All the features Apple didn’t mention in its WWDC 2023 keynote

Apple held a monstrous WWDC this year, and a ton of what was rumored, it turns out, will actually see the light of day. There’s the new 15-inch MacBook Air, M2-powered Mac Studio, and Apple’s finally realized AR headset — which we now know is called the Vision Pro.

As usual, Apple didn’t touch on everything new during its opening keynote. But lots of small features that could change the way you use your Apple devices (or are just fun to play with) get packed in, and we’ve collected as many of those as we could find here. To keep this article from being a mile long, I’ve noted in the top iOS 17 section where I could confirm features will hit other platforms. So take a deep breath and dive in.

Image: Apple

iOS 17 and iPadOS 17

I’m a fan of a lot of the new stuff going on with iOS 17 and iPadOS 17. I love the idea of being able to pick up my phone and answer it while someone is recording a voicemail (what is this, 1996?) or leave a FaceTime video message. And Apple’s demonstration of collaboration on PDFs for iPad looks great. Most, if not all, of the new features below will hit both operating systems.

• iPhones X, 8, and 8 Plus will no longer be supported. Looks like anyone hoping to keep Apple’s 2017 lineup up to date for one more year is out of luck. Apple had a nice streak of support for older phones — iOS 13, iOS 14, and iOS 15 could all run on the same phones — but then, iOS 16 went and dropped everything up to the iPhone 7 and the first-gen iPhone SE.
• iPadOS 17 will lose support for the first-gen iPad Pro and fifth-gen iPad.
• AirTag and Find My sharing is coming! I’ve been silently begging for this in my quiet moments since AirTags came out, and it’s finally here. Or will be. This also includes any other Find My accessories, and you can share with up to five people.
• Apple Maps gets offline downloads. Eight years after Google Maps added it, Apple Maps will finally get offline downloads.
• Enhanced electric vehicle routing. You’ll be able to see charging stations on your route, with “real-time availability.” You can pick your preferred charging network, and it’ll show you what’s available along your route. Google Maps has had the feature since 2019, and it’s pretty darn handy.
• App shortcuts will show up in the Top Hit card in Spotlight search. So you can go straight to your preferred Apple Photo albums by searching for them from iOS Spotlight search, for example.
• Visual Look Up lets you find recipes based on your food pics. You’ve been able to learn about things you took pictures of since iOS 15 using the Visual Look Up feature. Now, you can find recipes for similar dishes to ones you have pictures of in your Photos library. You’ll also be able to get info about aspects of a video or a cutout you pulled from Apple Photos.
• Communication Safety is expanding. It’s coming to AirDrop, photo picker, FaceTime messages, the new Contact Posters feature, and even third-party apps. That’s a pretty broad expansion to Apple’s warning system for nudity. The company is also adding the option to have those images blurred so you have to take one more step to view them.
• More privacy upgrades. Apple says you can choose which photos to share from within an app while keeping the rest of your Photos library private (though it’s unclear how that’s different from the same feature introduced in iOS 14 — I’ve asked Apple and will update if it responds), and apps can add events to the Apple Calendar app without being able to actually view the calendar. There’s also an expanded Lockdown Mode, allowing you to turn on Apple’s über private mode across all your devices, including the Apple Watch.
• New Memoji stickers. Now you get Halo, Smirk, and Peekaboo.
• Automatically sorted grocery lists in Reminders. Reminders will group your items automatically; you can change how you want them grouped, and your preferences stick around.
• Activity history in Apple Home. The Home app will show who operated a door lock and when they did it as well as recent activity for garage doors, contact sensors, and your security system. A footnote says this will only be available if you’ve upgraded the Home app to the new Apple Home architecture.
• Crossword puzzles in the News app. Apple has sherlocked crosswords! Apple News Plus subscribers only.
• Apple News Plus audio stories will be available in Apple’s Podcasts app.
• Sign in with any email address or phone number listed in your Apple ID account.
• Freeform gets new tools. Some of this was mentioned in the keynote during the iPad section, but other tools coming to Apple’s collaborative whiteboard app include a ruler, watercolour brush, calligraphy pen, highlighter, and variable-width pen. The shape recognition feature Apple mentioned during this section isn’t mentioned on the iOS 17 preview page, so it’s possible that’s exclusive to iPads.
• Crossfade between songs in Apple Music. Old Apple iTunes for Mac fans might remember the ability to add a crossfade between songs, meaning the volume would fade out at the end of one song and the beginning of the next would fade in. I hated that feature, but hey, maybe some of y’all liked it. And now, that feature is in the first iOS 17 beta, according to 9to5Mac.
• Redesigned Now Playing. The Now Playing strip at the bottom of the Apple Music app in iOS 17 floats above the rest of the UI in Apple Music, and the tabs beneath it fade into the rest of the UI on either side of the floating controls, as noted by MacRumors.
• Collaborative playlists. Though you could always share playlists, iOS 17 will let you fully collaborate on them with others. Anyone sharing the list will be able to add, reorder, and remove songs, and they will be able to react to song choices with emoji.
• You can now invoke Siri during a call or FaceTime on your phone. This feature, spotted by a Reddit user in the first iOS 17 beta, allows you to use Siri even when you’re on a call, expanding the ability to use Siri to hang up on a call, which was introduced in iOS 16.
• You can add links from one note to another. Apple spent some time talking about PDFs in the Notes app but didn’t talk about this nice upgrade. The company only mentions the feature on the iPadOS 17 preview page, but as MacRumors writes, it’s also on iOS 17, so it’s likely to be cross-platform.
• iPhone finally gets multiple timers. Who knows why even the Apple Watch got this feature before the iPhone, but in iOS 17, you’ll be able to set multiple timers, glory be. As with linking PDFs, Apple mentioned the feature for iPads, but it’s coming to iOS as well.
• Safari gets a new “Listen to Page” feature. A new option is added to the page options of Safari that will have your iPhone read the webpage you’re looking at out loud. You can pause and unpause the feature.
• Interrupt Siri. iOS 17 will let you interrupt the voice assistant without saying “Siri” again.
• A new call controls section sits in the AirPods Pro settings. In the iOS 17 beta, this would let you configure how many times you squeeze the AirPods Pro stalks to end calls. Answering calls isn’t configurable, but given this is a beta, that could change.
• Pronouns in contacts. iOS 17 includes the ability to add a person’s pronouns to their contact card.
• You’ll be able to ping your Apple Watch from Control Center.
• iOS 17 will let you auto-delete verification codes in Messages and Mail.

macOS Sonoma adds several new features.

Image: Apple

macOS Sonoma

Apple’s newest version of its computer operating system will bring over more iOS design elements and features, with updated widgets that you can actually place on your desktop and a lock screen that follows the same design as that of your iPhone or iPad. Here’s what the company didn’t mention.

• macOS Sonoma drops support for these Macs: 2017 MacBooks Pros; the beloved 2017 12-inch MacBook; and 2017 iMacs.
• Control the composition of Center Stage. In Sonoma, you’ll be able to decide where you want to sit in the frame on video calls with new zoom and pan controls — that’ll be great if you want to show something on the call and don’t want your Mac deciding you need to be the focal point. You can recenter yourself at any time, and it appears this feature works with third-party apps as well.
• Share your full-screen window in video call apps. The green button in the top left of your windows now has a new function in its drop-down menu. Maybe you didn’t know this, but when you hover your mouse over that button, it gives you some quick tiling options, along with the ability to quickly move an app window to another display in your setup. In Sonoma, you’ll be able to share that window on a video call now.
• Continue your notes in Pages. For all those Apple Pages heads out there (there are dozens of us!), Sonoma will let you use the share button in Notes to send your work over to the Pages app to continue working there.
• Screen sharing gets a boost. Sonoma adds a new screen-sharing feature that lets you activate a high-performance mode when you’re remotely accessing your Mac over a high-bandwidth connection. Apple’s Sonoma preview page says it will use the advanced media engine to bolster that connection to make the connection more responsive.
• macOS Sonoma lets Macs pair with Made for iPhone hearing devices. In addition to that, the new Personal Voice feature is coming to Macs as well as updates to text size adjustment, the ability to automatically pause autoplaying animated images on the web, and an updated experience for learning Mac Voice Control.
• Apple Mail updates. Mail will start surfacing travel-related emails at the top of your search results as the trip date approaches, and you’ll be able to add big emoji to your messages, making email more annoying than ever.

watchOS 10 gets widgets, new watchfaces, and more.

Image: Apple

watchOS 10

watchOS 10 is getting a widgety makeover later this year and bringing some cool new enhancements to cycling and hiking workouts, but that’s not all. Here’s what we found that Apple didn’t shine the spotlight on during its WWDC 2023 keynote.

• watchOS 10 will only work for the Apple Watch Series 4 and up. Any watch compatible with watchOS 9 will be eligible for the update.
• Control Center is now accessible by pressing the side button. Previously, this brought up all of your open apps.
• Mobile Device Management now comes to Apple Watch. Apple is opening up managed Apple Watches to enterprise customers, adding the ability to configure VPNs, deploy internal apps, and more.
• You can now add an Apple Watch to a group FaceTime. Of course, you would only join with audio since there’s no camera on the Apple Watch.
• Apple Maps downloads will work on the Apple Watch. But you have to be in range of your iPhone.
• Medication reminders get follow-up notifications, and you can classify them as “critical” alerts.
• FaceTime recorded video messages will be viewable on the Apple Watch.

Apple hardware

Apple hit some of its Mac lines with updates during its WWDC keynote, but it shuffled through each one incredibly quickly, so there are a few small details it left out. Here’s what I was able to find.

• Mac Studio features: The Mac Studio gets Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, both upgrades from the M1 version.
• Mac Pro features: Like the Mac Studio, the Mac Pro will support both Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 out of the box.