by The end of the year is usually a time when people reflect on what happened in the previous year, and the same goes for Apple’s software, especially iOS.
Since the debut of iPhone and iOS in 2007, there have been new software updates every year that would bring big changes or small improvements, such as: B. a redesign in iOS 7 or widgets on the home screen in iOS 14.
However, with iOS 16 bringing widgets to the lock screen, users seem to want an extension of existing features rather than new ones for iOS 17.
With that in mind, we racked our brains and came up with seven features of the iPhone platform that many users could benefit from.
Home screen with the new features
I hear this a lot: “I didn’t know my iPhone could do that.” When I work in an open plan office, I discover iPhones that have been updated to iOS 16 but still have the old lock screen, or others that still have iOS 13 running on an iPhone 11 Pro.
Apple believes that design should be invisible, that you should intuitively know a feature is there and ready to go, but that doesn’t work for everyone. A friend had no idea that, for example, you could take calls on a Mac using an iPhone – a feature that’s been around since 2014.
This is why you should see an additional home screen after updating to iOS 17. Similar to launching one of the Apple apps, a What’s New screen will appear. Instead, have these show up when you go to the home screen and make it clear that the Tips app can help you try out these features.
The Tips app is a lesser known app from Apple but for a new user it’s great – it’s just not talked about much by the company and you most likely don’t know you can go to the app and as above image shows, see an overview of all innovations.
Let’s see it become more ubiquitous – maybe the first day you update to iOS 17, a random tip pops up in the dynamic island, or even an email showing what you can do.
Redesigned control center
This is long overdue, but it is a difficult challenge to complete. First appearing in iOS 7 with the major redesign to a flat method, you would swipe up from the bottom of your iPhone to access some settings. It was later moved to the top-right corner, as the iPhone X and beyond uses the swipe gesture to return to the home screen.
Almost ten years later, the Control Center has gotten worse, largely due to the number of new features that have popped up, and in turn has filled the menu so much that it can be difficult to leave the screen when trying to swipe up .
Let’s look at a redesign where we can resize the options, similar to widgets on the home screen, and give third-party apps access to the Control Center.
Aside from that, we also see that the Control Center is part of the multitasking menu on the iPad, rather than having its own section.
Stream games to Twitch from iOS more easily
Apple made a big push into gaming at WWDC 2022, where it announced Resident Evil Village is coming to Mac and No Man’s Sky is coming to both Mac and iPad, but if you’re gaming on your iPhone via Twitch want to stream, you’re out of luck.
Granted, SharePlay allows users to stream what they’re doing in specific apps, but that’s within a FaceTime call. Instead, let’s look at a feature that allows you to press a button to load your Twitch account and stream your Apple Arcade game.
Also let’s enable to see the chat window of those who are watching your stream and track your subscriptions through notifications on another Apple device you may have.
We’re in an era where many users own multiple Apple products, and while iCloud helps you manage files on those devices, some details like fitness and battery life are unique to some Apple products.
For example, if you want to show your movement goal on a fitness widget from your iPad, you can’t.
If you want to check the battery of all your devices, you’re out of luck. The only way to check if they’re running out of power is to load up the Find My app and go to Devices taband select each of your Apple products to check how full the battery icon is for each.
If an app can do this, a battery widget is certainly possible in iOS and also macOS and iPadOS.
The iOS home screen hadn’t changed much since 2007, so it was great to see a redesign with widgets finally arrive in iOS 16. However, let’s see how those efforts expand even further in iOS 17.
Six widgets and one Live Activity widget on the lock screen might not be enough for some — there are plenty of ways to see more widgets, in more sizes and in more locations.
For example, the time should be able to be replaced with another widget, alongside another set of widgets among the three that we can already choose.
More widgets are always a good thing, so let’s look at more of them and in more sizes.
Better picture-in-picture control
While the ability to watch a video anywhere on your device wasn’t introduced until iOS 9 on the iPad, little has changed since then, except for coming to iOS 14 in 2019.
The ability to have more control over the video, such as B. timeline scrubbing and selecting other videos has not arrived yet, which is why these should appear in iOS 17.
There is also a hidden feature when using this in macOS – if you hold option While dragging a video, you can place it anywhere on the screen. Let’s see that this also appears in iOS 17 so that we have more control over its size and position.
Return landscape
When I had an iPhone 8 Plus, I loved being able to rotate the phone to landscape and the home screen rotated alongside everything else.
The keyboard would have added features like punctuation and shortcuts like copying and pasting text, and would have taken advantage of the extra length so some keys were wider, but this was removed in future models when the 2018 iPhone XS was launched.
Almost all currently available iPhones, from the iPhone 13 to the iPhone 14 Pro Max, have the same or larger displays than the regular iPhone 8 Plus thanks to the different all-screen design. So let’s see how iOS 17 takes advantage of this and also extends it to other apps like Apple Music and even the lock screen with its useful widgets.
Is your wish missing?
We’re at a point on iOS where the lofty fruits of Apple’s features over the years have been fulfilled – from custom keyboards to redesigned widgets on the home screen.
The seven here are what could improve someone’s use of an iPhone, but Apple knows individuality matters, which is why we can customize our redesigned lock screens in iOS 16 to make them our own.
Is there anything you think we’ve missed for iOS 17? Feel free to contact us (opens in new tab) to let us know what you would like to see in a future version of Apple.
