycle through them easily, boosting our productivity (“improvements to file management”).

TUTORIAL: How to view two Safari tabs side by side on iPad

The Bloomberg write-up mentions that the Cupertino tech giant will also launch a new magazine subscription service and its original video programming “via iOS updates this year,” implying there will be more than one update to enable these services.

We’re thinking that iOS 12.2, currently in testing, will enable a new Apple News Magazines subscriptions service. As for the rumored video-streaming service along with subscriptions in the TV app, those would be released via another iOS software update in mid-April.

Here’s an awesome iOS 13 concept by Jacob Rendina.

iOS 13 concept courtesy of Australian 3D artist Jacob Rendina

None of this stuff is necessarily new: Bloomberg actually first reported about this in the summer of 2018, hinting that iOS 13 would bring an overhauled Home screen, tabs in all apps, multitasking enhancements, improvements in the File app and other perks.

Which new features would you like to see in iOS 13?

Let us know by leaving a comment below.