As expected, Apple has announced iOS 13 onstage at WWDC 2019, giving a first look at the company’s latest software for the iPhone. According to Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, iOS 13 is the “next big release for iOS,” and will offer a variety of improvements to the operating system.
Federighi kicked things off by touting improved performance in iOS 13, as well. Face ID unlocks will be 30 percent faster. Apple is also changing how it packages apps downloads will be 50 percent smaller, while updates will be 60 percent smaller. An even bigger is that apps will launch about twice as fast, which could be a seriously notable improvement for everyone.
Apple moved on to what’s iOS 13’s most-expected feature: dark mode! As you’d expect, the interface changes everywhere across the OS, including your widgets and keyboard. And Apple slipped in a new keyboard feature at the same time during the dark mode demo there’s a swipe-able keyboard just as Android has had for years now.
Maps is also getting a major update, with far more detail on its maps than used to be there. Obviously Maps had a rocky launch, but it’s been significantly better in recent years. But now there’s far more visual detail, and Apple’s also revamping its interface as well. It’s easier to save and tag your favorite places, something the app really needed. There’s also a new feature called “look around” which basically is Apple’s take on Google Street View.
Following Maps, Federighi shifted to privacy, specifically location services. There are more granular location preferences you can make it so an app can only see your location one single time, and it’ll have to ask you again next time it needs it. Apple is also building background tracking alerts that’ll give you more details on how exactly an app is using your location.
Apple is also discussing social logins, like Facebook and Google, that are commonly used to log into apps and services. Apple is developing its own sign-in button that uses Face ID to authenticate you without giving any information to the service that you’re logging in to. Apple will allow apps to request your email, but it’s up to you whether or not they get that information. You can share your regular email, or you can have Apple generate a random email that’ll forward to your regular email, keeping that information secure. Those addresses are linked to the app you’re using, and you can disable that access at any time.
Apple’s also tweaking a few of its core applications on iOS 13. Apple Mail is set to get new desktop formatting. Safari is getting per-website preferences, and Notes is getting a new gallery view for looking at all your notes at once.
Apple’s adding a new editing interface to iOS for photos — and for the first time, videos. You’ll be able to edit brilliance, highlights, shadows, contrast, saturation, brilliance, white balance, sharpen, definition, vignette, and noise reduction on your content. And for videos in particular, you’ll finally be able to rotate them directly on the device.
The Photos app is also getting a new UI, which will use machine learning to remove duplicates and weird clutter like screenshots for easy browsing.
There are some privacy improvements coming to Apple’s HomeKit, as well. HomeKit secure video is a new interface that analyzes video recorded by cameras on your devices, instead of in the cloud, and HomeKit will work on routers from Linksys, Eero and providers like Charter-Spectrum.
As for messages, Apple is adding makeup and other new customization features to the custom “memoji” that the company launched last year. These go along with a new contact card you can tie to your iMessage account so that when you message someone for the first time, they’ll get your actual contact info instead of just a phone number.
Apple has confirmed that iOS 13 will be compatible with the iPhone 6S and above, which means two generations of handsets which got iOS 12 won’t be in line for the next upgrade later this year, spelling the end of their core support from the technology giant.
That means if you have an iPhone 5S, iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, you won’t be able to take advantage of iOS 13 and all its new features.
Apple will be adding native support for USB mouse to the iPad Pro with the upcoming iOS 13 update. The feature will be added as an accessibility one from Apple which means that users will first have to enable it from the Settings menu before they can use a mouse on their iPad Pro.
