Apple has announced that it is opening its iOS 16 beta to members of the Apple Developer Program today and to members of the Apple Public Beta Program next month.
According to Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering. “We have reimagined how the Lock Screen looks and works with exciting new features that make it more personal and helpful, introduced iCloud Shared Photo Library for families, streamlined communication through new capabilities in Messages and Mail, and harnessed enhanced intelligence with updates to Live Text and Visual Look Up.”
Lock Screen just got more personal
Let’s talk about the changes to the Lock Screen first.
With a new multilayered effect, the subjects of photos are artfully set in front of the time on the Lock Screen, creating a sense of depth and personality rather than just cold, hard data above your background image. Users can go even more personally by changing the look of the date and time with expressive type styles and colour choices.
iOS 16’s Lock Screen also takes inspiration from the Apple Watch’s complications for its updated widgets. Now, it’s easier than ever before to get information at a glance, such as upcoming calendar events, the weather, battery levels, alarms, time zones, Activity ring progress, and more.
A new Lock Screen gallery features a range of options for inspiration, such as Apple collections, which include Pride and Unity to celebrate special cultural moments; a Weather wallpaper to see live weather conditions as they change throughout the day; and an Astronomy wallpaper for views of the Earth, moon, and solar system. Users can also create Lock Screens using their favourite emoji or colour combinations. With multiple Lock Screens, users can switch between their favourites with just a swipe. That last one is big for us folks with a lot of personalities… and a lot of commitment issues!
Live Activities is a new feature that helps users stay on top of things that are happening in real-time without even navigating past the Lock Screen. Catch up with a sports game, workout, ride-share, or food delivery order right from your Lock Screen.
Focus is more powerful, easier to set up, and now connects to the Lock Screen, offering users a way to tie a Lock Screen wallpaper and widgets to a particular Focus. To activate a Focus, users can simply swipe to the corresponding Lock Screen. With Focus filters, apps like Calendar, Mail, Messages, and Safari can display only the content that is relevant to a user’s Focus, helping them to find a better balance.
You’re going to be putting a lot of work into personalizing your Lock Screen, so you are going to want to see it, which is why Notifications roll up from the bottom, ensuring that users have a clear view of their personalized Lock Screen.
iCloud Shared Photo Library is picture-perfect for the whole family
iCloud Shared Photo Library gives families a new way to share photos seamlessly with a separate iCloud library that up to six users can collaborate on, contribute to, and enjoy. Family members can choose to share existing photos from their personal libraries or share based on a start date or people in the photos. A user can also choose to send photos to the Shared Library automatically using a new toggle in the Camera app. Additionally, users will receive intelligent suggestions to share a photo that includes participants in the Shared Photo Library. Every user in the Shared Photo Library has access to add, delete, edit, or favourite the shared photos or videos, which will appear in each user’s Memories and Featured Photos so that everyone can relive more complete family moments.
Messages get productive
You can now edit or recall recently sent messages, recover recently deleted messages, and mark conversations as unread so you can come back to them later. SharePlay is coming soon to Messages, making it possible to enjoy synced content like movies or songs and shared playback controls all while chatting in Messages.
Mail’s working harder for you
A lot of work emailing has happened over our iPhones over the course of the pandemic, and so to see Mail get some productivity changes is welcomed! You can now schedule emails right from the app and cancel delivery up to a moment after a message is sent. Mail now detects if you’ve forgotten to include an important part of your message, such as an attachment. I mean, we all seem a little bit more forgetful these days! You also have the option to resurface a message at any date and time with Remind Later and Follow Up suggestions automatically remind you to follow up on an email that has not received a response. Mail also includes the biggest overhaul to search and uses state-of-the-art techniques to deliver more relevant, accurate and complete results. You can see recent emails, contacts, documents, and links the moment you search for emails.
Live Text and Visual Look Up are better than ever
Live Text uses on-device intelligence to recognize text in images across iOS, and it is now expanding to include video. You can pause a video on any frame and interact with the text. Live Text also adds the ability to quickly convert currency, translate text, and more.
Visual Look Up takes photos further by introducing a new feature that allows you to tap and hold on the subject of an image to lift it from the background and place it in apps like Messages. Visual Look Up also expands to recognize birds, insects, and statues.
The next generation of CarPlay is here
The next generation of CarPlay goes even further by deeply integrating with a car’s hardware. CarPlay will be able to provide content for multiple screens within the vehicle, creating an experience that is unified and consistent. Deeper integration with the vehicle will allow you to do things like controlling the radio or changing the climate directly through CarPlay and using the vehicle data, CarPlay will seamlessly render the speed, fuel level, temperature, and more on the instrument cluster. Personalize your driving experience by choosing different gauge cluster designs, and with added support for widgets, you’ll have at-a-glance information from Weather and Music right on the dashboard. More information about the next generation of CarPlay will be shared in the future, and vehicles will start to be announced late next year.
