Apple today released the first public beta of macOS Golden Gate, expanding the macOS 27 beta test to non-developers. You can sign up to test the update on Apple’s beta website, and then download it by going to System Settings > General > Software Update and toggling on the macOS 27 beta.
The fact that there are more design changes in macOS than any of Apple’s other 27 updates speaks volumes about how broken many of the Tahoe design decisions were. Apple describes the design as “even more refined,” because in Apple marketing-speak, broken features are never remedied or fixed—past features are just improved. The truth is, Apple has rolled back numerous missteps and made changes to others to mitigate the issues they caused.
The Golden Gate developer beta has proven stable in my everyday use on an M5 MacBook Air and M5 Max MacBook Pro, which is notable since dev betas often have side effects like tanking battery life or causing hardware to run hotter than normal.
[…]
Would I still prefer to go back to the flatter design of macOS Sequoia? Yes, unequivocally. But at least Liquid Glass is more tolerable and less distracting now.
Nowhere is the Snow Leopard of it all more apparent than in the hundreds of little changes made to improve the day-to-day use of your Mac. I’m not going to catalog them all here, but I’ve used Golden Gate on two different Macs at this point, and based on my experiences so far, the changes are meaningful.
Apple released the iOS 27 public beta today, and if you’ve been curious about the new software, now’s the time to try it out. iOS 27 brings Siri AI, performance improvements, and lots of new Apple Intelligence features.
[…]
Everything feels snappier than it did in iOS 26. Animations are quicker, apps launch faster, and AirDrop transfers complete faster. You’ll see improvements when taking photos, opening the keyboard, using the App Library, and swapping Home Screen pages. Your iMessages between devices sync more accurately, messages won’t fail to send and will be automatically retried, and your iPhone can transition more smoothly between Wi-Fi and cellular.
In general, the iOS 27 incarnation of Liquid Glass is far easier on the eyes, dialing down the transparency in favor of legibility. Apple’s also imposed some distinction between user interface elements and content. For example, in list views like in Messages and Mail there are now much clearer “toolbar” areas at the top when you start scrolling, even if they still have some degree of translucency. App icons have also gotten a face lift; they’re sharper, and feel more vibrant.
[…]
That’s because one of the odd things about looking at iOS 27 is that there’s just a ton of small stuff—those “quality of life” improvements that chip away at little frustrations and annoyances.
The social media company Meta and the video streaming service YouTube harmed a young user with design features that were addictive and led to her mental health distress, a jury found on Wednesday, a landmark decision that could open social media companies to more lawsuits over users’ well-being.
[…]
Citing features like infinite scroll and algorithmic recommendations, K.G.M. sued Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, and Google’s YouTube, claiming they led to anxiety and depression.
For its part, the Wall Street Journal editorial board is standing up for beleaguered social media companies in an editorial today criticizing everything about these verdicts, including this specific means of liability, which it calls a “dodge” around Section 230.
[…]
Product design, though, is a different question. It would be a mistake, I think, to read Section 230 as a blanket allowance for any way platforms wish to use or display users’ posts. (Update: In part, that is because it is a free speech question.) From my entirely layman perspective, it has never struck me as entirely reasonable that the recommendations systems of these platforms should have no duty or expectation of care.
To me, a non-lawyer, much of the actual text of the ruling (PDF) explaining why this lawsuit was not immediately turfed on Section 230 grounds seems pretty reasonable. For example, the judge says “[u]nder the default settings, Meta enables approximately forty types of notifications” for the Instagram app, which the government alleges “is designed to overwhelm young users and compel them repeatedly to reopen Instagram”. We can argue whether this is a meaningful thing for a government to police or if it is just another example of Meta resorting to tacky growth-hacking techniques instead of trusting their product is sufficiently compelling on its own. (Most days when I open Instagram in my browser, it puts a red badge over the notifications tab and suggests I have one new follower. I do not; I never have. It lies to me every time, presumably because it knows most people, including me, will usually click on that, thereby increasing a number on a dashboard somewhere.)
couple weeks back, Jonathan Haidt published another entry in his ongoing campaign to convince the world that social media is inherently ruining kids’ lives. This one was a victory lap titled “Seven Lines of Evidence Against Social Media,” treating recent developments — including the social media addiction verdicts against Meta that most people are misunderstanding — as vindication of his thesis.
Indeed, the research repeatedly suggests that for the very small number of kids who are facing mental health problems and overrelying on social media in response, the answer is a targeted intervention to help those individuals — not a broad “ban kids from social media” program.
Now that the public beta for iOS 27 is available, even more iPhone and iPad users are going to be interested in experiencing the new operating systems while they’re under active development. And there’s good reason for this, iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 are both shaping up to be notable improvements to the operating systems, ... Read More
Apple has released the first public beta of iOS 27, giving eager iPhone users an early look at the year’s most significant software update. Launched on July 13, 2026, the beta introduces a vastly improved Siri powered by Apple Intelligence, along with speed enhancements, refined visuals, and thoughtful updates to everyday features.
How to Install the iOS 27 Public Beta
Joining the beta is straightforward and free through Apple’s Beta Software Program — no developer account required.
Back up your iPhone first (via iCloud or a computer), as betas can bring bugs, battery drain, or app issues.
Visit beta.apple.com, sign in with your Apple ID, and enroll.
On your iPhone, go to Settings > General > Software Update > Beta Updates.
Select iOS 27 Public Beta.
Return to the Software Update screen and tap Update Now when available.
Apple recommends testing on a secondary device. iOS 27 supports iPhone 11 and newer models (including SE 2nd generation and later). Full Apple Intelligence features, including advanced Siri AI, require iPhone 15 Pro or newer.
Siri AI Steals the Spotlight
The biggest highlight is the complete overhaul of Siri, now rebuilt as Siri AI on the next-generation Apple Intelligence foundation. It supports natural, ongoing conversations, understands on-screen content, searches your personal data across apps like Mail, Messages, Notes, and Calendar, and performs actions within apps.
• Responses appear in the Dynamic Island; pull down for full conversation view.
• A new standalone Siri app stores conversation history (synced privately via iCloud).
• Camera integration adds a Visual Intelligence mode for tasks like turning barcodes into Wallet passes or importing events from flyers.
• New voice controls let you adjust pace and expressivity.
Siri AI starts with select English variants and is unavailable in the EU at launch. Some advanced features need the latest flagship iPhones.
Apple Intelligence Expands Across Apps
Beyond Siri, Apple Intelligence brings smarter tools to several core apps:
• Safari: Auto-organizes tabs by topic, groups bookmarks and Reading List items, offers “Notify Me” for stock alerts or page changes, and can generate custom extensions from natural language prompts.
• Photos: New Clean Up for complex objects, Extend to generate content beyond frame edges, and Spatial Reframing to adjust perspective post-capture.
• Passwords: Automatically updates weak or compromised passwords with Live Activity progress.
• Shortcuts: Build automations from plain-language descriptions.
• Additional perks include Call Context in Phone, photorealistic image generation in Image Playground, and natural-language Calendar editing.
Liquid Glass Gets More Customizable
iOS 27 refines last year’s Liquid Glass design for better clarity and flexibility. Controls better diffuse backgrounds, with improved contrast for readability. The standout new feature is a customization slider in Settings > Appearance that adjusts tint and translucency system-wide, from ultra-clear to fully opaque.
Performance Upgrades for All iPhones
Apple promises noticeable speed gains even on older devices:
• Apps launch up to 30% faster.
• AirDrop transfers up to 80% faster.
• New Photos captures appear up to 70% faster.
Optimizations to the CPU scheduler benefit iPhone 11 and newer. Expect smoother unlocking, navigation, scrolling, and better network switching. Search in Spotlight, Photos, and Mail has also been rebuilt.
Redesigned Screen Time and Enhanced Child Safety
Parents get a major upgrade with a clearer dashboard, one-tap controls, category-based Time Allowances, and flexible Schedules (school days, evenings, weekends). New Ask to Browse extends permissions to websites, while Communication Safety now flags gore and violence in addition to nudity. Full features require all Family Sharing devices on iOS 27.
Other Notable Features
• Messages: Background media sending and consolidated Tapback notifications.
• Photos: Full-resolution Shared Albums, cross-platform support, keywords, star ratings, and custom slideshows.
• Save any video frame as a photo.
• Independent alarm volume control.
• Extra-large widgets that fill entire Home Screen pages.
• AirPods custom equalizer.
• Direct GymKit connections and improved FaceTime/Home features on supported hardware.
MacDailyNews Take: The public beta will evolve through the summer, with the final release expected this fall alongside new iPhones. Users can report issues via the Feedback Assistant app.
Currently, iOS 27 public beta feels like a polished, user-focused OS that meaningfully advances AI capabilities while making the iPhone faster and more enjoyable for everyone. Early testers should proceed with caution, but will in most cases likely be impressed by the refinements already in place. Again, use a secondary device for testing iOS 27 public beta.
Please help support MacDailyNews — and enjoy subscriber-only articles, comments, chat, and more — by subscribing to our Substack: macdailynews.substack.com. Thank you!
Apple has opened the public beta program for MacOS 27 Golden Gate to all curious Mac users. While betas are typically best reserved for advanced users due to being buggier and less stable than final builds, the public beta program offers an opportunity for users to experience beta development and upcoming features, ahead of the ... Read More
Apple has launched the public beta program for iOS 27, making the upcoming iPhone operating system available as a beta to all interested users. Beta system software tends to be buggier and less refined than final versions, and is generally best reserved for advanced users, but the public beta is fairly stable, and made available ... Read More
Apple has issued what is now the fifth beta versions of iOS 26.6, MacOS Tahoe 26.6, and iPadOS 26.6, for users beta testing the current generations of system software. There’s even a 5th beta build available for MacOS Sequoia 15.7.8 and MacOS Sonoma 14.8.8, which seems like a lot of betas for what is assumed ... Read More
Meta, who owns and operates FaceBook and Instagram, has enabled a setting automatically that allows anyone to use your public Instagram photos, profile picture, and/or reels for AI purposes. This includes everything from your posts, stories, stickers, reels, and even your profile photo. Some users may not like this, whether they’re opposed to AI in ... Read More
Beta 4 of MacOS Tahoe 26.6, iOS 26.6, and iPadOS 26.6, has been released by Apple. The 4th beta arrives just a week after the 3rd beta, which perhaps suggests a final version will be made available in the next few weeks. There’s also a 4th RC build for MacOS Sequoia 15.7.8 and MacOS Sonoma ... Read More
The third beta version of MacOS Golden Gate 27 has been released to users enrolled in the developer beta testing program for Apple system software. MacOS 27 beta 3 carries build 26A5378j, and is available to download now through Software Update, a package installer, or IPSW. MacOS Golden Gate 27 has an emphasis on improving ... Read More
Apple has released iOS 27 beta 3 for iPhone users who are participating in the beta testing program. iPadOS 27 beta 3 is also available for iPad based beta testers. iOS 27 and iPadOS have an emphasis on performance, with improvements to general system performance, a slider for adjusting Liquid Glass intensity to the appearance, ... Read More
The social media giant Meta just added a major safety feature to its digital assistant. When younger users have conversations that involve thoughts of suicide or hurting themselves, the company will step in. Instead of just showing crisis hotlines on the screen, the system will now send a direct notification right to a linked parent […]
Meta executives claimed that a controversial facial recognition feature didn’t “exist.” Fast forward a few weeks later, and they’re describing the feature in public — and in detail.
In June, a Wired investigation revealed that Meta had quietly infused unreleased facial recognition tech into its “AI Glasses,” the tech giant’s chatbot and camera-equipped smart glasses. While the feature, dubbed NameTag, was inaccessible to consumers, it was designed to register faces encountered by Meta glasses wearers “into unique biometric signatures, commonly known as faceprints, and check each one against faceprints stored on the user’s phone,” according to the magazine.
Andy Stone, the tech giant’s spokesperson and VP of communications, declared on X that Wired’s reporting was “intellectually dishonest” and “advocacy-driven click bait.” What’s more, according to Stone, NameTag was fully nonexistent.
“Here’s a thing: Wired reports Meta didn’t answer several questions about how this will work,” Stone added in a follow-up post. “How could we? The feature doesn’t exist!”
In response to Stone, another Meta executive, chief technology officer Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, jumped in.
“Incredibly misleading from Wired,” he wrote. “Absolutely dishonest.”
Yet despite company leaders reassuring us that the feature doesn’t exist, Bosworth discussed it in detail during an interview with The Atlantic CEO and podcaster Nick Thompson. Bosworth’s comments in the interview, which was published last week, seemingly contradicted his fellow executives, revealing that the feature did indeed exist.
NameTag, Bosworth told Thompson, would be “encrypted locally to your device,” and would catalog people who smart glasses wearers “met in person, with your glasses on, who introduced themselves, or you said, ‘okay, this is David, remember this person.'”
This information is “only available to you, when you are wearing your glasses,” Bosworth added. He emphasized that the data captured by NameTag wouldn’t be stored in a centralized database.
“This is a person you’ve met before. Here’s their name. They’re right in front of you. That’s… what we call a NameTags feature,” said Bosworth. “I think people get confused because they hear face recognition and they think, ‘oh, there’s a central face database that everyone’s being scanned constantly into.’ It’s not that.”
In addition to supporting blind or low-vision smart glasses wearers, said Bosworth, NameTag could solve what Meta calls “the cocktail party problem,” saving wearers from any awkwardness that may arise when encountering people at parties who they’re sure they’ve met before, but can’t quite place.
“It’s a very universally human problem,” Bosworth said. “Nearly every human I talk to, no matter what their status of their vision or their memory, understands that this is a problem that would help them feel more comfortable in social situations if they had it.”
To be clear, Wired never suggested that the facial recognition feature it uncovered was being used to build a “central face database” by way of Meta’s smart glasses. Indeed, in line with what Bosworth said in the podcast appearance, Wired reported that “code discreetly added to Meta’s AI app over multiple updates this year shows that the feature, internally called ‘NameTag,’ identifies people captured by the glasses’ camera and, when activated, alerts the wearer when it recognizes someone.” The story also repeatedly noted that the feature was unreleased and inaccessible to glasses wearers.
When journalists and others called out the contradiction between Meta’s past and recent statements, Stone — the comms executive who said that Wired couldn’t answer questions about the feature because it “doesn’t exist” — jumped back in the comments section.
“We have said for months we’re exploring such features, even as nothing has shipped to consumers,” the spokesperson said in response to a post by The Intercept journalist Sam Biddle. “No secret there despite the conspiratorial thinking.”
There’s a big difference between a feature not existing and a feature that exists — if still unfinished — and has yet to be released. Meta appears to be arguing that if a feature remains inaccessible to consumers, it’s technically nonexistent, even if the company has gone as far as to issue multiple updates inserting code for the feature into products that are already in consumers’ hands. (Meta quietly deleted the NameTag code after its existence was made public.)
During the podcast interview, Bosworth took care to emphasize that Meta is considering the privacy implications of a facial recognition-powered feature like NameTag. He noted that it’s likely illegal in states like Illinois and Texas, and that it “has to be done in a way that people feel comfortable.”
Meanwhile, Meta continues to fight an ongoing consumer harm lawsuit, prompted by an investigation by a pair of Swedish newspapers. The publications found that Meta collected recordings by smart glasses wearers and passed them along to human data labelers, despite promising consumers that their recordings would be stored only on their devices.
“Designed for privacy,” reads a webpage for Meta’s smart glasses, “controlled by you.”
Meta patented AI tech that constantly analyzes your voice and surroundings in order to detect your emotional state. Finally, exactly what we were all asking for: Meta being granted constant access to our offline lives.
As first caught by Patentlyze, a patent published on July 2 describes a system that records all the user’s “audible communications” and combines it with “contextual factors” like “time of day, location, user activity, or digital interaction.” Audio may be “transcribed, and an emotional-state machine learning model may interpret verbal and nonverbal cues to determine emotional indicators.”
In other words, the system listens to you and everything you do, combines it with other data, and feeds it all to a mood-predicting AI.
“The system increases the precision and reliability of emotional inference by aligning multimodal sensor inputs on synchronized timelines, which creates a novel data structure that supports richer emotional analysis,” reads the patent. “These combined features deliver a technical improvement in automated audio interpretation, enabling continuous emotional monitoring on everyday devices.”
According to the patent, the goal of this extraordinarily intrusive system would be to better tailor users’ workouts to their emotional state, as “personal trainers cannot provide the level of precision in guidance, such as correcting a pose and/or body movement,” as well as Meta’s imagined device could.
It’s not surprising to see Meta pitch this kind of surveillance technology as a fitness device. Health-tracking wearables have become wildly popular, despite the extraordinary amount of physical data about individual consumers they collect and store.
The key difference in Meta’s case, is that rather than crunch biological metrics, it’s an AI-powered fly-on-the-wall attempting to measure a person’s emotional state by listening in on the world around them, and possibly then connecting that information to all other available data.
“The AI assistant may listen to a user(s) at predefined times to hear various types of communication, such as sighs, laughter, and/or the tone(s) of a voice(s),” reads the patent. “The AI assistant may use these inputs to quantify the user’s emotional state or generate other insights about the user.”
The patent also discusses connecting audio inputs to information like when a user takes their medicine, proposing that “the AI assistant may take multiple inputs in addition to audio inputs (e.g., of a user’s voice) to provide a summary of emotional trends based on various inputs (e.g., a happier emotional state associated with a particular time of day or at a time when medication is taken, etc.)”
It’s worth noting that fellow tech giant Amazon tried and failed to market a similar system. In 2020, the company launched the Halo Band, a fitness band with a built-in microphone that was designed to listen in on users and conduct what Amazon described as a “tone of voice analysis.” Following public backlash in 2021, Amazon nuked the microphones when it launched a next-generation version of the band. It discontinued the product line altogether in 2023.
Whether we’ll ever see Meta attempt to launch a similar mood-tracking device is unclear. In a statement to 404 Media, a Meta spokesperson said that “like other companies, patents at Meta are often filed to disclose concepts that may or may not be implemented, and a granted patent does not guarantee that Meta has pursued or will pursue the technology described.”
The existence of the patent, though, shows that such a device is certainly on Meta’s mind — and is yet another Meta-made product that stands to strengthen the bridge between our online and offline worlds.
A nova ferramenta Muse Image, da Meta, vem ativada por defeito em todos os perfis públicos de adultos no Instagram, e qualquer pessoa pode usar as suas fotos para gerar imagens com inteligência artificial sem que seja avisado. Eis como travar isto em menos de um minuto.
Entre as novidades anunciadas pela OpenAI e pela Meta estão mais controlos para os pais, mecanismos de segurança reforçados e ferramentas concebidas para adaptar a experiência aos utilizadores mais jovens.
Summer beta season is in full swing, with a new wave of testers coming aboard via the just-released public OS 27 betas. While visionOS hasn’t ever been included in the public beta program, now is as good a time as any to check in on visionOS 27. What’s it like living with the features Apple highlighted at WWDC, and if you’re jumping on the public betas with your other devices, is it a good time to give the visionOS 27 developer beta a try, too? Let’s dig in and find out.
Siri AI
Given the massive overhaul Siri is receiving this year and the fact that the Vision Pro has always been a little behind when it comes to Apple Intelligence features, I didn’t expect visionOS to get the full Siri AI treatment this year. Thankfully, I was wrong. Not only is Siri AI fully present in visionOS 27, but the experience of interacting with the assistant has even been adapted to fit a spatial context.
For starters, Siri is much more capable in visionOS 27 than ever before. It’s not just for opening apps anymore. With access to your personal context, Siri can handle tasks I would have never imagined prompting it for until now. Questions like, “When was the last time I ate at this restaurant?” or, “How many years in a row have I attended this local event?” used to lead me down time-intensive rabbit holes of scavenging emails, texts, calendar events, photos, and more. Now, Siri can pull all of that information for me and answer the question in just a few seconds.
That “in a few seconds” bit is important. At least this point in the beta cycle, every request I give the assistant takes some time. Even tasks like checking my calendar and opening apps have a bit of lag to them on my M2 Vision Pro. This seems to be a side effect of Siri’s new architecture: it can do more, but parsing input, coordinating resources, and performing tasks takes a little longer than you might expect.
Of course, Siri has access to world knowledge now, too. We’ve all run into the classic, “Here are some web results for you,” response when asking Siri a question it considers too complex to answer itself, but those canned responses are no more. Now, Siri can dive into its (scraped) trove of knowledge to answer questions about pretty much any topic: history, science, pop culture, and more. Siri is the all-knowing bot we’ve always wanted it to be; just be sure to double-check its answers because, as Siri will remind you, AI can get things wrong.
Interacting with Siri in visionOS 27 is a whole new experience. The purple, blue, and green sphere evocative of Siri’s previous era (before all of Apple’s other platforms switched to the rainbow outline UI that never came to visionOS) has been replaced with a semi-translucent glowing white orb matching the Siri aesthetic on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. The circular “thinking” animation mimics what you see when you interact with Siri on other devices, too, making for a much more cohesive cross-device experience.
When you invoke Siri via voice, the orb appears with a window above it displaying the text of your conversation. You can grab the window and place it anywhere in your environment. To continue the conversation, you simply look at the Siri UI and start speaking again. It all feels very natural, and I appreciate the way you can converse with Siri while interacting with other windows in objects in visionOS, a task that doesn’t translate as well to Apple’s other platforms. For those on the M5 Vision Pro, Siri has a new, more natural voice with customizable speed and expressivity as well, though my M2 model isn’t capable of running the local model necessary to power these changes and the improved dictation system.
visionOS 27 also includes a gesture for activating Siri that’s a little nostalgic. If you hold your palm open and upward then look at it, you’re present with a Home button as before. But if you pinch and hold the Home button, a tiny Siri UI will appear above it, just like in the old days when iPhones had physical Home buttons. You have to hold your fingers together the whole time you’re speaking to Siri, which seems a bit strange to me, but once you’ve made your initial request, the standard Siri UI appears, and you can carry on as usual.
The new version of Siri also brings Visual Intelligence to the Vision Pro for the first time. You can ask Siri about the content of a virtual window or objects in your real-world environment. When Visual Intelligence is activated, the system displays a very cool animation of your environment being scanned, and then, Siri can use what it sees to answer your questions. I’ve used this to ask Siri about webpages, documents I’m working on, and items I see around me, and it’s very cool to have an always-available digital assistant who can see what I see. It did a great job identifying my water bottle and then pulling up the receipt from my email to let me know how old it was, which I found to be a great combination of Visual Intelligence with my personal context.
There’s also a new Siri app that contains a history of all your conversations with the assistant, including those synced from other devices. On visionOS, the Siri app is a horizontally-scrolling list of glassy cards that reminds me a lot of the Spatial Gallery app. It’s a handy way to pick back up on conversations started elsewhere, search for a previous answer, or simply interact with Siri via keyboard rather than voice.
At WWDC, Apple showed off a Siri mode where the orb persists in your environment, waiting for you to look at it and start a conversation. I have not been able to get that method to work yet. Once I start a conversation with Siri, I can keep the conversation window open and place it anywhere, but that’s not the same as having a small Siri UI sitting on my desk out of the way until I need it. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for it in future beta releases.
Siri AI is marked for release “later this year” (as opposed to the OS 27 updates listed as coming “this fall”), so there are still some rough edges to work out. Sometimes, conversations simply stop, with Siri telling me an error occurred. The Siri conversation UI will sporadically disappear, and I have to force quit the Siri app to get it to show up again. And Visual Intelligence sometimes struggles to understand what I’m trying to get it to look at, focusing on the wrong window or even the keyboard. But that’s beta life for you; it’s what I signed up for, and I’m trusting it will all be worked out before the public release.
Beta UI bugs aside, Siri AI is a huge upgrade for Apple’s digital assistant, and I’m happy to see visionOS getting the first-class treatment here. It isn’t simply ported over from iOS. It’s been carefully adapted for a spatial UI, and it makes for a powerful overall experience.
There is one other major way Siri differs on visionOS from other platforms: it hasn’t been integrated with Spotlight Search. For now, at least, the search feature on visionOS is dedicated to finding apps, app content, and web results, without even an ‘Ask Siri’ button in sight. With so many other ways to interact with Siri on the platform, it might make sense to keep it separate from search, but it’s certainly an oddity given the way the two features have been merged on every other platform. I’m still trying to figure out if I find this a helpful separation or a missed opportunity for cross-device cohesion.
Panoramas and Environments
There’s a lot more to visionOS 27 than just AI. Big changes are coming to panoramas, including the ability to act as persistent Environments. And, of course, Apple has to throw in a new Environment of its own, too.
Over the past couple of years, Apple has continually pushed the capabilities of its spatial photo conversion technology. Last year, that came in the form of spatial scenes across all of the company’s platforms, and this year, it’s coming to panoramas. In visionOS 27, you can convert panoramas into spatial scenes, adding layers of depth and perspective to the already stunning experience of viewing panoramas on the Vision Pro.
Being immersed in panoramic photos in visionOS was already breathtaking. This takes it to a whole new level. Experiencing memories in deeper ways than I ever thought possible is one of my favorite uses for the Vision Pro, and now, I can use it to revisit places I’ve been and feel like I’m standing there once again.
The system takes this experience one step further by allowing you to set panoramic spatial scenes as custom Environments. In the Environments view, there’s a new folder called My Environments where you can add up to 34 panoramas from your photo library and use them as immersive backgrounds for your content. You can even adjust the immersion level to make the photo wrap around you.
I love that we now have the option to use our own photos as Environments, but it does come with some tradeoffs. Panoramic photos are static, so they don’t have the subtle motion elements that make Environments feel alive. They also don’t expand as far vertically as Environments do, which means you’re likely to see your real-world surroundings if you look up or down. Still, this is the first time visionOS users have been able to set their own custom Environments using their own photos or images purchased online, so it’s a win. It’s definitely inspired me to start taking more panoramas than I did before.
The new built-in Thórsmörk Environment is gorgeous. Apple always knows how to pick the perfect spot. Between the snow, the slow-moving river, and the aurora borealis in the sky at night, it offers a beautiful, peaceful place to relax, watch a movie, or trick your mind into cooling off on a hot summer’s day.
Safari
Spatial browsing is continuing to mature in visionOS 27, this time with the help of curved windows. Safari is one of the few built-in apps – Freeform and TV being the others – that are receiving special curved window modes this year, similar to what we’ve seen in the past with Mac Virtual Display. When a window is expanded beyond a comfortable width for side-to-side viewing, it automatically starts to curve, wrapping around the user’s head to make it easier to take in the window’s contents.
To be honest, I’m not sure how useful curved windows will be for browsing normal websites. While some, such as Apple’s OS Overview page are optimized to display content like image galleries at such wide aspect ratios, most sites don’t expand beyond a certain point, displaying blank space on either side of a centered column of content. Perhaps that will change with time, but for now, I don’t foresee these ultra-wide windows catching on for single-tab browsing.
Where the curved Safari window does shine, though, is in the browser’s new multi-tab view. A new button on the right side of the tab bar activates the view, which displays all open tabs side by side in a horizontally-scrolling curved window. These aren’t previews, either. Each tab can be scrolled, navigated, interacted with, and even closed as it if it were an independent browser window.
I’ve already found numerous use cases for this view in my own workflows: editing article previews, comparing product pages, and reviewing multiple research sources at once, just to name a few. Displaying multiple tabs at once in a large, ergonomic window view makes for a fantastic interaction method that I think could apply far beyond Safari webpages and sports multiviews in TV. I imagine this feature will be used far more than last year’s spatial browsing.
Apple Intelligence can sort your bookmarks and Reading List entries based on topic if you like, though the automatic tab sorting feature present on other platforms is curiously missing. Personally, I like managing my own tabs anyway, but add that feature to the long list of strange feature parity omissions on visionOS along with Focus filters, photo editing, and – as of the current beta – Describe a Shortcut.
Platform Improvements
There’s no doubt that this is a refinement year for Apple’s platforms beyond AI. The company is taking the opportunity to revisit and optimize OS features that have long been considered mature, and that’s the case even for visionOS, a relative newcomer.
The time it takes the Vision Pro to connect to Wi-Fi upon power-up has been reduced significantly. Given the device’s short battery life and tendency to go into deep sleep when not in use, this is a quality-of-life change that you’re going to feel. When I turn my M2 Vision Pro on, I can’t log in quickly enough to open Safari or the TV before it’s connected to the Internet. That definitely was not the case before visionOS 27, and I appreciate it.
I’ve long been on the record as a critic of the notification system on visionOS, but it’s taking a big leap forward this year with expanding notifications. When an app icon appears at the top of your view to alert you to a notification, you expand it with your gaze and actually see what you’re being notified about. You can even long-press a Messages notification to reply directly without the need to open the full app, which is so convenient. And with any app, just seeing notifications in full without losing the context of what I’m doing is a major improvement.
Unlike notifications, I was a fan of the redesigned Control Center in visionOS 26. Alas, Control Center has been redesigned again, now featuring a three-column layout instead of a single window. I’m still getting used to the new look, but it does make sense conceptually to split different types of controls into separate columns, so I’m hoping this will make the feature more intuitive once I’ve adapted to it. Regardless of any other efficiency wins, though, this redesign gets my approval simply because it finally brings the AirPlay menu to the top level of Control Center, saving me an extra tap every time I want to switch sound output to my AirPods.
Sharing screenshots and videos from visionOS is going to be much easier thanks to high-quality screen recordings, which can be enabled in the Settings app. Now, the Vision Pro can take unfoveated videos of its screen for up to three minutes, as well as full-quality screenshots. In the past, on-device screen recordings were fuzzy outside of the viewer’s focus, resulting in a poor representation of the visionOS experience and requiring a Developer Strap and Xcode on a Mac as a workaround. This change alone is going to make my review process much simpler, and it’ll make it easier for all Vision Pro users to show others what using the device is like.
visionOS 27 now supports extra-small widgets, which are basically Lock Screen widgets brought to life in the user’s space. Like any other spatial widget, they can be placed on a wall or a horizontal surface such as a desk, and they are entirely customizable. Apple is introducing its own extra-small Mac Virtual Display widget for starting up a virtual connection with a Mac even if it’s asleep. Extra-small widgets take up much less space on a desk than even small ones, and there are already a bunch of them available from iPad apps running on the Vision Pro, so I think they’re going to be very useful.
Finally, there are some other Mac Virtual Display improvements included in visionOS 27. Virtual Display sessions can optionally persist even when you take your Vision Pro off, and macOS can stream spatial previews of 3D objects directly to visionOS with instant updates and two-way editing. I don’t have a Mac running Golden Gate yet, so I haven’t been able to try these features myself, but I plan to soon. If you work with 3D objects on your Mac and Vision Pro, I imagine this will speed up your workflow significantly.
And that’s visionOS 27 – so far, at least. There’s a still a lot more summer left: bugs to be squashed, refinements to be made, and third-party apps to be updated and introduced. My experience with the new version up to this point has been very positive, and I think it’ll make for a great update.
If you want to try out some of these features early, you can enroll in the Developer Beta anytime in the Software Update section of the Settings app. Whether you upgrade now or hold off for the public release, Apple’s got some great things in store with visionOS 27, and I look forward to continuing my testing over the summer in preparation for a full review this fall.
Last year was a quiet year for watchOS. While Apple took a couple of swings with Workout Buddy, Smart Stack hints, and a redesign of the Workout app, watchOS 26 was a scaled-back release compared to the big changes and upgrades in watchOS 11 the year before.
Of those swings, the excellent redesign of the Workout app felt severely hampered by bizarre scrolling behavior, Smart Stack hints didn’t appear often enough, and I found Workout Buddy to be mildly annoying and limited (though it’s true some users had the opposite view).
Let’s not forget the addition of Liquid Glass, too, a design system that was more like a coat of paint for the Apple Watch than the behavioral change seen on iOS.
Out of everything that was added, the wrist flick gesture was my favorite, and something I continue to use throughout the day. I don’t mean to sound down on last year’s release – there were genuine improvements in several areas – but it just felt more like a small evolution.
This year’s WWDC keynote didn’t feature a dedicated watchOS section (or a dedicated section for any particular OS, for that matter), but that’s not to say there’s nothing to see in watchOS 27. In fact, after several weeks of beta use, I see several intriguing things going on here.
So with that obvious tease out of the way, let’s break down what you can expect from watchOS 27.
Siri AI and Apple Intelligence
The new Siri UI over various watch faces.
The headline feature at this year’s WWDC was Siri AI, and along with every other platform (save for tvOS – yet), watchOS will be gaining access to Apple’s upgraded personal assistant.
I had worried that with the promised launch of an upgraded Siri, the Apple Watch would be forgotten in the rollout or receive a diluted version, so it’s exciting to see that not only is Siri AI included with watchOS 27, but it is almost a like-for-like copy of the iOS version. This is likely due to the way Siri AI on watchOS will essentially bounce queries off a paired iPhone.
Siri AI continues to appear as a slightly amorphous assistant that can be summoned by long-pressing the Digital Crown, uttering the wake phrase, or using Raise to Speak. But now, it is also a dedicated app that lets you continue conversations started on other devices.
The new Siri app allows you to browse and pin past conversations.
Siri AI on watchOS only debuted in the latest developer beta a week ago, so I haven’t had long to fully test it. That said, I have two strong takeaways already: Siri AI shows the potential of becoming something huge for the Apple Watch, but it is, as of now, quite buggy.
Let’s start with the positive: the potential. I’ve long said that the best place for digital personal assistants is on existing items we wear like watches, rings, and glasses. The friction is low, and you’re not adding another device to your daily carry.
Imagine, if you will, being able to raise your wrist, ask a question, and get an instant answer without having to fiddle around getting your iPhone out of your pocket or bag, unlocking it, and then holding the power button or saying Siri’s wake phrase. Who needs that faff? Certainly not me.
That’s why when Siri AI has worked well, it’s been a great experience.
Siri can surface some impressive personal context answers.
While world knowledge questions are great, it excels more with in-depth queries, like a question about an old message. One good example is a query I had (pictured above) where, while talking to someone, I needed a friend’s website URL to pass along. I knew I’d sent it to my wife, so I asked Siri AI to find it. Based on the context, it searched messages with my wife and found the website, which I read out.
I’ve had several experiences like this. I had Siri AI find what our seat numbers were to see Aziz Ansari. I asked about the weather, with follow-up questions about the UV index and wind speeds, too. Although results can be slow, getting information like this felt like a superpower. The Apple Watch is a very personal device, and these experiences were both personal and useful.
Now for the negative: bugs. Unfortunately, Siri AI in the latest developer beta (and, likely, the first public beta) has a lot of them. To be clear, this is to be expected; it’s called a beta for a reason. But it’s also worth being aware of these issues if you’re thinking of trying out the public beta and expecting a consistently amazing personal assistant.
watchOS 27 may still be in beta, but the reliability needs work.
Queries frequently fail or time out, and Siri AI can often be a little too keen to answer your query, cutting off your question before you’ve finished. These bugs have also, unfortunately, leaked into some standard Siri requests. Setting a timer on the Apple Watch has been impossible for me since the update.
While it’s strange that these bugs are popping up, given that they aren’t issues on iOS, I expect the smaller ones to be fixed by the time Siri AI is released publicly later this year. The big question is whether Apple can bring Siri AI to an adequate level of reliability on the Apple Watch and fulfill its huge potential.
Call Context when making a call.
In terms of Apple Intelligence upgrades, there’s a new feature called Call Context. This promises to surface relevant information on your Apple Watch when you are on certain phone calls. For example, if you’re calling an airline, your Apple Watch might show the flight you have booked, or if you’re calling a friend, it might show their upcoming birthday. You get the picture. I’ve yet to encounter Call Context, but it could prove to be a small yet handy feature.
App Navigation and Interface
Apple claims opening speeds for apps across all of its platforms are up to 20% faster. On watchOS specifically, the company says tapping to start a workout and media playback are quicker, too.
I’ve got to admit: whatever Apple has been refining behind the scenes has worked. From the very first beta, apps opened dramatically faster. The same goes for general interactions like screen refreshes and button taps. It’s made the Apple Watch easier and quicker to use, which in turn has made the experience more enjoyable.
The new dynamic app grid changes one slot to your most recent app while the others are out of your control.
Over on the UI side of things, Apple has introduced an extra layer of app icons on top of the classic grid/list view. The dynamic app grid displays five app icons based on context and recent usage, surrounding one fixed icon for Siri AI. You can access the traditional grid or list view by swiping up from this grid, scrolling up with the Digital Crown, or tapping the app grid icon in the bottom of the app grid.
In use, I’ve found this new view a bit frustrating. It usually displays your most recently used app, which can be a waste of an app slot if you don’t frequent it often enough. Plus, I had already deliberately organized my icon grid to make it easy to access my most frequently used apps; this extra step gets in the way of that.
This would all be well and good – as I’m sure some people will like this feature – if it were optional. Frustratingly, it’s now the default behavior, so I’m forced to tap or swipe again to access the apps I like. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s certainly an unnecessary annoyance.
Liquid Glass is more legible in watchOS 27.
Elsewhere in watchOS, the UI design has been given some nice refinements. Just like on Apple’s other OSes, app icons are sharper and more distinct, and the Liquid Glass design system is much more readable in areas like Notification Center. Unlike on other platforms, the transparency of Liquid Glass cannot be adjusted on watchOS, but the level Apple has settled on is, I think, a decent compromise.
Workouts and Health
Workout app scrolling is fixed!
The biggest news, for me at least, is that the terrible scrolling behavior in the Workout app that I mentioned at the top of this article is gone. It’s difficult to describe without seeing it for yourself, but I would say it feels more “natural”.
The number of workouts the app scrolls past nicely reflects the amount of velocity you apply to your swipe, and even a dramatic swipe will only get you past a maximum of four workouts on the list. It shouldn’t have been a problem in the first place, but it’s good to see it rectified.
Workout Buddy has received a number of refinements, which will be welcome for users who like very enthusiastic announcements during their workouts. The big news is that Workout Buddy no longer requires a nearby iPhone to work. That’s a win for those who want to go out for a workout with their AI buddy but leave their iPhone at home.
Next, Workout Buddy’s insights are reportedly improved and deliver more detailed feedback. New insights include progress for pace, distance, and workout duration. In testing, I’m not sure I’ve noticed a huge difference, but more data is always welcome when you’re working out.
Finally, Workout Buddy features improved voice delivery that is more natural and less abrupt. Its phrasing now combines multiple achievements into a single statement to provide more consolidated feedback, and it will be available in Spanish as well.
While not available to view on the Apple Watch, if you’re cycle tracking with your iPhone and Apple Watch, Apple Health will warn you if your cycle patterns are suggestive of perimenopause. As is the Apple way, the app will encourage you to track related symptoms, provide resources, and talk with your healthcare professional. It’s good to see Apple continuing to support common but often overlooked areas of health like this, especially ones specific to women.
Lastly, following the through line of performance improvements Apple is targeting across its platforms, step count accuracy and syncing between the iPhone and Apple Watch are fixed, and the accuracy of treadmill distance tracking has improved.
Find My
The new Find My app in watchOS 27 is fantastic.
The Find My app has historically – and bizarrely – been split into three separate apps on watchOS: People, Devices, and Items. I’ve never understood this logic, but watchOS 27 finally consolidates these three tracking streams into one app, just like every other platform.
What’s great to see is that, unlike last year’s Notes app, the new watchOS Find My experience is incredibly close to the one on iOS. You can switch between the three categories using a button in the top-left corner of the screen, scroll through each item or person, and perform all the usual actions you can on other platforms.
These include playing a sound, marking an item as lost, setting up location alerts, and even Precision Finding. The way the watchOS team has translated the full Find My app experience to the wrist is a real triumph of app design.
Smart Stack and Gestures
A selection of new Smart Stack widgets.
This is the third watchOS release for the Smart Stack, and it continues to gain enhancements. This year, those come in two forms. First, there is a range of new Smart Stack suggestions, including a close contact’s birthday, parked car location, and transit card balance.
An intriguing addition is a Smart Stack suggestion that will prompt you to change a recurring alarm the night before a holiday. I look forward to the day when my daughter doesn’t wake me up every morning so I can take full advantage of this.
The new single-tap gesture in action in the Smart Stack.
The second enhancement comes in the form of a new gesture. I’ve not been coy about my love of gestures on the Apple Watch, and after last year’s addition of the excellent wrist flick gesture, I was hoping for more this year.
The new single-tap gesture allows you to launch individual widgets within the Smart Stack or carry out an action like starting a workout or recognizing music. This is a nice addition, but my excitement is tempered by the fact that the gesture only works in the Smart Stack. The gesture being unavailable as an API for third-party apps is a disappointing omission by Apple, so I hope they grant developers access soon.
Tidbits
Better access to notification controls.
Notifications have been tweaked slightly to allow better access to options like muting and disabling them. Apple Pay notifications are richer, too, with clearer transaction information and a map showing the location of the purchase.
Sticking with transactions, iOS 27 is gaining the ability to create custom Wallet passes from QR codes, and watchOS will display these creations in the Wallet app as well. And in another example of increasing feature parity between watchOS and iOS, the Wallet app now shows card balances.
There are several features that users just don’t take advantage of on the Apple Watch purely because they don’t have the need or don’t particularly like them. Unfortunately, some of these features can affect battery life, so with watchOS 27, your Apple Watch will look for unused features and offer to turn them off to enhance battery life. These include things like Double Tap, Raise to Speak, and Start Workout reminders. You can always turn these features back on in Settings.
Lastly, continuing the theme of performance enhancements, Apple says watchOS 27 has improved Wi-Fi connectivity, better water detection, and more efficient GymKit integration.
Heading to the watchOS Graveyard
watchOS 27 comes with a few cuts, too. The Walkie-Talkie app is gone, as is the App Switcher. While I’m sure there are few who will miss Walkie-Talkie, the axing of the App Switcher seems a strange choice.
Previously, a double press of the Digital Crown would surface your currently open apps, allowing you to switch between them or close them. Now, a double press does the same thing as a single press: opening the new dynamic app grid. I used the App Switcher infrequently, but when I did, it was useful, so I hope Apple reverses course.
The last axe to fall in watchOS 27 is actually on several Apple Watch models. watchOS 27 will only support Apple Watch Series 9 and above, Apple Watch Ultra 2 and above, and Apple Watch SE 3. That means, of the models that could run watchOS 26, Apple is dropping support for Series 6, 7, 8, Ultra 1, and SE 2.
That’s quite a few models, and while Apple has explained the reasoning behind this decision, it will be frustrating to some users, especially those with the original Apple Watch Ultra.
Siri AI and several new Apple Intelligence features are the big carrots for installing Apple’s OS 27 releases this year. That includes watchOS, and despite its bugs, it’s been exciting to test Siri AI out. If Apple can deliver on this promise, it could be a game changer.
Yet, for most users, the performance enhancements I’ve seen will be the most immediately tangible part of the new OS (with the usual warning that running the watchOS beta means your battery will take a hit). The ability to raise my wrist, perform an action, and quickly move on without hangs or loading screens is incredibly valuable.
Apple has previously described new iOS releases as akin to “getting an entirely new phone”. That statement often referred to feature additions and design changes; however, when you get a new device, the feeling of “new” actually comes from increased speed, power, and performance. As such, watchOS 27 can often feel like using ‘an entirely new Apple Watch’.
If you want to test out these new features before they’re released this fall, you can do so now by enrolling in the watchOS 27 public beta. watchOS 27 is compatible with Apple Watch Series 9 and above, Apple Watch Ultra 2 and above, and Apple Watch SE 3.
Login
