Monday will give iPhone owners a first look at the big changes coming to their smartphones this fall.
Apple will hold its Worldwide Developers Conference virtually this week, starting with a keynote on Monday where they are expected to widely unveil iOS 16, the latest software for its iPhones.
The keynote will likely also serve as a platform to share software updates related to their other products, including iPads, MacBooks, and the Apple Watch.
USA TODAY will provide live updates on what’s coming to iOS 16 throughout the keynote, which begins at 1 p.m. ET.
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Track Medications on Apple Watch
The watch will soon add a Medications app to easily track what medications you’re taking and when to take them. Users can add them manually or take a photo to quickly add them to the app. Users can also set schedules to know when to take their medications. The app will provide alerts if your medications have critical or serious interactions.
Improvements to the Apple Watch Sleep app
The next watch update will include support for sleep stages, checking how long you’ve spent in specific sleep stages, such as REM sleep. If you own a Fitbit, you probably know how it works.
For heart health, WatchOS 9 adds AFib history, which provides long-term tracking of when users are in atrial fibrillation.
It’s time for Apple Watch updates
Let’s start with the faces. Apple is adding four more faces, including a lunar calendar face, the playtime face with animated numbers, and a metropolitan face in different colors. Faces will also add new complications, which are basically great little widgets with information like dates or heart rate.
When it comes to fitness, WatchOS will take advantage of tools like machine learning to better track running during workouts, with details like stride and ground contact time. Users can also quickly see what heart rate zone they are in during a workout.
If you follow the same route when running, you can also track your best times to try and beat previous sessions.
What’s new with CarPlay
Apple presents some updates to the CarPlay in-vehicle system. Among them: improved odometers with Apple aesthetics, widgets providing trip information, navigation tools and weather details. Users can also perform tasks such as adjusting the temperature in the car without leaving CarPlay. The iPhone communicates with your car’s real-time systems to display all information in CarPlay. Users can even customize how this information is displayed.
Apple’s new Safety Check app
To help protect personal safety, Apple is launching a Safety Check app, created in partnership with domestic violence groups. The app can manage access to your device, disable location sharing, or set up an emergency reset of your phone. It can also reset all privacy permissions and check who has access to information on your phone.
Family Sharing updates are important for parents
Apple is changing Family Sharing to make it easier for parents to set up devices for kids and adjust parental controls. Kids can also send requests through Messages to save more screen time. For my part, I look forward to 1,000 posts asking me for five more minutes on YouTube. iPhone owners can also create shared libraries that anyone can access to automatically share photos with family or friends.
New territory for Apple Maps
The app will soon feature multi-stop routing, which allows users to add multiple stops during a single trip. Transit features are also being upgraded, providing details on times and prices for different services. The maps will also provide a detailed view of the city to provide a better perspective of the surroundings.
Buy now, pay later on Apple Pay
Apple is introducing the ability to Pay Later for items you purchase through Apple Pay Later, allowing consumers to break down an item purchase on Apple Pay into multiple installments.
New ways to use your license on iPhone
Apple is slowing the rollout of the option to add your driver’s license to your iPhone. Arizona and Maryland are the first states to do so, more will come soon. An upcoming use case is to verify with the Uber Eats app that you are over 21 to order certain items.
A more useful live text feature
Perhaps one of the coolest uses to come for Live Text: the ability to open the camera in the translation app and immediately see the translated text in view. Visual search not only lets you spot things in an image and search for them, but you can also grab specific things in the photo and paste them into a message.
Messages also get an update
New features such as unsending, marking threads as unread, and the ability to edit a message after it’s been sent are among the new tweaks to make the app simpler and more efficient, said Federighi. Composing messages will also improve with an improved on-device dictation feature. When using dictation, the keyboard stays open so you can both dictate and type as needed. It even does emoji dictation. Mind-blowing emoji indeed!
Less annoying iPhone notifications
Notifications will be broadcast from the bottom of the screen with iOS 16, and users can even hide them completely. There are also live activity widgets on the lock screen for special events like tracking sports scores, listening to music, and tracking an Uber ride. Users can also customize Focus mode so that lock screens match the moment, such as when you’re at work.
iOS 16 gets a big lock screen update
Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, confirms what we already knew: iOS 16 is the next major software update for the iPhone. It starts with the lock screen, calling it “the biggest update ever”.
It’s much more personal, offering different fonts, styles, and colors, as well as tiny icons for information like noise levels, weather, and more. It’s similar to the Apple Watch and how you update and customize watch faces. Making updates only requires a simple drag-and-drop interface.
Users can easily swipe to update fonts, and Apple will finally eliminate faces on wallpapers that are covered over time.
Tim Cook starts things off
No surprise, but the Apple CEO begins in the halls of Apple’s futuristic new headquarters to officially kick off WWDC. Cook is currently recapping all the ways Apple is trying to foster robust development environments, including new academies focused on underrepresented communities. Cook says the Apple community has grown to more than 34 million developers.
What is WWDC?
The conference had previously been hosted at a convention center in San Francisco before the COVID-19 pandemic turned it into a virtual experience in 2020.
How to watch WWDC
The keynote is available to stream on Apple’s website or through the Apple TV app available on various streaming devices. Apple is also broadcasting his speech via its YouTube channel.
What we know about iOS 16 right now
The most notable update Apple may reveal is iOS 16 supporting an always-on display, which could provide basic information to users without having to wake up the device. Other features rumored to be coming to the iPhone include upgrades to the Messages app and the Health app.
When will iOS 16 be launched?
Typically, the arrival of the latest version of iOS lands just before the launch of a new iPhone in the fall. Last year, Apple released iOS 15 on September 20, four days before the launch of the iPhone 13.
Will my iPhone support iOS 16?
Newer versions of the iPhone will almost certainly support iOS 16. The question is whether much older models dating back to the iPhone 6S, which launched nearly seven years ago, will still run the latest version of iPhone. ‘iOS. If you’re holding on to one of these models, it might be time to consider an upgrade.
Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23.
USA Today