Another circle around the Sun and we’ve finally arrived at what seems to be the preview of new features coming to Apple iPhone, iPad and Macs. Most importantly, this year’s WWDC has been the biggest ever with a slew of notable new features becoming Android-like and also Generative AI-infused. As predicted but never underestimated, Apple has spun the tech wizardry into a simple yet the most Apple approach to these changes.
Apple WWDC2024: What’s new with Apple iOS 18?
Take control or give it to the AI
1) Control Centre
By far the most clever use of gesture has been added to the Control Centre. It offers more flexibility and has categories that you can swipe through for more control. Continuous scroll lets you view different control centre widgets across the categories such as media playback, Home controls, and connectivity and lets you jump directly to them in a single continuous swipe. You can even resize the buttons in the Control Centre.
2) Apps no longer snap to the grid on Home
Yes, you read that right. Apps on the Home Screen will no longer snap to the grid on top and will instead stay where they are placed by you. You can move them around the Home Grid which will allow you to see your wallpaper better and not ruin the aesthetics. You can even change the app icon colours to match your wallpaper or enable Dark Mode to make them match the theme.
3) You can hide or lock apps
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Need to hide Zomato from your gym trainer? Well, you can dump any app in the hidden folder which will only show up with a FaceID verification. You can even lock any app behind your biometrics so your jealous lovers don’t find you flirting with the homies on WhatsApp. Locked and hidden apps will not show app notifications and content that may raise eyebrows from nosey neighbours.
4) Messages get some love
You can use AI to create a Genmoji or text-to-image in the Messages app to communicate your feelings with a pixel-perfect depiction of your mood and message. You also tapback any message with any emoji or Genmoji now and also have text formatting like bold, underline, italics, and strikethrough.
You can also now compose a message and schedule to send it at a later time. And yes, when messaging contacts who do not have an Apple device, the Messages app now supports RCS for richer media and more reliable group messaging compared to SMS and MMS.
Finally, if you don’t have WiFi or a cellular network, you can message via satellite during emergencies.
5) Photos is getting redesigned
Photos app has been the most designed app on the list and it looks like a rather simplified version of itself. Got 25000 photos on your iPhone? The new Photos app now lets you filter by screenshots and Collections lets you browse by topics like trips, people, places etc. There’s also the infused Apple Intelligence that can use the AI Clean Up tool to erase things in your photos if you want or you can ask Siri to use the power of generative AI to edit your photos based on your prompts or speech. You can also ask Siri about a specific thing you did in a video and the AI will hunt it down in your library and present it to you. Pretty handy, yeah?
More new features are shared across iOS, iPadOS and MacOS such has Mail and Safari updates which we will add to the MacOS story. So be sure to hop on there for more WWDC updates.