Apple had plenty to show off when it unveiled iOS 17 at WWDC. We’re excited about the vastly improved autocorrect, sleep timer, live voicemail transcriptions, custom contact posters, and all that other good stuff.
But sometimes it’s the little things that have the biggest impact. One small interface change or one little little-known feature could change the way you use your iPhone day-to-day more than any fancy AI-powered gadget. Here are some of the little things about iOS 17 that you didn’t hear about in the keynote, but that will definitely impact your iPhone.
Ping your Apple Watch
One of our favorite features of the Apple Watch is that you can open Control Center and ping your iPhone, causing it to play a brief loud sound so you can find it quickly.
With iOS 17, it’s also the opposite! There is now a “ping Apple Watch” button in Control Center on your iPhone.
Note binding
You have a note with your itinerary for your trip to Tokyo, and another with a list of restaurants where you want to go. Wouldn’t it be nice to switch quickly from one to the other?
With iOS 17, links aren’t just for websites, you can link directly from one note to another. Long press somewhere in your note, choose Add linkyou can enter a URL or, now, the title of another note.
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News + Daily Crossword
A mainstay of many newspapers, Apple News+ subscribers will receive daily crossword puzzles in the News app. It doesn’t appear to be live in the first beta, so we don’t know what it will look like or how difficult it will be, but that’s all the more reason to subscribe to Apple News+ or the Apple One bundle. .
Best Spotlight Search
An underutilized feature for many, Spotlight Search (just swipe anywhere on your iPhone home screen) lets you super-quickly find apps, search the web, perform simple calculations and conversions, and even find content in Mail or Messages.
In iOS 17, it gets smarter and more capable. Look for a setting like “Wi-Fi” and the top Siri suggestion will have a toggle to turn it on or off directly, without diving into the Settings app. When you’re not typing in Spotlight, Siri Suggestions has new, smarter things, like starting a timer or jumping to a particular album in Photos.
For many, swiping down to access Spotlight/Siri Suggestions is already the first thing they do when they pick up their iPhone. These changes in iOS 17 make it even more useful for more people.
Personalized Fitness+ packages
Want to create your own personalized training plan for your Fitness+ workouts? Open the Fitness app, tap the Fitness+ tab and select Custom Plans. You can choose the days of the week, the length of your plan (2 to 8 weeks), the duration of the workout and the type of activities you want to use, and even include the equipment you have, such as dumbbells or yoga mats.
Note that this is not a freeform fitness plan creation tool – it is for Fitness+ and is limited to the types of activities and equipment you will find in Fitness+ workouts.
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Quickly listen to web pages
The Speak Screen feature has been able to read web pages in Safari for a long time, but Apple seems to have realized that it can be really useful for everyone. So in iOS 17 there is a “Listen to Page” feature right in the aA menu of your address bar. Press it again to pause or resume playback.
Lock white balance when recording video
In Settings > Camera > Record video you will find a new option to lock the white balance when recording video. Useful for shots where the ambient light is changing and you want to capture that effect.
Weather averages
The Weather app has a new Averages tile that shows the temperature deviation from the historical average for that day. Touching the tile for details displays normal temperature ranges and precipitation amounts for your location, both throughout the day and monthly averages.
There is also a new Moon tile!
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Apple Music Crossfade
We’ve heard a lot about the new features in Music SharePlay, but there’s another feature that Apple hasn’t mentioned: crossfade, which smoothly fades out of one song and fades out in the next so that there is no gap between the music. Since Apple Music replaced iTunes users, it has been available on Mac for a long time, but not on iPhone.
Open Settings > Music and find the Crossfade setting.
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Medication reminder tracking
The Health app may optionally send a second notification 30 minutes after the first notification about taking your medication.
In the Health app, tap the Browse tab, then Medications. Scroll down to Optiohns at the bottom and press it. You will find the toggle for Follow-up reminders there.
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Multiple timers
This was mentioned in the iPadOS section of the keynote, but it’s worth explaining: multiple timers will be a feature on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. No, we also don’t know why it took so long.
In almost any text field in iOS 17, including messages, mail, notes, etc., you can long press, select Insert, and in addition to the existing scan to text option, you’ll see options to add contacts or passwords. Choosing one will open your contacts or passwords (you will need to authenticate before your passwords will open) where you can quickly select which one you want to add.
Recover deleted passwords
Deleted passwords are stored in a “Deleted passwords” section of Settings > Passwords for up to 30 days and can be recovered if you deleted something by mistake.
Apple promoted it as an iPadOS feature, but it’s present on iOS 17 as well as macOS Sierra. You can now tick reminders items, activate smart home switches and more from your widgets without opening the app.
Automatic grocery list sorting
The Reminders app will automatically sort any list set as the “Grocery” list type into sections: Produce; beverages; dairy products, eggs and cheese; Breads & Cereals; And so on. You can add and rearrange categories as you wish.
You can also create custom categories for any other reminder list, although they are not sorted automatically. Other reminders enhancements include a column view, early reminder notifications, and live widgets so you can check off items right from the widget.
Hide sensitive images
The Communication Safety feature that can hide sensitive images sent to a child account via Messages has been expanded. It now works for AirDrop, system-wide photo picker, FaceTime messages, contact posters in the Phone app, and third-party apps. You’ll find it in Screen Time when setting up a child account.
For everyone, not just kids, you’ll have the ability to blur sensitive photos and videos before viewing them. You will see a gray box with the words “This may be sensitive”. in it, which you can tap to view the image.
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Dark AirPods Cards
It’s certainly distracting to have that glowing white card that pops up when you open your AirPods case near your iPhone when you’re using dark mode. We don’t know why it took so long, but iOS 17 now respects your dark mode preferences when displaying these pop-up cards.
New quick crop interface in Photos
When viewing a photo in iOS 17 and pinching it to zoom, you’ll see a new “Crop” button in the top right.
Pressing this will open the usual editing interface in crop mode, with the crop edges set to exactly what was showing on your screen when zoomed in. You can always drag the borders to adjust the crop, but it’s a quick and easy way to get a crop that’s perfect for creating an iPhone wallpaper or a new profile poster, for example. example.
Automatically clean verification codes
We like the feature that autofills verification codes texted to you, and iOS 17 extends that to codes you receive via email.
But even better is how it can prevent those old codes from piling up. Open Settings > Passwords > Password options and you will see a new toggle Clean automatically which will delete these texts or emails after inserting them with AutoFill.
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Sharing the research of my article
In iOS 16, once you assign an AirTag or other trackers to an Apple ID, it’s linked to that ID only. It’s a great security feature that alerts you when someone has surreptitiously planted an AirTag in you, but it’s also a pain for shared items like luggage and keys. In iOS 17, you’ll be able to share AirTags in Find My with other people so you know when something is actually lost, not just used by someone else.
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