Top 10 iOS 17 Features for Your iPhone

Apple showcased their new products along with hardware and software updates in WWDC 2023 event on 5^th June 2023. Along with exciting new 15-inch MacBook, and macOS Sonoma, you will also get bunch of feature updates in iOS 17. If you have updated iOS 17, here are the top 10 features you will get for your iPhone.

iOS 17 Features Summary

Below picture from Apple summarizes major features added or updated in iOS 17. Journal is the only new app you will get by end of the year and most other stuffs are enhancements added to existing Phone, Messages and FaceTime apps. You will start getting iOS public beta version on July before the stable iOS version available during fall.

1. New Journal App

This new app will use on-device machine learning to suggest photos, music, workouts and locations. This app will be available later 2023 and not immediately released with initial iOS 17.

• You can use these auto suggestions and create your journal entries quickly.
• iPhone will even add automatic text input based on the items you have selected so that you do not need to start from scratch.
• Mark important items for later reference.
• You can setup a reminder to be consistent in writing your journal or get notified when new suggestions are available.

2. StandBy

This is a cool feature to use your iPhone as a clock or any other widget while you are not using (that’s why called StandBy). Simply rotate your phone to get a new full lock screen view. Now, you can dock the phone nearby and use it as a clock, view photos or check weather. You can add any other widget to track your favorite game’s score or food delivery. The beautiful thing is the phone will automatically change to low light in nighttime allowing you to sleep well.

3. Check In with Messages

This is a tracking feature you can use to know the whereabouts of your kids and elderly people in the house. iOS 17 allows you to automatically check in to the known locations like house and send the message in Messages app to your loved ones. For example, you can get the check in messages when your kid regularly returns from school at 5PM or your grandfather returns from jogging at 7AM.

iPhone will show an alert notification message when there is a delay in the check in. And if there are no response to the alert, it will collect emergency information like location of route, battery level and Cellular status and send to your loved ones.  

4. Stickers in Messages

Messages also get a new Stickers feature to instantly send funny small stickers in your conversations.

• You can react to any received messages by adding an appropriate sticker on top of it.
• iOS 17 also converts all existing emoji to stickers which you can instantly send by tapping on it.
• Convert any of your image or live photos to a sticker. Simply drag, rotate and drop the sticker on any message to stick on that message.

5. NameDrop and AirDrop for Sharing

Apple expands AirDrop feature with a new feature called NameDrop. This helps to share the contact cards just by brining two iPhones nearby each other. You can also share photos and music by bringing the devices together. Now that AirDrop also works through internet if you are moving away from the AirDrop range.

6. Live Voicemail in Phone App

With iOS 17, your Phone app will show the voice transcription when the call is received. This will help you to decide whether you want to pick up the call or ignore especially if it is from an unknown number. This is called Live Voicemail feature which works within your device so you do not need to worry about sending the information to Apple.

7. Keyboard Input Updates – Autocorrect, Text Prediction and Dictation

iPhone is getting more intelligent to use keyboard inputs with machine learning.

• More accurate level of autocorrect when you type. You can also simply tap on the underlined word and undo the autocorrection.
• In addition to showing the predictions on a bar, now you can get the predicted words inline to finish the typing faster.
• Finally, dictation is also getting smarter by using the updated speech recognition model.

8. Contact Posters – Phone App

The Phone app gets much awaited updated of visual identities called Contact Posters. You can assign a photo to each of your contact and see the picture appears when they call. You can use a photo or an avatar as a poster and it will appear in the Contacts app also. Apple also make it easy to customize the poster by adjusting the colors and fonts.

9. Messages – Audio to Text, Location Sharing, Search Filters and Swipe to Reply

Messages app gets some decent updates in iOS 17.

• You can use multi-level search filters to find messages easily.
• A catch-up arrow will help to take you to the top of conversation quickly.
• Now, you can swipe any message to right and reply instantly.
• Audio messages can be converted to text so that you can read them without disturbing others.
• Message app will allow you to keep track of your friends within the conversation using Location Sharing feature.

10. Others iOS 17 Updates – Pet Albums, Siri, FaceTime and Offline Maps

As of now, Photos app recognizes human faces and you can link the contact to the identified faces. With iOS 17, you can also identify your pet’s face and create a per album. That will allow you to filter photos with pets and see memories based on your pet’s face.

• Siri – Apple removes “Hey” from “Hey Siri” and now you can simply activate the virtual assistant by calling Siri. It is also possible to use back-to-back commands without the need of activating again.
• FaceTime – you can leave a recorded message in FaceTime so that the receiver can see it later if they are not available currently.
• Maps – select an area and download it for offline use.