What’s up with iOS 13?

iOS 13, announced on June 3rd 2019, was just released in a beta to registers developers, and is coming to an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch near you in September 2019. It brings quite a few new features that normal and power users alike will love and appreciate, including a completely new iPad experience called iPadOS. Without any more interruptions, lets introduce the top iOS 13 features you will love!

iPhone

Dark Mode

Night owls rejoice! iOS 13 is getting a Dark Mode, which will reduce the amount of white on screen to ensure a more enjoyable viewing experience at night (or any time if that’s how you roll). Dark Mode in iOS 13 is similar to the one introduced last year in macOS Mojave, which will be complete and comprehensive and not leave any inconsistencies. Third-party applications (like Instagram or Google Maps) will include support for Dark Mode later this fall.

Dark Mode can be toggled on and off through the Control Centre, or automatically at specific times of the day, such as sunrise and sunset.

An All New Reminders App

If you’re someone who likes using your iPhone or iPad to organize your life, you're in luck! iOS 13 brings a complete redesign to the Reminders experience, which has remained the same since iOS 7 in 2013! Your reminders are now automatically split into four different groups: Today, Flagged, Scheduled and All, and each reminder list can be customized with its own glyph and colour. Reminders gets smart, with more options for when you want to be reminded, such as a time, location, or when you are contacting a specific person. It also provides an easier way of indicating when you want to be reminded, by providing intelligent suggestions based on the context of the reminder.

iMessage Profiles

No more rogue phone numbers in your message threads! Message Profiles allow you to share your name picture with people you iMessage to ensure nobody is unidentified. You can input a first and last name, and a customizable picture (which can also be configured to be your Memoji). There may be times when you don’t want to share your profile information, so fittingly you can choose for your profile to be shared automatically with people already in your contacts, or choose for iOS to ask you every time.

Memoji: Now on iPhones with a Home Button

In addition to iMessage profiles, you can now make Memoji (fully customizable digital avatars) on older iPhones. Now, users as far back as the iPhone 6s, iPhone SE and iPad Pro can create, customize and send Memoji to other iOS users. Your Memoji can be found in the emoji keyboard or in the Animoji iMessage App.

Refreshed Photos

The Photos app is getting some needed design changes to help you manage your massive photo collection. At app launch, the main photos page is now split into four different categories, Years, Months, Days and All Photos. The Years, Months and Days tabs use machine learning to analyze your photo library and pick out the best photos in your library and display them more prominently! It even categorizes photos by location, and events (like birthdays or holidays).

Live Photos, GIFs and videos will now play for you in the photo grid, which makes for a magical photo browsing experience.

Music & Karaoke Mode

The iOS 13 Music app now includes a karaoke mode, which shows lyrics on the screen and highlights them in real time as they are sang.

There is now an updated Now Playing interface. While only being a minor cosmetic change, it is very appreciated.

Swipe Typing

Only have one finger and need to hash out a message? It’s no problem with the new QuickPath keyboard, available by default! Just simply swipe from key to key, and it does a VERY good job of knowing what you want to type, with an impressively small margin of error. It’s super handy, and matches features already available on Android, arguably, in a more user friendly way.

The new “Find My” App

As a merger of the previous Find My Friends and Find My iPhone app, the new “ Find My” app does what you would expect it to do: find my… You can use it to follow your friends’ or family’s location, or track your other Apple devices. The app has three tabs, one for friends, one for devices, and one to manage your location settings. The functionality is identical to the previous two apps, with the only difference being a fresh new design.

iPad (iPadOS)

iPad is getting special treatment in this update, with new features exclusive only to iPad, in addition to all the new features above. Some changes include:

Light Mode

Dark Mode

A new Home Screen

Apple has reorganized the Home Screen in iPadOS 13, which increases the amount of apps you can have per page, and allows for widgets on the main page.

Multiple Instances of the Same App

Ever wanted to have more than one window of an app open, like on a computer? iPadOS 13 offers now offers that feature, and more! Simply swipe up from the bottom of the screen to bring up the dock, drag the app you want to the side, and voila! Another app, or the same app, side by side.

Slide Over and Split View

Not much has changed in this department since iOS 12, but a significant change exists in the animations and speed of triggering Split View. An important improvement of iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 is that you can generally expect every app to launch 2x faster.

Floating Keyboard

There is now a floating iPhone keyboard available for iPad, simply by pinching the large keyboard. You can move it around too!

Floating Keyboard

New Undo, Copy and Paste Gestures

Cut, Copy and Paste are now only a swipe away. To copy highlighted text or an image, do a three finger pinch. To paste, do a three finger spread. To undo, swipe with three fingers to the left.

Summary

iOS and iPadOS 13 are filled with new features and improvements, but unfortunately, will end support for a large percentage of the iOS install base. iOS 13 will not support: