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At WWDC 2025, Apple Unveils Liquid Glass and Previews New OS Features

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Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference keynote was a lightning-fast 92-minute tour of Apple’s vision for how we’ll use its products in the next year. Apple wove two themes through the presentation: the new Liquid Glass design language will provide a consistent look and feel across all its platforms, and Apple Intelligence-powered features will continue to appear throughout the ecosystem. The other overarching news is that Apple is adopting a new annual versioning approach, similar to car model years, so the version number for each operating system will be 26.

Apple previewed numerous features during the keynote and listed even more on its website afterward. Below, we’ll focus on those we think will make the most difference to your Apple experience, but we also encourage you to read Apple’s pages for each platform to learn more about what’s coming. Those are linked here, along with basic hardware requirements, so you can determine if your devices will be eligible to upgrade this fall:

  • macOS 26 Tahoe: MacBook Air with Apple silicon (2020 and later), MacBook Pro with Apple silicon (2020 and later), MacBook Pro (16‑inch, 2019), MacBook Pro (13‑inch, 2020, four Thunderbolt 3 ports), iMac (2020 and later), Mac mini (2020 and later), Mac Studio (2022 and later), Mac Pro (2019 and later)
  • iOS 26: iPhone SE (2nd generation), iPhone 11, and later
  • iPadOS 26: iPad (8th generation and later), iPad mini (5th generation and later), iPad Air (3rd generation and later), iPad Pro 11‑inch (1st generation and later), iPad Pro 12.9‑inch (3rd generation and later), and iPad Pro (M4)
  • watchOS 26: Apple Watch SE (2nd generation), Apple Watch Series 6 and later, and Apple Watch Ultra and later
  • visionOS 26: All Vision Pro headsets
  • tvOS 26: Apple TV 4K

First, let’s look at Liquid Glass, after which we’ll examine a handful of changes we think Apple users will find most interesting.

Liquid Glass Gives Apple’s Platforms a Fresh Look

Apple’s last major interface redesign occurred in 2013 with the release of iOS 7. Since then, the company’s hardware and graphics technologies have advanced significantly, enabling the new Liquid Glass interface design. It brings to life a new glass-like “material” for interface elements that blurs the line between the physical and the virtual. Liquid Glass is both translucent and malleable, allowing background content to refract through the controls, which can morph, flex, and illuminate in response to user interaction.

Liquid Glass encompasses all of Apple’s platforms and extends to every aspect of the interface, including controls, navigation bars, tabs and sidebars, alerts, widgets, icons, the menu bar, and the Dock. Functionally, Apple has taken the opportunity to improve some interactions, so alerts appear from where you tap rather than taking over the entire display, and context menus expand into scannable lists rather than requiring awkward horizontal scrolling. When you interact with toolbars or other controls, they expand and become more prominent, but as soon as you’re done, they minimize themselves to let you focus on the content. Watch Apple’s intro video to get a feel for it.

The main concern with Liquid Glass is that it may lack contrast and be difficult to read for those whose vision isn’t perfect. In the past, Apple has provided a Reduce Transparency option in the Accessibility settings for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS to eliminate any color bleeding through translucent menus and dialogs; we’ll see if such an option proves necessary for some.

iPadOS 26 Takes Lessons from macOS

Ever since the introduction of the iPad, people have been frustrated by the extent to which it was a larger iPhone rather than a smaller, touch-sensitive Mac. Apple took small steps toward enhancing productivity by adding features like Slide Over and Split View, but they were fussy to use and never achieved widespread acceptance. With iPadOS 26, Apple has finally acknowledged that the iPad should just work more like a Mac. To that end, iPadOS 26 will offer Mac-like features in the following areas:

  • Window management: Every app can now be transformed into a standalone window that you can move and resize freely. Windows remember their size and position, and you can tile them flexibly, with options to split the screen into two, three, or four sections. The familiar traffic light window controls from the Mac reappear along with the macOS Move & Resize and Fill & Arrange options. Swiping up invokes Exposé, allowing you to view all windows and switch to your desired one easily.
  • Menu bar and Dock: iPadOS gains a menu bar that looks and works like the one on the Mac, but it only appears when you swipe down from the top of the screen. You can also put folders in the Dock and access their contents in much the same way docked folders appear as a stack on the Mac.
  • Filesystem access: The Files app resembles a Finder window much more now, thanks to the addition of collapsible folders and resizable columns. It allows you to select which apps will open specific document types and even modify the defaults. Additionally, you can customize folders with colors and icons.
  • Preview makes the move: One of the core Mac apps, Preview, is coming to the iPad. Just as on the Mac, you can use Preview for viewing and editing images and PDFs, and it offers full support for the Apple Pencil.
  • Background processing: Computationally intensive processes and other activities that take a long time, like exporting edited videos and downloading large files, can now run in the background while you engage in other tasks.

Apple Intelligence Expands Across the Ecosystem

Apple Intelligence has been far from a rousing success, with Apple’s failure to deliver last year’s promised update to Siri being the most prominent misstep. But Apple isn’t giving up and will be tapping into Apple Intelligence in many more places across all its operating systems and apps.

Even more important, the company announced that it is opening Apple Intelligence to developers, so we can expect to see features powered by Apple’s on-device large language models appearing in third-party apps this fall. That’s a big deal because Apple’s models provide fast response times, prioritize privacy, and incur no per-prompt costs.

Some of the new and expanded uses of Apple Intelligence include:

  • Visual Intelligence: You can now use Visual Intelligence to learn more about and act on information displayed on your iPhone screen. You could research a piece of clothing you see while browsing, or create a calendar event based on a social media banner. You can also ask ChatGPT about anything you see on screen.
  • Shortcuts gets Apple Intelligence: New intelligence actions in Shortcuts enable you to leverage Apple Intelligence to summarize text, create images, and more. Interestingly, shortcuts can even access Apple Intelligence’s Private Cloud Compute for more power-intensive tasks.
  • Image Playground & ChatGPT: When using Image Playground, you can create images in a wider variety of styles with ChatGPT.
  • Combine emoji for Genmoji: Previously, you could use text descriptions to create custom Genmoji; now, you can make them by combining existing emoji.
  • Messages backgrounds: Chats in Messages will offer shared backgrounds, and users can create custom backgrounds with Image Playground.
  • Messages polls: Group chats in Messages will gain polls—where should we go for dinner tonight?—and Apple Intelligence will automatically detect when a poll might be helpful and suggest one.
  • Wallet order details: With Apple Intelligence, the Wallet app can identify and summarize order details, including tracking information.
  • Workout Buddy: In the watchOS 26 Workout app, Apple Intelligence powers a virtual workout buddy that talks to you while you exercise, offering motivation, real-time stats, and post-workout feedback.

These new applications of Apple Intelligence may not rock your world, but together, they offer some appreciated enhancements. We also look forward to seeing how developers leverage Apple Intelligence models in innovative ways.

Live Translation Edges Toward the Universal Translator

Perhaps the most significant additional feature driven by Apple Intelligence in the new operating systems is Live Translation. It’s integrated into the Phone, FaceTime, and Messages apps. In the Phone app, you get spoken translations between supported languages. In FaceTime, you see the other person’s translated text as a caption, and Messages translates their text. Live Translations may prove to be a lifesaver on your next international trip.

Spotlight Gains Enhanced Capabilities

Whenever you do a search on the Mac, you’re using Spotlight. It can also search within apps like Contacts and Calendar, access various online sources, open documents, launch apps, and more. Despite that, Spotlight has paled in comparison to launchers like Alfred, LaunchBar, and Raycast. No more.

In Apple’s new operating systems, Spotlight will enable users to perform hundreds of actions across various apps. It will also be capable of understanding what you’re working on and suggesting relevant files, apps, or actions. For instance, you’ll be able to start a timer, create calendar events, generate a new email message with pre-filled fields, play a podcast episode, and more.

Spotlight also introduces the concept of “quick keys,” which are short, custom mnemonics for specific actions. For instance, you might type sm to trigger Spotlight to send a message or ar to add a reminder.

In addition, Spotlight becomes a clipboard manager, providing access to recently copied items, including text, images, and links. You can browse, search, and insert previous clipboard entries directly through Spotlight.

Phone App Introduces Call Screening and Hold Assist

Phone calls may not be the primary use of the iPhone for many people, but they remain a fact of life. With iOS 26, Apple has introduced two features that, if they work as promised, will alleviate two common pain points associated with calls.

Call Screening builds on the Live Voicemail feature by automatically answering calls from unknown numbers, without even alerting you. Once the caller provides their name and the reason for their call, the Phone app rings and presents information to help you decide whether to answer.

The other new feature is Hold Assist, which automatically detects hold music and asks if you want it to wait on hold for you, allowing you to attend to other tasks. When someone on the other end picks up, it informs them that you’ll be there shortly and notifies you that it’s time to return to the call.

Although we think of using the Phone app exclusively on the iPhone, Apple is also bringing it to macOS 26 and iPadOS 26, thanks to Continuity. Once you upgrade, you’ll be able to take advantage of these features—and Live Translation—on those platforms as well.

Dismiss Notifications with the Flick of a Wrist

Finally, watchOS 26 introduces a new gesture that we believe will be popular: the wrist flick. Whenever a notification appears on screen, you can quickly rotate your wrist away from you to dismiss it. This feature is a great little addition to the Apple Watch interaction model.

If none of these changes seem earthshaking to you, we agree. With six operating systems and billions of users, Apple can’t move as quickly as smaller companies. While Liquid Glass will dramatically change the look of our Apple devices, the other new features shouldn’t require us to learn completely new methods of interaction.

(Featured image by Apple)

Social Media: At its Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple unveiled the first major interface change to its operating systems in many years, along with a boatload of new features, many powered by Apple Intelligence. Here are a few of our favorites.

At WWDC23, Apple Releases New Macs, Previews New OS Features, and Unveils Vision Pro

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Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference keynote (full video or 2-minute recap) is primarily an opportunity for Apple to give developers a first look at new features coming in its operating systems, and this year was no exception. However, Apple sandwiched those feature reveals between announcements of new Macs and the unveiling of its mixed-reality Vision Pro headset, due next year. Here’s what you should know.

New Macs Complete the Transition to Apple Silicon

Apple introduced three new Macs, the 15-inch MacBook Air, Mac Studio models with faster chips, and the first Apple silicon Mac Pro, all of which are available to order now and start shipping on June 13.

  • 15-inch M2 MacBook Air: This new consumer-level laptop is nearly identical to the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air, apart from its 15.3-inch screen and array of six speakers. It starts at just $1299, and the 13-inch model drops $100 to start at $1099. It’s an excellent machine for students or anyone who wants a highly capable laptop with a larger screen for less than the 14-inch or 16-inch MacBook Pro.
  • Mac Studio: The new Mac Studio is unchanged other than swapping last year’s M1 Max and M1 Ultra chips for the higher-performance M2 Max and new M2 Ultra, which combines two M2 Max chips. The M2 Ultra boasts a 24-core CPU, lets you choose between 60-core and 76-core GPU models, offers a higher unified memory ceiling of 192 GB, and can drive up to eight displays. The improvements may not be worth replacing an M1-based Mac Studio, but the gains over an Intel-based iMac or Mac Pro are significant. Pricing starts at $1999 for the M2 Max and $3999 for the M2 Ultra.
  • Mac Pro: The long-awaited Mac Pro retains the form factor of the last Intel-based Mac Pro—complete with $400 optional wheels—but differs radically inside. It relies on the same M2 Ultra chip as in the Mac Studio but has open slots for six full-length PCI Express gen 4 cards and provides eight built-in Thunderbolt 4 ports. Apple claims it is 3–7 times faster than the Intel-based Mac Pro, but the details will likely vary by situation. For instance, the M2 Ultra reportedly provides the performance of seven of Apple’s $2000 Afterburner cards for accelerating ProRes and ProRes RAW video codecs. But the M2 Ultra maxes out at 192 GB of unified memory that’s faster and more efficiently used, whereas the Intel-based Mac Pro could accept up to 1.5 TB of traditional RAM. Pricing starts at $6999 for a tower enclosure and $7499 for a rack enclosure. It’s big iron for demanding workflows.

With the release of the Mac Pro, Apple dropped the last Intel-based Mac from its lineup. That doesn’t mean the company will stop supporting recent Intel-based iMacs in the next version or two of macOS, but that will happen sometime in the next few years. Plan to replace Intel-based Macs eventually—you’ll appreciate the significant performance gains from Apple’s M-series Macs.

Top New Operating System Features Coming in 2023

As always, Apple previewed oodles of new features while covering many more on its website. We’ll focus on those we think will make the biggest splash in your Apple experience, but take a moment to scroll through Apple’s pages for each operating system to see the full list of what’s coming. Those are linked below, along with their basic system requirements so you can see if your devices will be eligible to upgrade (not all features will be available on all devices):

    • macOS Sonoma: iMac Pro from 2017. MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini from 2018 and later. iMac and Mac Pro from 2019 and later. Mac Studio from 2022 and later.
    • iOS 17: Second-generation iPhone SE, iPhone XR, and later
    • iPadOS 17: Sixth-generation iPad and later, fifth-generation iPad mini and later, third-generation iPad Air and later, and second-generation iPad Pro and later
    • watchOS 10: Apple Watch Series 4 and newer, including the Apple Watch SE
  • tvOS 17: Apple TV 4K, with fewer features on the older Apple TV HD

Here are some new features we think will most impact your Apple experience.

Contact Posters

Although you can share your preferred photo with others for use in Messages, Contacts, and Photos, when you call someone, all they see is your name. In iOS 17, Apple is introducing Contact Posters, which let you pick a photo or Memoji, along your preferred font. Then the Contact Poster will appear whenever you call someone, making it easier for them to identify who’s calling at a glance.

FaceTime Support on Apple TV

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could take a FaceTime call on your living room TV? It wasn’t impossible before, but Apple didn’t make it easy. With tvOS 17 on an Apple TV 4K, you’ll be able to leverage your iPhone or iPad camera and microphone through Continuity Camera to bring FaceTime conversations to the biggest screen in the house. Center Stage will let you move around the room while staying framed onscreen, and gesture-based reactions let callers create onscreen effects. These capabilities will also arrive later this year for other videoconferencing systems like Zoom or Webex, creating another reason to put an Apple TV in the conference room.

Desktop Widgets on the Mac

Widgets have become commonplace on iPhone and iPad Home screens, but on the Mac, they’ve been relegated to Notification Center. With macOS Sonoma, widgets can now migrate to the desktop, where you can position them anywhere. They’re also interactive, enabling you to control music, toggle the lights, and mark reminders as done. Thanks to Continuity, you can add your iPhone widgets to the Mac desktop, even when there’s no Mac app. Your iPhone has to remain nearby or on the same Wi-Fi network. Remember that you can use a hotkey or hot corner to slide all your windows aside to reveal your desktop at any time.

NameDrop for Sharing Phone Numbers

Sharing phone numbers has never been easier with the new NameDrop feature. Just hold your iPhone near someone else’s iPhone or Apple Watch (Series 6 or later, sometime after the initial watchOS 10 release) to exchange contact information—which you select—along with your Contact Poster. Alas, you’ll still have to type in phone numbers for Android users manually.

Web Apps in Safari

We all have websites that we use heavily, just like a native Mac app. If there’s no Mac version of the app, Safari in macOS Sonoma will let you add the website to your Dock, where it will look and work like a standalone app with its own window, toolbar, and notifications. (If you’re longing for this capability now, check out Unite from BZG.)

Five More Welcome Features

For more reasons to upgrade once these new operating systems are out and stable, consider the following additional features:

  • Live Voicemail: While someone is leaving you a message, Live Voicemail transcribes it and displays it onscreen so you can decide if you want to pick up or not.
  • AirTag sharing: No more awkward notifications when one family member has an AirTag that ends up traveling with other family members.
  • No more “Hey” with Siri: We can hope Siri becomes better at listening, but at least Apple’s letting us invoke Siri with a single word now.
  • Simultaneous dictation and keyboard use in macOS: Being able to dictate and edit text with the keyboard simultaneously has been great in iOS 16, and with macOS Sonoma, you’ll be able to enter text on your Mac just as fluidly.
  • PDF form filling: It will get easier to fill forms in PDFs, with iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma automatically filling in your contact information. It’s supposed to work even with scanned PDFs.

Apple usually releases its new operating systems in September or October, and we’ll be writing more about them as we have a chance to test them. Generally speaking, it’s OK to upgrade to everything but macOS shortly after release; with macOS, we recommend caution to ensure all your existing apps and workflows won’t be impacted.

Apple Unveils Vision Pro “Spatial Computer”

And now for something completely different. Apple devoted the final third of its keynote to unveiling a mixed-reality headset it calls Vision Pro. Even though it fits on the user’s head like bulbous ski goggles, Apple prefers to call it a spatial computer. That’s probably to avoid charged terms like metaverse, although the Vision Pro does provide both augmented reality, where digital objects are superimposed on a view of the real world, and virtual reality, where an immersive digital environment blocks out the real world.

Apple said the Vision Pro would ship early next year, starting at $3499. The high price accurately reflects the impressive amounts of technology Apple has shoehorned into the device but puts it out of reach for all but the most inquisitive and flush early adopters. What will the Vision Pro make possible for that money?

The Vision Pro blends digital content with the physical world, providing a three-dimensional interface controlled by the user’s eyes, hands, and voice. Users can display apps as floating windows or bring a Mac’s screen into Vision Pro as an enormous 4K display. Along with controls triggered by eye tracking and hand gestures, plus a virtual keyboard, users can use the Magic Trackpad and Magic Keyboard for faster interaction.

FaceTime calls using the Vision Pro take advantage of the space, putting other callers in life-size tiles and providing a shared screen. Speakers in the headset provide spatial audio, so it sounds like people are speaking from where their tiles are positioned. Vision Pro users don’t show up looking like they’re wearing the headset; instead, they’re represented by a digital avatar Apple calls a Persona. Will it escape the uncanny valley?

The Vision Pro is an easier sell for entertainment, where many people prefer immersive experiences, whether watching a movie on what seems like a 100-foot screen or playing a game where you see nothing but its virtual world. A Digital Crown lets the user control how much of the physical world seeps through around the edges.

If you’re thinking it would be unsettling to be in the same room with someone wearing a Vision Pro, you’re not alone. In an attempt to reduce that sense, a technology called EyeSight makes the device seem transparent—it shows an image of the user’s eyes on a front-facing display for others to see. How effective this will be remains to be seen, but it’s hard to imagine the Vision Pro becoming a fashion accessory.

There’s a great deal more to the Vision Pro, such as its ability to record and play back 3D movies with spatial audio, wrap panorama photos around the user, and use familiar iPhone and iPad apps. Despite the incredible hardware and software that Apple has invented to bring the Vision Pro to fruition, it feels like a technology demo. And it does demo well, judging from reports from people like tech analyst Ben Thompson.

But the Vision Pro is at least 6 months from emerging from Apple’s reality distortion field, and many people are already highly dubious that the company’s vision for the future of computing will do a better job with the real-world tasks we already do with today’s digital devices.

(Featured image by Apple)

Social Media: At WWDC, Apple announced new Macs and new features in the upcoming macOS Sonoma, iOS 17, iPadOS 17, watchOS 10, and tvOS 17. It also unveiled the Vision Pro mixed-reality headset, which offers a glimpse at Apple’s vision for the future of computing.

Sneak Preview of What’s Coming from Apple This Fall

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At Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference keynote on June 4th, the company unveiled the first developer versions of all four of its operating systems: macOS 10.14 Mojave, iOS 12, watchOS 5, and tvOS 12. They won’t be available until this fall, likely in September or October, but here is a glimpse of what you can expect.

macOS 10.14 Mojave Adds Dark Mode, Enhances the Finder, and Gains Four iOS Apps

With the update to macOS, which Apple is calling “Mojave” after the southern California desert, the company is beefing up the Finder, adding visual enhancements, and bringing some familiar iOS apps to the Mac. Apple is dropping support for some older Macs, so you’ll need a Mac introduced since 2012 to run Mojave.

Productivity mavens with messy Desktops will appreciate a new Finder feature, which, when turned on, automatically gathers all the files on the Desktop into “stacks,” sorting them by file type, date, tag, or other criteria. Click a stack to expand it, much like a Dock stack today.

Apple has replaced Cover Flow view, which combined a large preview area and a file list, with the new Gallery view. Aimed at helping you browse in a folder of images, Gallery view displays a large preview of the selected file above a row of thumbnails for other items in the folder. A right-hand sidebar in Gallery view shows more information about the current file and lets you edit or mark up the file with Quick Actions (which you can create with Automator) without opening the file in an app. Press Space bar to preview a file with Quick Look, and you can apply appropriate Quick Actions to the file as well, all from the Finder.

If you find the white backgrounds in the Mac’s windows too bright, you’ll like Mojave’s new Dark Mode (shown above), which intelligently reverses things to display white text in a largely black interface. Additional eye candy comes from Dynamic Desktops, which change the appearance of new Apple-provided Desktop backgrounds based on the time of day.

For those who take a lot of screenshots, Apple has given the Mac’s long-standing screenshot capabilities a visible interface that simplifies taking still screenshots or recording a movie of your actions. Plus, you can preview, edit, share, or delete a screenshot or movie immediately after creating it.

A new feature called Continuity Camera lets you use your iPhone’s camera in Mac apps, either taking a photo directly into a Mac app or scanning a document as a PDF.

Lastly, although Apple was emphatic that it won’t be replacing macOS with iOS, or merging the two, the company is working to make it easier for developers to create apps that work on both platforms. Independent developers won’t be able to do that until 2019, but Apple is testing the waters by bringing four familiar apps from iOS to the Mac: News, Stocks, Voice Memos, and Home. They look and work very much like their iPad counterparts, but rely on the mouse or trackpad, and use normal Mac interface elements like resizable windows.

iOS 12 Improves Performance, Provides Time Management Tools, and More

In the WWDC keynote, Apple emphasized that one of its main goals for iOS 12 is to improve performance, especially for older devices. Unlike Mojave, iOS 12 will support all the same devices as iOS 11, so those with an iPhone 5s or original iPad Air may benefit the most from this effort.

To address increasing concerns about how much we—and our kids—are using smartphones, Apple has made some important changes. Perhaps most important is the new Screen Time feature, which shows how often you use your iOS devices and how much time you spend in different apps. It also lets you set daily time limits for specific apps, so you can make sure you don’t spend too much time in Facebook, for instance. Even better, you can set such limits for your children’s devices via Family Sharing.

Do Not Disturb has become a more appealing feature, because you don’t need to worry about accidentally leaving it on for too long—it can now be set to turn off automatically after some time or when you leave a location, such as at the end of a class or when you leave your doctor’s office. (This feature also comes to the Apple Watch with watchOS 5.) Also new is Do Not Disturb During Bedtime, which ensures you won’t see enticing notifications on the Lock screen if you check the time on your iPhone in the middle of the night.

Getting too many notifications? Notification grouping gathers all the notifications from each app together on the Lock screen so it doesn’t fill up, but you can see them all at once when you’re ready. Plus, a new feature called Instant Tuning helps you reduce the number of notifications you see, right from the Lock screen.

If you’ve always wanted to automate repetitive actions in iOS, you’ll love the new Siri Shortcuts feature. You can use it to string together actions in different apps—send a message to your spouse that you’re leaving work, show the traffic conditions on your commute home, and start playing a podcast app—and then invoke them all via Siri with a custom phrase.

Other interesting changes in iOS 12 include these:

  • Apple has renovated the interfaces of several bundled apps, including iBooks (now called Apple Books), News, Stocks, and Voice Memos (which can now sync recordings with the Mac).
  • FaceTime is no longer limited to one-on-one conversations and can now include up to 32 people in a single FaceTime conversation. The Mac version of FaceTime gains this capability too.
  • Photos boasts improved searching, can unearth photos from your library in a new For You tab, and prompts you to share photos with friends who it recognizes in your photos.
  • Apple is working with colleges and universities to add Wallet support for contactless student ID cards so students can use an iPhone (or Apple Watch) for unlocking doors, paying for meals, and more.
  • CarPlay allows apps from non-Apple developers to take over the car’s screen so that you can use alternative mapping apps like Google Maps and Waze in a CarPlay-enabled car.

watchOS 5 Improves Workouts, and Adds Walkie-Talkie and Podcasts Apps

Apple has realized that the Apple Watch is popular primarily for fitness and communication, so the company focused on those areas for watchOS 5. Alas, watchOS 5 isn’t available on the original Apple Watch.

On the fitness side, the Apple Watch can now start many workout types automatically when it detects that you’re exercising, and end a workout automatically when it sees that you’ve stopped. It even provides retroactive credit for what you did before the workout was detected. Apple has added new Yoga and Hiking workouts, each with their own metrics, and the running and walking workouts now measure cadence (steps per minute).

For those running outside, the Workout app can also display the rolling mile pace—the pace for the last mile—and can sound an alarm if you’re going slower or faster than a specified pace. And for those who do better with social motivation, watchOS 5 provides 7-day activity competitions.

In terms of communication, watchOS 5’s marquee feature is the new Walkie-Talkie app. Once you and a friend have set it up, you can tap a big yellow button to talk to your friend—and they can reply—just as though you were using old-school walkie-talkies. It works over both Wi-Fi and cellular.

Apple is bringing the Podcasts app to watchOS 5, so you’ll be able to listen to podcasts from your wrist, assuming you have AirPods or a Bluetooth headset. Plus, watchOS 5 makes it possible for other audio apps to store audio on the watch, so it should get easier to listen to audiobooks and the like even when you don’t have your iPhone with you.

Other welcome changes in watchOS 5 include:

  • The Siri watch face has new options, including sports scores, heart-rate readings after workouts, and commuting times from Maps. Independent apps will also be able to contribute bits of data to appear in the Siri face.
  • Notifications can be interactive, so you could tap on your wrist to check in for a flight, confirm a restaurant reservation, or extend parking time. As with iOS 12, multiple notifications from the same app will be grouped.
  • Web links in Messages or email can be previewed on the Apple Watch.
  • When you raise your wrist to talk to Siri, you no longer have to say “Hey, Siri.

tvOS 12 Gains Dolby Atmos Support, Zero Sign-on, and a New Aerial Screensaver

Although the Apple TV often receives less attention than Apple’s other platforms, it still gains new capabilities with tvOS 12. Most notable among these is support—on the Apple TV 4K only—for Dolby Atmos audio, which makes audio sound more realistic by going beyond the simple right and left channels to provide 3D sound. You’ll need an Atmos-capable soundbar too, along with Atmos-compliant video content, but Apple will automatically upgrade anything you’ve bought from the iTunes Store to the Atmos version once it’s out.

Two other new features work on both the Apple TV 4K and the fourth-generation Apple TV but require support from both apps and TV providers: Zero Sign-on and Cloud DVR. Zero Sign-on figures out your Internet provider, and if it’s the same as your TV service, automatically detects apps that need authentication and logs you in to them. It will work only with Charter Spectrum at launch, but Apple is negotiating with more providers. Similarly, the new Cloud DVR feature lets you watch TV you’ve recorded via the Apple TV, if your TV provider supports it. In the U.S., that again means Charter Spectrum to start.

Apple put some work into the Apple TV’s gorgeous aerial screensaver, introducing a new view from space using imagery taken by astronauts on the International Space Station. Also, you can tap the Siri Remote touchpad while a screensaver is showing to see where it was taken.

Finally, in conjunction with iOS 12, tvOS can autofill passwords saved on your iOS devices so you don’t have to type them on the awkward onscreen keyboard. And if iOS 12 detects an Apple TV, it automatically adds an Apple TV Remote button to Control Center on your iPhone or iPad. (You can do that now, but you have to add the button manually in Settings > Control Center > Customize Controls.)

Getting Ready for These OS Releases

Apple usually makes new versions of its operating systems available in September or October, in conjunction with new iPhones. That doesn’t mean you should upgrade immediately, and we always recommend that you hold off on upgrades until Apple had had a chance to address the inevitable bugs that come with the initial release of any major upgrade. So sit tight, and we’ll tell you more when the time is right.

That said, if these features sound enticing and you have a pre-2012 Mac, an iPhone 5 or earlier, an iPad that predates the iPad Air, or an original Apple Watch, some new hardware may be in your future.

Social Media: Apple has unveiled the next versions of its operating systems: macOS 10.14 Mojave, iOS 12, watchOS 5, and tvOS 12. Read on for the highlights of what you can look forward to this fall!