Everything Apple Announced at WWDC 2024
Stay tuned for Lifehacker’s ongoing coverage ofWWDC 2024 .
Apple’s keynote at WWDC 2024 lasted nearly two hours and covered everything from new iOS updates to a deep dive into Apple’s big plans for artificial intelligence. If you missed the event, you don’t have to watch the live stream on YouTube: here’s everything Apple announced at WWDC this year.
Apple TV+
Apple kicked off its presentation with a preview of upcoming Apple TV+ shows and movies, with quite a few on the horizon. The company announced a second season of Severance in addition to fresh content such as Dark Matter , Presumed Innocent , Fly Me to the Moon , Pachinko , The Bunker , Slow Horses , Lady in the Lake “ , “The Instigators” , “Bad Monkey” , “Downsizing ” and “Wolves” .
VisionOS 2
Apple then took the time to show off some of VisionOS 2’s new features. Despite the modest update, Vision Pro users can look forward to a larger and higher-resolution Mac Virtual Display, mouse support and new gestures for Control Center, as well as options such as viewing the current time, battery level and volume controls.
VisionOS 2 also allows you to create 3D spatial images from 2D images in Photos and supports headset use on trains. Currently, the Vision Pro has a flight mode, but in other moving vehicles it is difficult for the device to orient itself correctly.
iOS 18
We all thought this would be the moment at Apple’s event where the company would unveil its suite of brand new artificial intelligence features. That did not happen. Instead, the company highlighted a few small but interesting new changes to iOS, and postponed major AI announcements for later.
First, Apple is opening up the ability to customize iOS . The company now allows you to place app icons wherever you want, change the colors of app icons to your liking, and customize the hue of the icons to match your iPhone’s dark theme. You can also fully customize Control Center: Apple lets you choose which features you want and where. Honestly, it doesn’t feel 100% Apple. iOS 18 will also let you lock your apps using Face ID, Touch ID, or a PIN, and hide any apps in a new hidden folder.
Messages got a big update : Tapback icons (thumbs up, heart, “Ha Ha”, etc.) now have a more colorful design, but instead you can also select any emoji from your phone to react to. Now you can also schedule messages, so you don’t have to set yourself a reminder to send an important message. We’re also getting text effects and formatting: You can now add effects to individual words and choose from rich font features like bold, italic, underline, and strikethrough. Plus, you’ll be able to send messages to other phones via satellite when you don’t have cellular service and RCS is on the way .
Mail also has a new look, with quick tabs at the top of the screen (Basic, Transactions, Updates, and Promotions) for sorting your email. Mail also intelligently sorts similar emails to provide relevant information in one view, so you don’t have to scroll through multiple emails from your airline to find different flight details. Maps now has a ton of new hike data, including new topographic maps and the ability to create your own hikes. Tap to Cash lets you pay people by connecting phones to each other, and Game Mode reduces background activity, improving game performance and response time.
Photos has gotten a big redesign: Instead of using multiple sections, which is how the Photos app currently works, the new app is a single view, with a grid of your photos at the top and albums, memories, and other sorted content at the bottom. It’s a different approach to photos than Apple has tried before, and it remains to be seen how legacy iOS users will cope with the new UI.
AirPods and TV
AirPods also got some new features in iOS 18: You can now interact with Siri by nodding your head for “Yes” or shaking your head for “No.” Voice Isolation is also coming to AirPods Pro . It’s unclear how this differs from the voice isolation already available in iOS and macOS, but Apple claims the feature can completely block out city noise during a call—at least according to Apple’s demo. Personalized spatial audio will also be coming to games, so developers will be able to integrate this feature into their games.
Apple also releases “InSight”, which essentially copies X-Ray Prime Video: when you pause a show or movie, you’ll see information about the actors, as well as what music might be playing during a scene. Enhanced Dialogue is rolling out to more devices and will use machine learning (also known as artificial intelligence) to improve the experience. 21:9 projectors will also be supported in the latest version of tvOS, and Apple is releasing new screensavers such as the new Snoopy animation.
watchOS 11
Like iOS 18, watchOS 11 is more of a modest update than a major overhaul. But there are a few interesting features: The update introduces a new app called Vitals. Here you can view metrics like heart rate and sleep and track how they’ve changed over time. There’s also a new feature called Training Load, which takes into account all your metrics and body measurements to estimate the correct training effort (rated from 1 to 10) you should perform in your exercises. This feature also takes into account your own experience if you feel like you’re working too hard or too little.
Speaking of working too hard, you can now pause your activity rings (thank goodness) so your clock doesn’t have to shame you for missing a day of goals. You can even set goals based on the day, so Monday might have a lower workout goal than Tuesday. You can also customize the Fitness app with tiles to quickly check the data sets and features that matter most to you.
Specific training supports swimming in the pool and makes it easier for pregnant users to receive additional health-related information. Your Apple Watch will use artificial intelligence to power a new live translation feature, but we don’t know much about it at the moment. Smart Stack will also get some updates (including new Translate and Precipitation widgets), and watchOS will get the iOS ” Check In ” feature. This way, you can automatically notify a friend when you return home from an outdoor run. More apps will be able to take advantage of Double Tap on the new watch, Tap to Cash will work with Apple Watch, and there will be new versions of the Photos watch face.
For more information on Apple’s latest update to the Apple Watch , check out our article here .
iPadOS 18
iPadOS 18 gets many of the same features as iOS 18, including message scheduling and Game Mode, but by far the biggest update is the new Calculator app.
No, really. After more than a decade of refusing to put a calculator app on the iPad, the mad geniuses at Apple have finally done it. iPadOS18 can count. And he can do it very well. Specifically, the new iPad calculator app will be able to take notes using machine learning to enhance the calculator experience on tablets.
Once you download the Calculator app, you’ll be able to use the buttons for basic calculations as usual, but now a quick press will take you to the new Math Notes section of the app. Here you can write formulas and other equations, and the page will automatically update with your handwritten answers as soon as you draw an equal sign or other equivalent symbol. You can even edit already solved equations in real time and Math Notes will make changes accordingly.
There’s also support for graphs, which you can automatically create and adjust based on equations you’ve already written. Your notes will appear in history, just like written notes in the Notes app, so you can also refer to old issues days or weeks later. Teachers are sure to be tearing their hair out over this new “show your work” cheat tool, but Apple is positioning Math Notes as a great tool for budgeting or even scientific prototyping.
You’ll also be able to access Math Notes features in the standard Notes app, which is getting its own update with the new Smart Script feature.
Smart Script is a bit of a strange idea because the idea here is to fix your writing so it looks more like…your writing. Essentially, your iPad will now use machine learning to figure out what your handwriting typically looks like, and then make small changes to any new text to clean it up so it looks like a model of your handwriting.
If that sounds confusing, imagine this: you’re in a lecture and you can’t afford to compose perfectly beautiful text from your notes, so you just write down what you hear and hope you can figure it out later. Smart Script will try to take those scribbles and make them look like your handwriting in a more ideal environment.
“It’s still your own text, but it looks sleeker, straighter and more legible,” said Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi.
Notes also introduces new formatting options, including five new highlight colors, the ability to collapse sections under headings and subheadings, and automatic content resizing. For example, if you delete a paragraph, Notes will adjust the remaining content to fill the empty space.
For general navigation, a new floating tab bar will now appear at the top of multiple apps on the system and provide easy access to different parts of that app, somewhat like the menu bar in MacOS. By default, it brings up a few key sections (the Apple TV version of the tab bar has shortcuts for Apple TV+ and MLS content), but you can also expand it into a sidebar for more detailed information or add your own shortcuts.
Finally, there are accessibility features and Shareplay that should help with the iPad experience. iPadOS 18 will add eye tracking for navigation, as well as voice-activated keyboard shortcuts that will allow users to match their own sounds to specific tasks and actions. Meanwhile, Shareplay will now be able to show when a user taps or draws on their screen, which should help with actually completing a task. In more extreme cases, assistants may (with permission) take direct control of the device.
The M-series iPad will also have access to Apple Intelligence features like Image Playground, which we’ll talk about later.
macOS 15 (Sequoia)
macOS 15 is here, and it has a new Californian name: macOS Sequoia. Like iPadOS, it will get iOS 18 features where needed, such as Tapbacks and the Passwords app, and will even have a version of Math Notes designed for typed text. But as far as exclusives go, this year the focus is on window layout, device syncing, and gaming.
Perhaps the most important of these is the new continuity feature: iPhone mirroring. Now, while your iPhone is nearby, you can bring its screen into a window on your Mac, where you can interact with apps and notifications. While you do this, your iPhone will remain locked, and you can even share files directly from your Mac to your screen mirroring in supported apps like Unfold.
When you’re just working on your Mac, you’ll finally be able to dock windows. Third-party apps like Magnet already offer this capability, but this will be the first time it’s a built-in feature. Now, when you drag a window (or tile, as Apple calls them) to the edge of the screen, you’ll be able to place it in the suggested location on your desktop. There are also keyboard shortcuts and menus for more advanced customization.
For video calls, the new Presenter Preview will also let you double-check which of your windows you’re going to share before you go live. You can also choose your own background or use a photo.
Finally, there are games. The updates here are more developer-centric, but they show a promising future for gaming on the Mac. Essentially, Apple is releasing a new set of game porting tools, allowing games originally made for Windows to run on the Mac. This should mean a wider library of games available on Apple computers, with confirmed ports for blockbusters such as Control and Assassin’s Creed Shadows already on the way.
Like the iPad, any Mac with an M-series chip will also have access to Apple Intelligence.
Safari
Safari is receiving several updates specifically aimed at macOS Sequoia. These include a new video mode, article summaries, and additional bonuses based on machine learning.
Now, when Safari detects a video on a page, a new viewing mode will be enabled. You’ll be able to click a button next to the address bar to hide everything on the page except the video, and when you click outside of your browser, Safari will go into picture-in-picture mode to play the video in the corner of the screen.
For text content, the new Reading mode “instantly removes distractions from articles” and also gives you a sidebar with what appears to be an AI-generated table of contents, as well as a summary (Apple hasn’t been very clear on how to do this). they are still working).
Finally, Highlights uses machine learning to add all sorts of context to your viewing experience. For example, if you’re reading an article about a singer, Highlights will display a link to one of his songs on Apple Music. Likewise, if you’re looking for a hotel, Highlights will show you its location.
Apple Intelligence
Apple’s main event at WWDC this year was its entry into the artificial intelligence market. The company’s artificial intelligence, called Apple Intelligence (pun intended), does something old and a little new.
First, about what we don’t know. We don’t know what training data Apple uses for its AI, we don’t know how detailed the image creation can be, and we don’t know specific release dates (only release windows). But when it comes to everything else, Apple was surprisingly candid, perhaps even more so than Google was about Gemini during Google I/O .
Perhaps the most exciting discovery is the updated Siri. While Apple was the first to bring a digital assistant to market, Apple Intelligence is finally giving Siri the upgrade it needs to keep up with competitors like Alexa. Thanks to Apple’s artificial intelligence, Siri can now understand context, answering questions based on what it sees on your screen, or intuitively understanding which contact you mean when you say “pull up my messages with Mike.”
This opens up new search and action possibilities for the bot, allowing you to search your photos and videos for words like “my daughter is wearing a red shirt” or ask Siri to add the screen address to a specific contact. card for you.
Siri will also be able to answer questions about Apple products, as they come pre-loaded with guides on questions like “how to turn on dark mode.” Answers will now appear in a box directly on the screen rather than on the associated help page.
You’ll also be able to give Siri prompts to create custom collages of memories from your photos, and the bot will naturally decipher references to specific contacts, activities, places or music styles to link them together.
Finally, Siri will be able to take on a more traditional AI chatbot role, building on ChatGPT. When you ask Siri a question that it thinks ChatGPT can help with, the bot will ask for permission to send the question to ChatGPT for an answer. Apple has promised that any requests to ChatGPT will hide your IP address and that ChatGPT will not log requests made through Siri. You will not need an account to ask ChatGPT questions, but usage restrictions will apply and ChatGPT subscribers will be able to link their accounts to access paid features.
Apart from Siri, Apple Intelligence also provides iPhone with a cleaning mode that is very similar to Google’s Magic Eraser. In the Photos app, simply tap the Clear button, then circle or tap a specific item to have your phone automatically crop it out of the photo.
Another Pixel-like feature, Apple Intelligence also allows the Notes app to record and transcribe audio even during phone calls. Participants in your conversation will be notified when you start recording, so no one will be surprised.
There are a couple more organizational goodies here too. Both notifications and the Mail app can use AI to prioritize and summarize what you see, and the Mail app will even let you use AI to compose smart replies.
Then there are the more traditional functions. Apple Intelligence will be able to rewrite or adjust the text “almost everywhere” you write, based on either user suggestions or pre-selected tones.
It will also be able to use ChatGPT to generate entirely new text using the same rules as Siri.
Image Playground will be your image generator and can incorporate AI art into your notes, messages and more. You’ll have access to pre-selected themes and art styles, as well as a hint window, although it’s unclear how much freedom you’ll have with this tool. Apple’s language emphasizes that users will “choose from a range of concepts” rather than typing in whatever they want. One thing is clear: Image Playground will use the same contextual approach as Siri, meaning it will be able to create caricatures of people in your contacts list using only their names.
Finally, there are Genmoji, which are similar to Image Playground but are custom emoji created by artificial intelligence. Just like regular emojis, they can be added to messages and shared as stickers.
This all sounds a little cool and a little scary, which is why Apple is focusing on privacy with its artificial intelligence. Apple wants most of the AI processing to happen on the device, but for content that needs to be sent to the cloud, Apple promises that the data will never be stored and will only be used for queries. It also makes its servers’ code available for third-party review.
The catch in all this? It is based on Apple Silicon neural engines. This means that it will only be available for devices with the A17 Pro chip or the M-series chip. This limits the number of iPads and Macs you can use, and also makes it so that the only iPhones with Apple Intelligence (at least at launch) will be the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max.
Apple Intelligence will be available for trial in US English this summer and will be released in beta in the fall.