During its opening keynote for WWDC 2021, compared to iOS 14 at first glance, there's still a lot for s to sink their teeth into. Whether it be updates to Apple applications or a complete rethinking of notifications, iOS 15 has quite a lot to offer.
It's safe to say that last year's iOS 14 update was one of the most exciting Apple has released in some time. Between the App Library, home screen widgets, picture-in-picture, and plenty of other features, it made the iPhone feel legitimately exciting again. Naturally, that put a lot of pressure on Apple to deliver another substantial update with iOS 15. Although there aren't as many drastic UI changes this time around, iOS 15 is still jam-packed with plenty of goodies to keep people busy for another year.
Let's get started with one of the biggest updates — notifications. Notifications on iOS have long been one of its biggest pain points, and with iOS 15, and Sleep features present in iOS 14, Focus also introduces Personal and Work modes that allow s to switch between different home screen setups based on which mode is enabled. For example, in the Work mode, someone could limit themselves to one home screen that shows all of their necessary work applications/widgets. Comparatively, the Home mode could be created to hide work-related applications and show ones that are frequently used around the house (grocery list app, streaming apps, etc.) s can also create custom Focus modes for the gym, grocery store, or anything else to fit their lifestyle.
iOS 15 Upgrades FaceTime, Apple Maps, Safari, And More
As with every iOS update, iOS 15 also introduces a heap of updates for Apple applications. Apple Health app gains sharing + Trends.
Then there are all of the miscellaneous updates scattered throughout iOS 15. Like Google Lens on Android, Live Text in iOS 15 enables the iPhone to recognize text in photos. Once text is identified, s can take instant action on it — such as copying/pasting an old recipe to an iMessage conversation or tapping a phone number on a handwritten note to call it. Similarly, Visual Look Up allows s to scan art, landmarks, plants, and other notable items with the camera app to learn more about them. For folks that use Spotlight, they'll notice that it can now search web images, get improved results for things like conversations, and see text identified in photos. Certain search items, such as movies and actors, also get improved result pages that are more visually interesting. Rounding out iOS 15 includes on-device speech recognition for faster Siri performance, an App Privacy Report to see a quick overview of how apps are using certain permissions, and a feature called 'Mail Privacy Protection' that will hide s' IP addresses and "stop senders from learning whether an email has been opened."
In other words, iOS 15 is a massive update. It may be as immediately exciting as iOS 14 was, but there's no denying that Apple crammed this latest update with a heap of features for every type of . iOS 15 is rolling out to all compatible iPhones later this fall, with a public beta launching in July.
Source: Apple