Today is the day. It’s the keynote for this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, which means it’s packed with new announcements. Which includes new products! And platforms, including the major changes coming to iOS. And this year is certainly no different.
Today, Apple has announced iOS 16. First up, the Lock Screen. And, of course, it has plenty of changes coming to it. As rumored, Apple is making it a brand new place to customize for each user. With this new platform update, the Lock Screen is getting reimagined. That starts with widgets! Right there for the user to see when they activate the phone’s display. It’s been one of the most oft-requested features for years and Apple is finally delivering.
Lock Screen
On top of that, the new Lock Screen offers a range of new ways for personalization, including color filters for personal photos. There’s the new Depth effect that shows images in front of the time. Press-and-hold to change the color filter, the font for the time, and more. Even choosing a new color for the Lock Screen is more customizable because the colors can be shaded. There is a brand new wallpaper gallery, too, with “millions of combinations” for customization. There’s even a way to shuffle photos throughout the day. “Suggested photos” will curate photos from your personal Photos library.
There are widgets for things like Calendar, Fitness, and much more. And the Lock Screen offers animations, too. That includes the Weather app, which shows dynamic weather animations with that customizable Lock Screen.
Notifications
Notifications have been updated, too. They will now roll up from the bottom of the screen. This means they’ll stay out of the way from the new Lock Screen for the most part, until you engage with them. And with the new Live Activities feature, you can stay more up-to-date with notifications as they are happening. This makes it even easier to track the progress of an Uber ride, or stay up with the score of a game you’re following. The Now Playing controls for listening to media can show full-screen album art, too.
Focus
The Focus mode is updated, too. The new Focus feature extends to the Lock Screen. Match a Lock Screen to a specific Focus mode, for instance. You can change custom notifications and more through your customized Focus modes, set up your Lock Screen to show specific widgets, and much more.
With Focus filters, you can customize even further. In the Focus for work, for instance, you can show specific tabs in the web browser, show specific events in Calendar, and much more. And Apple is deploying an API to allow this specific feature for third-party apps, too.
Messages
With Messages, Apple is changing things up in a big way. First, messages can now be edited after they have been sent! And on top of that, users can undo send. And finally, the Messages app can allow users to mark a thread in a conversation as unread.
With SharePlay, Messages is now supported. Which means you can launch content from a range of different services, including third-party options, and watch the content together with someone right from within the Messages app.
Dictation
This feature lets you type what you’re speaking. It’s designed to protect privacy by default, with dictation happening entirely on device. And today, at WWDC, there’s a brand new experience. This will allow users to “fluidly” move from dictation to typing, all as smoothly as possible. Now, the keyboard will stay up while using dictation. So now users can quickly switch between voice and typing as they see fit, or as they need. Dictation will also automatically add punctuation to the text — and can add emoji, too. This all works with Siri as well.
With Live Text, which is integrated with the platform, works from apps like Camera and Safari and many others. Integration is coming to video, too. It will work in the Translation app, too. Including in the Camera view.
This post is being updated…