Apple previews iOS 15 at WWDC: FaceTime, notifications and others - The Verge

As expected, Apple offered a preview of iOS 15 at today’s WWDC 2021 keynote, highlighting some changes coming to FaceTime and notifications.

FaceTime gets some major updates, with spatial audio and voice isolation, to help make conversations feel more natural and reduce distracting background noise. Portrait mode’s blurred backgrounds can also be used in FaceTime, and users can also share music and videos during calls. It’s also possible now to include Android users on FaceTime with a shareable link that opens the call in a browser.

Notifications get a new look, with contact photos on text notifications and bigger app icons, and they will get new filter modes in iOS 15, called Focus. This allows you to customize which notifications appear during different activities, like while you’re working. These settings will sync across devices. There’s also an option to batch certain notifications and receive them as a digest at certain times of day as a summary.

Messages gets a few updates, too. iOS 15 makes it possible for others to see when you’ve enabled Do Not Disturb mode by way of an automatic status update in Messages. It’s also possible to override Do Not Disturb for urgent messages. Photos shared in messages are automatically grouped into collages or stacks and will appear in other places like your photo gallery and memories.

Other updates include the ability to search text in photos courtesy of a new feature called LiveText, including the ability to search photos in Spotlight, AirPods audio updates, and better support for locating them using Find My.

Apple Wallet will support a wider range of items, like hotel room keys and relevant identification information for TSA. Memories get more customization options with different music track and transition options to change the feel of your video clips, and the weather app will display more information with new full-screen maps and a wider range of animated backgrounds. Safari for iOS will also get support for browser extensions.

Apple says iOS 15 will arrive to the public this fall, with a developer beta arriving today and a public beta next month.

Developing… we’re adding more to this post, but you can follow along with our WWDC 2021 live blog to get the news even faster.

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Apple previews iOS 15 at WWDC: FaceTime, notifications and others - The Verge
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