Everyones doing it so I wanted to jump on the bandwagon and voice my amazing opinion on what I would love to see with iOS 15. When will it be coming well it will be launching at Dub Dub this year. That’s right in two weeks on June the 7th at 10AM Pasific time Apple will take to the… not stage anymore, the campus? They’ll take to the campus and announce the latest and greatest features for all their devices, making everyone’s mouths water with the potential of brand new features to freshen up their tiresome use of iOS 14. If you’re anything like me, you can’t help yourself and download the public beta of iOS every single year. So you’ve been using the latest version for way longer than most everyone else, and sometimes it can feel like it needs an update right now to feel fresh. Somehow this year Apple has kept iOS 14 fresh with their frequent updates, adding new features and making iOS 14 even more exciting (and sometimes controversial) than when they announced it! Now that doesn’t mean I don’t want iOS 15, it just means I’m not anticipating it nearly as much as I have in previous years so without further adieu, let’s dive in.
Feel free to skip through and read the bolded titles to see which ones may interest you more, and let me know which ones you really hope come to iOS 15!
Widgets
Interactive Widgets
One new addition to iOS 15 that I’d love to see is even better widgets. iOS 14 gave us widgets that are actually able to be added to the homescreen, and don’t completely suck. A huge surprise since all the leaks pointed to them being shelved last year and instead launch this year. I absolutely love the new design for widgets, it’s honestly kind of ridiculous how crappy the other ones were and how long we had to deal with it. However, there are a few things that I think could make widgets even better. Interactivity is one of them. This is something I actually expected to happen when they showed off widgets at Dub Dub last year, and for some reason it didn’t. I mean it sort of happened? Like the shortcuts widget used to open the app but now you can tap on a shortcut and it will run. So there must be a API or whatever it is for developers to do this, but maybe Apple hasn’t launched it? Or maybe developers haven’t taken advantage of it? Either way Apple needs to make that more of a thing, specifically when it comes to the music widget, like it’s useless if you use smart playlists frequently. Add a pause play button and then that way every time you play music your smart stack will rotate to the music widget. It just makes sense!
I’ve got some more examples of what could be interactive widgets so I’m going to list them. If you don’t care then move on to the next part.
- Scrolling through the temperature with weather (left to right)
- Scrolling through shortcuts with shortcuts widget (left to right)
- Making a reminder right from the widget
- Making a calendar event right from the widget
- Typing into search widgets (Apple Doesn’t have this but like google or IMDB) and when you press go then it takes you to the app
More Sized Widgets
I don’t know how much I really need to say about this, but how about 1X2 widgets? Or full page widgets, or 1X4 widgets? We need more sizes because not all widgets need to be these massive blocks that take up the screen. We could fit tons more information and widgets on a single screen if they could be smaller!
More Widgets
Of course, more widgets. What did you expect this to be a deep dive into features that would fully enrich the lives of those using iOS? I’m only joking. This is an obvious one that’s likely going to happen. Apple is probably going to hand us a bunch of new widgets to use this time around. Especially if we get interactive widgets. So what kinds of new widgets would I like to see? How about a set of wallet widgets. Where you can view your Apple Pay Cash balance, and Apple Card balance. What about one where you can quickly flick (left to right) through your saved cards and passes and click the one you want? I don’t know, I really just want to be able to see my card balances. How about messages where you can have specific conversations as widgets? Maybe it’ll show the most recent text depending on its size? How about a health widget with your prefered statistics, and maybe they introduce smart widgets that can change by themselves throughout the day to cater to your needs. Like having the weather widget show tomorrow’s forecast when it’s past, I don’t know, 18:00 or 19:00. Just some ideas Apple, you should stick this in last minute for us all.
Apple Music
Me and Apple Music
Before you go clickitly clack in the comments about how I should just switch to spotify if I want these features so bad, they aren’t full on deal breakers for me. On top of that I have yet to find a time where spotify lets you upload music files from your computer into it so you can listen to music that they don’t have. In the least pretentious way, because if you knew what the music was you’d make fun of me for it, I’m not joking I could tell you what it is and you would actually recognize it, but I do have hours of this music that’s mostly unavailable for streaming and even purchase on digital stores.
Native iOS Smart Playlists
Here’s something I bet a ton of people can’t give any cares about, but I think is an awesome and underrated feature that if Apple brought native to iOS (and iPadOS too) it would probably become popular and something people can’t live without. Smart playlists need to be native on iOS, and have really good integration with Apple Music. Currently you can still make Smart Playlists on MacOS in the Apple Music app. That’s super lucky because it was originally an iTunes feature that I was afraid would disappear with this app. If you don’t know what it is, it essentially allows you to create specific parameters and then create an automatically updating playlist that is in your library. I love this feature and I think it needs a bit of love, like maybe adding parameters on how to sort (oldest to newest, longest song to shortest, artist name, album title, song title) because I find the sorting to be fiddly at times. I also would love even deeper customization of these playlists and just an overall better smart playlist interface. I mean I can imagine Apple doing it in iOS and it just being a list of parameters that you can click a plus button on the bottom to add to it. If you want to edit some that you’ve added you just tap it and it takes you into the menu. At the very top it says “sort by” and then you can click on that and go through one of the fun scroll wheels or they pull up a brand new menu! Native Smart playlists would be a game changer.
Playlist Folders
Again this is something you can do on MacOS or iTunes and it’s less fiddly than smart playlists but still frustrating that you need a computer to do this. You should be able to create folders from your iOS device and also add pictures to those folders instead of them just being a giant ugly folder icon. I’m pretty sure that spotify has this feature so Apple really needs to get on this so they can stay up to date and not keep being so far behind everyone else.
Collaborative Playlists
Anyways not to keep comparing Apple Music to Spotify but come on we need collaborative playlists on Apple Music. Just like you can create shared folders for photos, please can we have the same with playlists? I’ve been dying to do this forever and trying to create a playlist with someone else is super annoying on Apple Music.
More social Features in Apple Music
More social features in Apple Music. Come on guys, let’s just add in a real social feed again, and make it so you can easily get to your profile. It’s set up so stupidly right now that even “showing playlists on profile” is such a joke. Give us real profiles and just make the social aspect of Apple Music way more fun. I just think it’d be nice, if they don’t it’s not going to kill me because I don’t have that many friends that use Apple Music anyways, but I just think it’d be fun.
Better Photos App
Right before the current version of photos was shown off I was complaining about how trash it is and how much it needs an update. They delivered pretty good, but missed a few key things, and I’ve been disappointed ever since.
Better Photo Albums and Photo Album Folders
I’ll try to keep this quick and to the point. Photo albums kind of stink and photo album folders are annoying to deal with if you want to change the location of a current photo album. Fix this, make the albums actually cool like the people section, and make it so when you create folders you can move the albums you have into those folders. I know it’s “a lot to ask” and as much as I love automated stuff, please give us the chance to make things ourselves.
An “Archive” Similar to Google Photos
Speaking of automation can we “archive” photos like in google photos? Like not the hidden feature we have now where you “hide” photos but they aren’t locked or hard to find in any way. Just change “hidden” to archive and make it so “archived” pictures still show up in photo albums. Or make it so “hidden” photos still show up in photo albums. Just look at google photos and copy that feature but maybe do it better? I mean I love the way “days” view looks but sometimes I’d like to just have my photos that I really want to see front and center first then do a deep dive later.
Here are some ideas Tim Cook, or anyone else if you want to steal them I’d be happy.
- Make an actual archive and keep hidden photos but allow and option them to be locked similar to notes. Or don’t I don’t really care as long as I can hide photos but still add them to albums, that’s all I want.
- Make there be a toggle when you scroll down extra far that says “show archived photos” when you select all photos so you can have both an archived and unarchived view.
- Make albums even better by making it auto organized like the people albums.
- Add the ability to auto archive screenshots since we have a whole tab for them
- Don’t remove pictures from recents if they’re archived, only if they’re hidden.
Not sure if all that makes sense but from a “power” or “pro” users perspective I think that would add a lot to the photos app which once again needs a face lift.
Better Facial Recognition
Speaking of face lifts, if I get one I want photos to still recognize me. I’m kidding about the face lift, but they could use some better facial recognition. I like that it’s on device, and it’s been getting better year after year, so just do that and I’ll probably be happy.
Pet Recognition!
I reference google photos a lot, but I feel like this would just be a fun addition. Instead of going through and adding descriptions or titles on your own just being able to recognize pets would be super cool!
Rumours
This is the section we will talk about the rumoured iOS 15 features. Things that are actually likely to happen in the first place, but I also am totally going to like. This year we haven’t had as many leak bombs as last year around this same time and I’m honestly surprised at that. Either that means it’s going to be boring or Apple is going to surprise us like they did with the Apple TV remote (Which I have now and I love it, you’ll hear more later). So this is what I’ve found about rumours and not just the fun stuff I wish would happen.
Icon Redesign
It’s gonna look like Big Sur. Surprised? I’m not, I showed someone the new MacOS icons close to after Dub Dub last year and they said that it was ugly and they hated it. So I said, good thing you don’t have a Mac or iOS 15. I figured this was likely to happen because why would Apple go to the trouble of changing all the icons on MacOS to look like iOS but only sort of and not translate that over? I mean Apples weird so maybe they won’t. Or maybe it’ll only happen for iPads that wouldn’t surprise me either.
Control Center Overhaul
Big Sur, that’s it. The Rumours are pointing to a Big Sur like control center and I gotta say I want that. The current one is really outdated, going back to iOS 11 and just feels weirdly out of place. Do this please Apple
“Better” Notifications
This ones weird. Basically the only difference I’ve heard about notifications is that you can have different do not disturb modes that do different things and can trigger based on different factors. Like that sounds confusing, but let’s say you don’t like people texting you at work (cause you’re a good cookie) so you set a DND (Not Dungeons and Dragons abbreviation) so anyone who texts you gets a text back automatically that says “You know I’m working right now, seriously?” and then you can check them all later. This definitely sounds cool, but I’m not sure I’d really get great use out of it.
Oh and also setting priority lists for apps for DND so certain ones come on during certain times. Like allowing calls from favorites when DND is enabled currently, maybe it can move to texts, and snapchats because you don’t want to miss out on your partner’s latest picture of the cat loafing on your couch
Always on display? (Maybe for iPhone 13 only)
Now this probably won’t be showing up at WWDC so it’s more of a iPhone 13 (or just 13 pro) feature but it will be on any iPhone after that and will likely get updates with iOS 16, which I’m totally not going to compile a list of my wishes that didn’t happen and have it ready to post next year. You all know what a AOD is so I likely won’t need to explain, but it could be really cool, or useless we’ll see, probably in september.
Settings overhaul
I can’t remember where I saw this, or if it was in Mark Gurmans report (and I’m too lazy to check while I type this, or maybe I just don’t want to sound dumb I don’t know) but apparently settings might get an overhaul? It’s basically looked the same since iOS was called iPhoneOS so this would be a welcome change. But it’s probably gonna confuse a lot of people and all the Apple Youtubers are gonna have a hard time finding new “hidden features” every year.
iMessage Changes?
Auto replies might be coming? Although that’s more of the DND expansion stuff so maybe that’s related. It’s also rumoured to get a more what’sapp social media feel. Personally I don’t really like this idea because surprisingly, I don’t like social media in my personal life. It’s not that interesting and most people couldn’t care less about my opinions on Disney’s newest boat. Actually even on my less personal accounts people still don’t care what I think. If you might, go check out my twitter @Disnerland and give me a pity follow and some likes, maybe a retweet of an original tweet? Either way, more social media features on iMessage maybe more customization.
iPadOS Exclusive
“The biggest homescreen redesign since the iPads introduction” just be prepared to hear that. Apparently iPad will be getting the ability to place widgets anywhere on the homescreen. Why we can’t do that already just baffles me but here we are. It’s also possible that other changes are coming since that’s what they’re calling it in some Apple Circles, but come on, they said that about widgets and while it technically is true, it’s still the same old homescreen just with widgets. Maybe we’ll see some improvements that we aren’t hearing about, and Apple will blow this out of the water like they did last year.
Conclusion
MacOS, WatchOS and TVOS all have not had any rumours pop up that I know of so far so I can’t say much for them. Plus I also haven’t spent as much time with them and have far less complaints. So iOS is where I focus a lot of time and energy and where I can think up the most ideas (I’ve had the photos and music stuff on my list for like four years now). That being said, this year is kind of looking like an S year for iOS, like we’re getting iOS 14S or something. Hopefully it’s bigger than that and my wishes are granted by the Hair Force genie but I kind of doubt it. What stuff do you want to see show up in iOS 15? Anything I said make you think? Change your mind? Let me know below!
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