IOS 17.2 Finally Introduces the Journal App

You may have just updated your iPhone to iOS 17.1 , but Apple is already hard at work on the next big iOS update. The company is currently beta testing iOS 17.2, which could offer the biggest changes since… well, iOS 17.0.

Here’s what’s new:

Magazine

One of the headliners this time is Journal, Apple’s own journaling app. The company announced the magazine during the iOS 17 presentation at WWDC , but it did not make it into the final version of iOS 17.0 or iOS 17.1.

Apple sets Journal apart from other similar apps by intelligently drawing from what you did on your iPhone that day to create a whole. For example, the journal records the photos you took, the places you visited, the music you listened to, and the workouts you did, and automatically adds them to create a journal entry. From there, you can journal with either Apple’s prompts or whatever you want to write.

Checking your iMessage contact key

The new update also adds iMessage contact key verification to iPhone. Apple has previously teased this feature too . For those facing “extreme digital threats” (such as journalists and politicians being targeted by hackers), this feature confirms whether the person they are sending iMessaging to is who they say they are. If your iPhone detects that an unknown device has hacked the cloud servers and infiltrated your conversation, you will receive an alert. There’s even a code you can use to verify another person’s identity.

General playlists have been created in Music.

Those who update to iOS 17.2 will find two key playlist features in Music. You can now collaborate on playlists with other people, so a group of you using iOS 17.2 can contribute to the list of songs, including the order in which they are played. Additionally, iOS 17.1 includes Favorites, which replaces the useless Favorites. Love” have now been added to the new “Favorites” playlist. Finally, it makes it easy to return to songs you’ve marked as favorites.

Disable listening history while focusing

The new update now gives you the option to turn off Apple Music listening history for any specific Focus. So, if you listen to ambient music while you have Work Focus enabled, but you don’t want it added to your history, no playback will be recorded to your account.

Translation can now be assigned to an action button.

The action button on your iPhone 15 Pro is great and can be used in so many different ways. Now you can add translation to this list: If you select the Translate option in iOS 17.2, you can use the Action button to quickly open the Translator app.

React with emoticons or stickers

This is another delayed iOS 17 feature: in addition to the regular Tapback reactions you can use, iOS 17.2 allows you to react with emoji or stickers. And since iOS 17 lets you turn just about anything into a sticker , you can respond to messages with just about anything.

Widget changes

You now have three new weather widget options to choose from: Details, Daily Forecast, and Sunrise & Sunset. There is also now a digital clock widget .

Smaller changes

There are also a few small features that Apple has added to iOS 17.2. You now have a rainbow text option when creating a contact poster, and Apple Books has a new feature called “Fast Fade” when turning pages.