Apple just announced iOS 13 at their WWDC conference in San Jose, CA. The newest release of iOS has many new features and improvements, such as faster app launches, faster Face ID unlock, smaller app downloads, and smaller app updates. But probably the most important of them all is the new dark mode.
Also, Apple decided finally to pay special attention to the iPad by introducing a new operating system called iPadOS.
Dark Mode
First and foremost, lets talk about the new dark mode. iOS users have been waiting for this new feature for a very long time, and finally it will be available for them with iOS 13. The dark mode gives the whole iOS and apps a new beautiful darker color style, which can be handy in low-light places or at night.
Dark mode can be enabled/disabled from the control center, or automatically at a certain time or based on sunrise and sunset.
The new wallpapers in iOS 13 are designed to automatically adjust to the dark mode settings, giving users a full dark mode experience when they decided to enable it.
For developers, Apple provides a new API to let apps implement dark mode easily.
Photos
The new Photos app in iOS 13 gets a fresh look with new tabs and organization options. The new photos tabs lets users browse their photos based on the day, month, or year, and display those photos in beautiful way where the most important moments are displayed to the user with auto-playing Live Photo’s and videos, and smart photo previews.
One of the best new options to the Photos app is that it auto-removes clutter, such as those accidental screenshots taken when trying to hit the snooze, or those receipts from the last year’s work trip.
Other new additions include, showing photos for birthdays, and photos taken on the same day, month, or year.
For those who use their Photos app to edit their photos, many new additions has been added as well as new effects and finer filter controls. For video editing, users can now finally edit their videos to add filters, cropping, rotate, exposure, and much more. The camera’s portrait mode got some enhancements too such as new lighting effects.
Privacy
Apple has been doing a great job in protecting their users’ privacy and security, and with iOS 13 they are introducing more new features to protect users from malicious apps.
User location is now protect even more than before with a new location permission model. Permission to access the user’s location can be granted once or only when its being used. Also, user will receive a notification if an app is trying to access their location while its running in the background, and they can choose to accept to deny that request. In addition to that, app developers are no longer able to determine users’ location from their WiFi or Bluetooth.
Sign In with Apple
Sign in with Apple ID is a new feature allows users to sign in to apps and websites via their Apple ID instead of creating new accounts or using social media logins. The beauty of this new feature is the that users can choose to share or hide the email address used to sign in to the app/website. In case they wanted to hide it, Apple will generate a unique email address that forwards to user’s real email address. This new email address is unique per app and can be managed by the user to enable/disable it whenever they want.
Maps
With iOS 13, Apple rebuilt the whole Maps app from scratch with new features and improved details. New features include; Dark mode, new collections of the users favorite locations, new junction view to avoid wrong turns while navigating, sharing ETA with contacts, new Siri guidance, real-time transit schedules, flight status and terminal information.
For developers, the new MapKit includes news vector overlays, weather, point-of-interests filtering.
Maps in CarPlay has been improved also to provide easier route planning, searching, navigation directions and junction view. The maps favorites and collections are accessible in CarPlay as well.
Siri
Siri will sound more natural than ever thanks to the new and improved voice with natural neural text-to-speech. It will offer more personalized suggestions in many other apps such as Podcast, Safari, and Maps, and it can detect reminders in messages and 3rd party apps as well.
For developers, the new SiriKit allows developers to enable Siri in their apps to play music, podcasts, audiobooks and more.
Lastly, a new Indian English voice has been added to Siri.
Shortcuts
Communicating with Siri shortcuts is more powerful with iOS 13. The new Shortcuts allows users to interact with their apps in a conversational way rather than one way communication.
Messages
The messages app allows users to share their name and photo when they start a new conversation with their contacts or everyone. Also, users can use auto-generated stickers based on their Memoji character that reflects a range of emotions.
Searching in Messages got improved too to allow users to find what they’re looking for easier. Search keywords are highlighted and results are organized. Searching within an individual message has been added too.
Memoji & Animoji
Users can customize their Memoji and Animoji to have more details, such as new makeup options, teeth, piercing, and over 30 new hair styles, head ware, earnings, and glasses.
Three new Animoji characters have been added; Mouse, Octopus, and a Cow.
In addition to that, Memoji and Animoji are now available on all iOS devices with an A9 chip.
Lastly, user can create new Memoji for their contacts right from the Contact app.
Keyboard
Finally, iOS users have a swipe keyboard, called QuickPath. The QuickPath keyboard can be used interchangeably with the regular keyboard without having to switch keyboards.
QuickPath currently supports English, Chinese, Spanish, German, French, Italian, and Portuguese.
For those users who rely on dictation, iOS 13 will automatically detect which language the user is speaking and translate that into text. The language spoken has to match one of the languages added to device’s keyboard.
Reminders
The Reminders app, like few others apps, have been rewritten and redesigned with new colors and symbols to provide new and more powerful options for iOS 13 users.
The app has a new quick toolbar above the keyboard to add date, time, location, flags, and many more options. The app also provides an enhanced Siri experience were it understands longer and more descriptive sentences and translate those into reminders.
New smart lists, tasks, and grouped lists added where users can keep track of their upcoming events via smart lists that gets automatically generated and organized. Tasks are easier to manage by dragging and dropping, as well as grouping.
The Mail has many new options, such as new multicolored flags, ability to block senders or mute threads. In addition to that, the reply menu has been extended to include more options.
When crafting a new email, a new format bar has been added above the keyboard to provide formatting and attachment options, such as scanning a document, inserting a photo, or attachment, as well as font sizes, fonts, colors, and general alignment options.
When attaching a photo, the photo selector does not take the whole screen anymore like in pervious iOS version, but rather only occupies the lower portion of the screen so users can see the email they’re crafting.
Notes
Notes, the most popular note taking app in iOS, has new folders and notes management options to organize the notes in folders and sub folders. These folders can be shared with other people by giving them access to a folder and they can add new notes to that folder.
Search has been improved in Notes, where it recognized what’s in the images inside the notes and can find specific text within the items scanned.
Health
The Health app in iOS 13 has more personal tracking options, such as Period tracking and prediction, fertile window prediction, and period history and statistics. Also, new interactive charts and filters has been added to view data on daily, monthly, yearly basis or even hourly.
One interesting and new feature is audio levels, especially finding the level of noise in the environment by using the Noise app on the Apple Watch. Also, users can see the audio level of their headphones to see if they’re too loud or not.
Safari
Safari in iOS 13 has new updated start page, which includes the users favorites, frequently visit, and most recently visited.
Safari has a new download manager where users can track the files they’re downloading and access them quickly. The great thing about the download manager is that it works in the background so users don’t have to wait for the file to download before switching apps.
When uploading images via Safari, the app will give users the option to resize the image before uploading it.
Safari has new per-site settings, where users can choose to enable camera, mic, and location based on the website they’re visiting rather than for Safari as a whole. Also, users can decide the default viewing settings for each website wether to view the mobile or desktop version.
Couple small but important features has been added to Safari, which are the weak password warning, which warns the user if they try to create a weak password. Also, iCloud now has end-to-end encryption for all the users’s history and bookmarks.
Files
The files app provides a new view that displays rich set of metadata so users can see files details.
New documents folder has been added to show users web downloaded files and attachment from Safari and Mail.
The most anticipated feature for File is the ability to support external drives, such as USB drive, SD Card, or external hard drives.
Also, another feature that many users were waiting for is iCloud Drive folder sharing, where they can share folders with other users and not only single files.
Users can also now zip and unzip .zip files directly from the Files app, without having to download and use 3rd party apps to do so.
Finally, Files now also support file servers by using SMB directly from the app.
Other Updates and New Features
- New text editing and gestures, for text selection via triple or quadruple taps.
- Easier scroll bar scrubbing by dragging the scroll bar.
- Cut, Copy, and Paste gestures, users pinch up with three fingers to copy, pinch up with three fingers two times to cut, and pinch down with three fingers to paste.
- Now with iOS 13 users can download and install fonts and use them in apps. Fonts will be available directly from the App Store, and can be managed directly from Settings.
- AirPods users will be able to share what they’re listening to with other users by quickly pairing two sets of AirPods to the same phone.
- HomePod has the ability to distinguish voices of family members to provide a personalized experience for each user. Also, users will have the ability to hand off music to HomePod directly from their phones.
- The Calendar app will allow users to do attachments to event.
- Find My Friends and Find My iPhone are combined into one app called Find My. The new app will allow users to find their devices even if they’re offline using the device’s Bluetooth signal.
- Music app will provide time-synced lyrics, where the words will follow along with the music playing.
- A new phone setting will allow users to silence unknown callers and send them directly to voicemail.
- A new Low Data Mode is available in the Settings to reduce network data usage.
- A new optimized battery charging technique to slow the rate of battery aging.
- Users of iOS 13 can play games using a PlayStation 4 or Xbox One S controllers.
- In Control Center users can select WiFi networks and Bluetooth devices without having to go to the Settings.
- New volume control appears are the upper-left corner.
- New accessibility options include voice control to control the iOS device, accurate dictation, navigation commands, and much more.
- Books app have a new feature called Reading Goals.
- Apple Arcade will be available in the App Store.
- New updates to CarPlay and navigation.
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