iOS 15 is now formally accessible to obtain as an over-the-air improve for iPhones, and it’s received extra than simply new wallpapers to check out. Once you put in the massive replace, there are a slew of recent options to take a look at, a few of which could simply change the best way you utilize your iPhone. Here are 19 methods iOS 15 is a big improve from iOS 14, and how you can begin utilizing them.

1. Narrow Your Focus

One of the most important new options in iOS is named Focus, which you will discover in the principle Settings menu. It’s like Do Not Disturb, however you’ll be able to arrange a number of eventualities—like dwelling, work, or trip—and set customized notification guidelines for each. There’s additionally the choice to let different individuals know you’ve received notifications off once they attempt to textual content you.

2. See What’s Shared With You

Across a lot of Apple’s iOS apps—together with Photos, Safari, Apple News, Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, and Apple TV—you’ll see new sections titled Shared With You. These are straightforward reference factors for all of the stuff that your numerous contacts have shared with you in Messages (and you too can ship message responses from inside these apps, too).

3. Schedule Notification Summaries 

Anything that helps with the every day deluge of telephone notifications is welcome, and the Scheduled Summary possibility beneath Notifications in Settings does simply that: You can select apps to restrict notifications from, and the abstract will bundle these alerts collectively and ship them at scheduled instances you’ll be able to specify somewhat than sending them instantly.

4. Turn on Portrait Mode in FaceTime

The similar Portrait Mode that blurs the background behind individuals once you take a shot with the iPhone digicam can now be utilized throughout FaceTime calls, too. During a name, faucet your video thumbnail to see a bigger model, then faucet the Portrait Mode icon that reveals up within the higher left-hand nook. The background blur must be immediately utilized.

5. Share Your Health Data

While we instinctively consider well being info as strictly non-public and private, there are occasions when it’s good to share—with companions, for instance, or with aged mother and father. The Apple Health app in iOS 15 permits you to select which knowledge and traits to share (from coronary heart well being to general exercise to the Medical ID) and which contacts you wish to share it with.

6. Check Your Walking Steadiness

Also new within the Health app in iOS 15 is Walking Steadiness. The metric measures how regular your strolling is, because the identify suggests, and this knowledge is a reasonably correct predictor of how seemingly you might be to have a fall over the course of the subsequent yr or so. You may even get a warning within the type of a notification in case your steadiness studying begins dropping over time.

7. Use iCloud Private Relay

If you pay for iCloud storage, you then get some new iCloud+ options routinely with iOS 15, and that features iCloud Private Relay. The sort-of-but-not-quite-a-VPN reroutes and encrypts your connection to the web for additional privateness and safety. You can discover it from Settings by tapping in your identify on the prime, then iCloud, then Private Relay.

8. Try Not to Lose Your Devices

New to the Find My app in iOS 15 are separation alerts, they usually’re precisely what they sound like: alerts that sound when your iPhone is separated from one other system (like a MacBook, Apple Watch, or AirTag). Select an entry within the Find My app, then search for the Notify When Left Behind notification possibility which is able to seem on suitable units.

9. Use Your Camera to Read Text

iOS 15 can be ushering in a brand new characteristic known as Live Text, which reveals up within the Camera and Photos apps. The characteristic can scan any photograph for textual content, which you’ll then seek for or copy. In the Camera preview, faucet the Live Text button (backside proper) that seems when textual content is within the body, and in Photos simply faucet to pick textual content as you’d anyplace else in iOS. Live Text works with each typed and handwritten textual content, and helps a number of languages.

10. See More Details in Apple Maps

Zoom method in to sure giant cities in Apple Maps and also you’ll see some fantastically rendered 3D landmarks—just like the Golden Gate Bridge, for instance. San Francisco is an efficient alternative if you wish to see what these detailed enhancements appear like, and Los Angeles, New York and London are among the many different main city facilities to additionally get these visible upgrades.

11. Get Immersive Walking Directions

Apple has simply gone proper forward and blatantly ripped off the immersive augmented actuality strolling mode in Google Maps, however we’ll take it. If you’re in a metropolis that helps the characteristic and cargo up a strolling route in Apple Maps, carry up your telephone to get a immediate to scan your environment and see immersive AR navigation prompts.

12. Install Safari Extensions

When you consider browser extensions, you often consider Google Chrome, however Safari helps the shortcuts, too. Now extensions are coming to Safari on the iPhone. In Settings, faucet Safari then Extensions to see what’s already put in and which extensions are at present enabled, then choose More Extensions to search out some new plug-ins so as to add to the record.

13. Group Tabs in Safari

Also new in Safari in iOS 15 is the flexibility to group browser tabs for simpler sorting. Tap the tab button on the toolbar (the 2 rectangles, backside proper), choose the Tabs dropdown that seems on the backside of the display screen, and you may create a brand new tab group. All the webpages that you simply then open up shall be added to that group till you begin a brand new one.

14. Pull to Refresh Safari

A smaller however nonetheless helpful Safari characteristic is pull to refresh, which helps you to faucet and drag down from the highest of the display screen to refresh a web site. It’s simpler to make use of than reloading a web page, although many won’t uncover it straight away.

15. See Improved Photo Memories

Memories within the Photos app is getting a bunch of enhancements: The auto-generated slideshows now include advisable track solutions from Apple Music, have a contemporary new visible look, are extra interactive than earlier than, and include extra templates to choose from. What’s extra, there are new classes of Memories accessible in iOS 15.

16. Take More Control Over App Privacy

Open up the Settings app in iOS 15, select Privacy, and scroll all the way down to the underside of the web page, the place you’ll see a brand new choice to Record App Activity. Once enabled, this characteristic retains a rolling 7-day log of which apps are utilizing location, pictures, contacts, and digicam and microphone permissions, and when. Any badly behaved apps ought to stand out within the record.

17. Level Up Your Memojis

An iOS replace often means extra Memoji options to mess around with, and that’s as soon as once more the case with iOS 15. Apple has packed in numerous outfits and new stickers (comparable to one exhibiting an open MacBook) to attempt, and there are some new accessibility customizations to take a look at as nicely—they embody cochlear implants and gentle helmets.

18. Store Your Driver’s License in Apple Wallet 

If you’re within the U.S. and your state helps it (there are eight so far that do), you’ll be able to retailer your driver’s license digitally in Apple Wallet. The course of is identical as it’s for including bank cards and transit passes in Apple Wallet: You faucet on the + (plus) button on the entrance display screen, then observe the prompts. State IDs are supported in addition to driver’s licenses.

19. Watch Movies Together in FaceTime

One iOS 15 characteristic we’re excited to attempt isn’t accessible at launch is SharePlay. The new FaceTime device permits you to take heed to music or watch TV or motion pictures in apps like Apple TV+ or Apple Music together with your family members whereas on a video name. Apple says the characteristic shall be coming to iOS 15 in a future software program replace later this fall. We examined it out in an early developer beta of iOS 15 and located it to be a extremely enjoyable technique to share content material, so hopefully it gained’t take lengthy to roll out.