iOS 17 is Apple’s operating system for its iPhone models. Here’s what we know about the newest iPhone software update.
iOS 17 is Apple‘s current operating system for its iPhone models. Announced during the WWDC 2023 keynote, the Cupertino firm focused on three main features: communication, intelligence, and new experiences. Here’s everything you need to know about this operating system that powers the iPhone 15 lineup.
If you’re looking for information on Apple’s upcoming iPhone operating system, BGR has a guide for iOS 18 and the unannounced iPhone 16.Features
iOS 17 is full of new features for iPhone users. BGR has compiled the most important ones here for you.
Phone, Messages, and FaceTime
For the first time since iOS 7, Apple revamped the Phone app. It brings personalized Contact Posters, which provide a new way for users to express themselves by customizing how they appear, bringing a completely new look to incoming calls. They can choose treatments for photos or Memoji and eye-catching typography and font colors.
After customizing your contact information, you can share it with NameDrop. It allows users to easily share contact information by simply bringing their iPhones together. This is the same gesture that starts SharePlay to listen to music, watch a movie, or play a game.
With Live Voicemail, you can see real-time transcription when someone leaves a voicemail. Calls identified as spam by carriers won’t appear as Live Voicemail and will be instantly declined.
For FaceTime, when users call someone who is unavailable, they can share a message in audio or video that can be enjoyed later. In addition, the app adds Reactions such as hearts, balloons, fireworks, and more.
Messages app, for example, lets you create Live Stickers, and a new drawer in the keyboard puts all of a user’s stickers in one place for easier access across iOS. An expandable menu can be accessed with a simple tap to display iMessage apps. In addition, a new catch-up arrow indicates where the user last left off in the conversation, and replying inline is as simple as swiping on a text bubble.Check-In is one of Apple’s most important security features ever made
Although this is a Messages feature, Check In deserves its own subheadline. This is an important feature when a user wants to notify a family member or friend that they have made it to their destination safely.
After a user initiates a Check In, their friend or family member will automatically be notified as soon as the user arrives. If they are not making progress toward their destination, useful information will be temporarily shared with the selected contact, such as the device’s location, battery level, and cell service status. Any information shared is end-to-end encrypted.Autocorrection and Dictation are more intelligent than ever
Apple says Autocorrect received a comprehensive update with a transformer language model for word prediction. It also received a refreshed design to better support typing, and sentence-level autocorrections can fix more types of grammatical mistakes.
Users can receive predictive text recommendations inline as they type, so adding entire words or completing sentences is as easy as tapping the space bar, making text entry faster than ever. Dictation also has a new speech recognition model to make it even more accurate.Siri now understands bilingual queries on your iPhone
During the beta phase of iOS 17, Apple added one of the most interesting features users could have ever asked for Siri: support for bilingual queries starting with select Indic languages.
That said, users can ask questions to Siri by mixing English and Hindi. People can also mix English with Telegu, Punjabi, Kannada, or Marathi.
There’s no AI here, but there are already rumors Apple could introduce an AI Siri assistant as soon as iOS 18.Apple Music offers new tweaks
Apple Music has also added a few new things with iOS 17. For example, with this operating system, Apple Music users can use SharePlay to control the music in the car through CarPlay, so everyone can play their favorite songs and contribute to what’s playing.
In addition, animated covers no longer appear solely on the artist’s album page but also on the music player. After years of this Android-only feature, Apple has added crossfade support between songs on iOS. Crossfade smoothly transitions between tracks, so the music never stops. In addition, you can finally see all the credits in a song.
Apple Music on iOS 17 also lets users invite friends to join a playlist, so anyone can add, reorder, and remove songs. Users can also use emojis to react to the song choices in Now Playing.StandBy offers glanceable information while the iPhone is charging
StandBy is a new function that gives users a full-screen experience with glanceable information designed to be viewed from a distance when the iPhone is on its side and charging.
With support for Live Activities, Siri, incoming calls, and larger notifications, StandBy makes the iPhone even more useful when viewed at a distance.
When charging with MagSafe, StandBy remembers a user’s preferred view. It is easy to bring up StandBy anytime by tapping the screen, and on iPhone 14 Pro with the Always-On display, it is always available.
Best iOS 17 apps with StandBy Mode and Interactive Widgets support There are even more features available
Transliteration support on iOS for Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam, now supporting 10 indic languages;
Users can sign into Apple ID using their phone number instead of an email ID;
New built-in Punjabi dictionary;
The ability to see up to 2,000 calls in the call history section, including FaceTime and WhatsApp calls;
Apple Fitness+ lets you build custom plans with the workouts, trainers, and songs you like the most;
iOS 17 finally lets you download offline maps on Apple Maps. Health app expands mental health awareness
The Health app on iOS 17 lets you log your state of mind by scrolling through engaging visuals to help you select how you’re feeling at that moment and during the day overall. In the Health app, it’s also possible to see your state of mind and how it could correlate with lifestyle factors.
With a new Mental Wellbeing section on the Health app, you can even log how anxious or depressed you feel. This will help you understand if you need to pursue medical help or not.
All of this data combines with a new Apple Watch Series 6 (and later), Apple Watch SE 2, or Apple Watch Ultra tracker available with watchOS 10 that identifies how much time you spend in daylight thanks to its ambient light sensor.
Journal app is finally here
Another feature that Apple announced as a “new experience” is a Journal app. Using on-device machine learning, it will display personalized suggestions that can inspire a user’s journal entry.
Suggestions are intelligently curated from recent activity, including photos, people, places, workouts, and more, making it easy to start a journal entry, and scheduled notifications can help build a journaling habit. Here are three reasons why you should start journaling today.
Also, it’s important to note that not every iOS 17 feature is available to all compatible iPhone models.New emojis
Every major iOS update offers new emojis. For example, Apple released 20+ emojis for iOS 16 with iOS 16.4. In 2023, Unicode previewed the 100+ new emojis that are now available with iOS 17.4. According to an Emojipedia blog post, there are 108 new emojis when you include skin tone modifiers and gender variants. They’re now available with Unicode’s Emoji 15.1 update.
The list includes a Lime, a head shaking vertically, a phoenix bird (Moltres, for Pokémon fans), and four new gender-neutral family emojis intended to be represented via silhouettes.
