As expected, Apple gave us our first official peek at iOS 13 today, and there are lots of updates to look forward to.
A major focus of iOS 13 is performance improvement. Apple says that Face ID is 30 percent faster with iOS 13 and that apps will launch up to twice as quickly. App downloads are shrinking with the update to iOS 13, too, getting 50 percent smaller while update downloads will be 60 percent smaller.
Another big feature of iOS 13 is Dark Mode. Just like it sounds, enabling Dark Mode will darken the entire user interface. That includes inside of apps as well as widgets.
Messaging will see some big improvements in iOS 13, including swipe typing support on Apple's keyboard. We've seen this feature on lots of other keyboards over the year and so it's great to see it finally coming to Apple's built-in keyboard, too, especially for those folks with big iPhone XS Max and iPhone Plus screens.
Apple is beefing up Maps with iOS 13 with a redesigned app that promises more details. There's real-time transit support in there, too, along with the ability to share your ETA while you're navigating. Apple says that the updated Maps will roll out to the entire U.S. by the end of 2019.
One major thing that Apple has focused on recently is privacy, and so to that end, it's launching a new "Sign in with Apple" feature in iOS 13. Rather than using Facebook or Google to sign into an app, you'll be able to sign in using Apple and not worry about your info being shared with other companies. You'll be able to choose what info you want to share with the app you're logging in to, and you can choose to hide your email address and have Apple create a unique, random address that'll forward messages to your real email address.
Another big change coming with iOS 13 that many users have been asking for is an improved volume control UI. Apple says that the redesigned volume control will appear in the upper-left corner of your screen so that it doesn't block the content that you're watching.
Here's a quick rundown of some of the other new features coming with iOS 13:
- Memoji improvements, including makeup, accessories, and AirPods
- Memoji stickers
- Portrait Lighting improvements, like the ability to adjust lighting intensity
- New photo editing interface
- Improved Share Sheet with suggestions based on who you regularly share with
- Low data mode
- Wi-Fi selection in Control Center
- AirPods users can share their audio with other AirPods users, can have Siri read and send responses to incoming messages
- HomePod gets ability to handoff audio to and from iPhone, support for streaming more than 100,000 radio stations
- CarPlay getting updated UI, redesigned Music app to focus on album art, Siri will stay out of your way so you can better see what's on the screen
- Siri getting Neural Text to Speech improvements to sound more natural
iOS 13 is available today as a developer preview and will be offered to public testers in the Apple Beta Software Program in July. The update will fully launch this fall and will be available to the iPhone SE and the iPhone 6s and later.