After several months in development, iOS 15 is about to launch, as Apple has set a release date. And when iOS 15 arrives, it will introduce a number of changes.
Assuming your iPhone is compatible, and unless you’ve been carrying your device for a long time, iOS 15 is likely to bring many new virtual toys to your smartphone when it launches on Monday, September 20th. video calls, games, web searches or notifications, Apple’s new features will be immediately apparent and hopefully very useful.
For a full list of changes to Apple’s new mobile operating system, you can check out our iOS 15 homepage. For now, here are the eight features we think are the most interesting changes to your iPhone.
iOS 15 FaceTime
Apple’s video calling app is expanding to make it a more convenient service, even for users without Apple devices.
In iOS 15 you get the ability to create unique links for calls that you can access from Android or Windows devices, as well as Apple computers. This could make FaceTime a more practical rival for Microsoft Teams, Zoom, or Google Meet, as Apple’s video chat app will no longer be platform-specific. Another couple of improvements that will work well are the introduction of grid display and video in portrait mode, which allow you to blur the background and see more participants at once.
The other big changes to FaceTime will be the introduction of space audio, the new noise cancellation enhanced by machine learning, and broad-spectrum audio. All of these should be combined together to provide natural sound conversations for both your band and whoever you want to call.
IOS 15 notifications
If you want your iPhone to not only overload you with notifications, iOS 15 is here to keep you from getting distracted. Your notifications will now be sorted by importance, conversations will go straight to the top, and others will come in later. You can also mute an app temporarily if it gives you too many updates to deal with.
If you want a more personalized option, you can set up a notification summary, which offers all notifications from a selected application group at once, according to a customizable schedule. You can now ask your phone to only bother you with emails a handful of times a day or to distill all social media notifications into a single night summary.
Notification banner icons are also getting bigger, so it’s easier to know which app they’re coming from or which contact is sending you a message. Taken together, these changes will make it much easier for you to manage the various pings and alerts you receive on your iPhone each day.
IOS 15 focus mode
Even with these notification changes, sometimes you just need a full time to concentrate with your phone. This is what Focus mode is for. It’s set up to extend the powers of Do Not Disturb, giving you access to similar settings, but it will also allow you to make it a much more personalized experience on all of your Apple devices.
Focus allows you to select which contacts and applications can contact you or notify you in certain Focus modes. The default values are work, staff, and sleep, although you can make your own profiles if you wish. You can also set different settings for more urgent notifications, so you don’t miss reminders or timely emergency notifications while other application pings remain silent. All contacts who try to contact you using the Messages app will be able to see if you’re in Focus mode as well, and hopefully they’ll be less likely to bother you or worry about you not responding.
Focus mode also lets you set up custom home screens for different modes, with unique app layouts and widgets. With only the apps you need right here and then visible, you should be less tempted to check the status of your social media or your Amazon order when you need to do something more important or make sure you don’t have the temptation to open your emails once I’ve been away from home.
Live text for iOS 15
The words in your photos won’t have to stay there with the new live text feature in iOS 15.
Your phone can recognize the text in your photos and allow you to copy / paste it elsewhere. Nor should they be images you’ve taken, as LiveText works in other apps on your iPhone. You must have a phone with an A12 Bionic chip or later, so anything before an iPhone XR or iPhone XS will not be able to use this feature.
It is a fairly simple feature, but one that promises to have many potential uses. It also helps Apple catch up with Google Lens, an app present on Android phones that is already capable of doing so. If you’re particularly curious about this feature, we already have a guide on how to use live text in iOS 15 so you can learn how to use it early.
iOS 15 Visual Look Up
Another feature of Apple’s loan to Google Lens is Visual Look Up, which adds the ability to visually search for items.
Whether you want to learn something about what’s in front of you or need to remember the details of holiday photo themes, you can tap the image icon, and then Siri will appear with useful links. You don’t need to take the image with an iPhone for this to work, the image only needs to be on your phone.
Our comparison of Visual Look Up with Google Lens gave mixed results, but with a little more work Apple will have a feature that can rival the usefulness of Google.
IPhones already make some of the best gaming phones thanks to the combination of premium screens, battery life and chipsets, as well as the enviable selection of titles in Apple Arcade. Still, Apple is now offering developers a new help in creating games for iOS: an API for adding pre-set game controls.
IOS 15 game controls
With the help of customizable virtual controllers, the game in various games large and small should be increasingly consistent. It should also feel better, because these controls support haptic feedback just like the rest of the iOS interface.
Use of this feature depends on the game developers using it, so there is no guarantee that you will see this unified driver in popular games once the operating system is released. We’re still excited to see what that means for iPhone games in the future.
IOS 15 wallet
Keep more than money, tickets, and loyalty cards in your regular wallet, and Apple is working to make the iPhone Wallet app contain a more diverse set of details.
Your iPhone will be able to act as a valid TSA form of identification when you travel to and within eight states in the United States (at least when the feature is released; more states will arrive later). Wallet may also open certain vehicle brands, the hotel room door for specific hotel chains, or be able to store corporate identification badges.
This feature will again rely on third parties to take advantage of what Apple is introducing. Given the popularity of iPhones and the convenience of the new Wallet, it may not be long before more companies and authorities allow you to use your iPhone as an official ID or access method.
Safari iOS 15
Apple’s long-running browser has been transformed with iOS 15. Fortunately, it’s optional if you don’t mind the new look of Safari.
The new version of Safari turns the old top navigation bar into a bubble at the bottom of the screen, offering a handful of options at your fingertips with more available with a long press of the bubble. This allows you to navigate more easily with one hand and allows you to view more than one webpage at a time.
This is a well-intentioned change, but one that is drastically different from the Safari you are used to. Fortunately, Apple introduced the option to switch between the new and old style of Safari in a recent version of iOS 15, so you can decide which version you prefer.