Apple has added direct touch input to Sidecar with macOS 27 Golden Gate and iPadOS 27, allowing users to tap and interact with macOS interface elements using a finger on their iPad for the first time.


Previously, ‌Sidecar‌ was deliberately limited as a touch interface. While multi-touch gestures like two-finger scrolling, pinch-to-zoom, and three-finger editing gestures for copy, cut, paste, and undo have been supported for years, directly tapping to click links, open apps, or interact with macOS UI elements was not possible with a finger. Those interactions required either the Mac's connected mouse or trackpad, or an Apple Pencil.

The new Direct Touch capability closes that gap. In macOS 27, users can can now tap, swipe, and interact with macOS apps on their ‌iPad‌ screen using a finger, bringing ‌Sidecar‌ closer to how third-party tools like Luna Display have worked for some time. ‌Apple Pencil‌ support continues alongside the new touch capabilities.



The expanded ‌Sidecar‌ functionality requires an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 27 Golden Gate and a compatible ‌iPad‌ running iPadOS 27. As with previous versions of the feature, both devices must be signed into the same Apple ID, connected to the same Wi-Fi network, and have Bluetooth enabled, with the two devices within 10 meters of each other.

The feature is likely another indication of impending touch support on the Mac, along with other features like pull-to-refresh. Apple is said to be planning to launch a "MacBook Ultra" as a new top-tier laptop with a touchscreen OLED display, an M6-series chip, the Dynamic Island, and a thinner design. Reports suggest that the device is scheduled to launch in early 2027.
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macOS 27 Golden Gate adds pull-to-refresh support to the Mac, adopting one of iPhone and iPad's most familiar gestures for the first time.


The feature, which Apple calls "Swipe down to refresh," lets users swipe down within apps to fetch the latest content, rather than relying on a keyboard shortcut or menu item. Apple confirmed that Safari, Mail, News, Podcasts, and Calendar are among the apps that support the gesture at launch.

Pull-to-refresh has been a staple of iOS and iPadOS for many years, offering an intuitive, gesture-driven way to update app content. Its arrival on macOS suggests Apple is continuing to blur the interaction patterns between its platforms.

Apple is reportedly planning to launch a "MacBook Ultra", a new top-tier laptop expected to feature a touchscreen OLED display with an M6-series chip, the Dynamic Island, and a thinner design. Reports suggest early 2027 is the most likely launch window, following delays attributed to the global memory chip shortage. Touch-friendly interface updates to macOS are almost certainly related to that future product.
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Apple has published a five-minute recap video summarizing the key announcements from its WWDC26 Platforms State of the Union, covering rebuilt intelligence frameworks, platform design changes, and major developer tools updates.


Apple said its Foundation Models have been rebuilt from the ground up in collaboration with Google, leveraging technology from the Gemini family of models. The Foundation Models framework now supports image input and cloud model integration, allowing developers to connect to any cloud model provider for more complex tasks.

New dynamic profiles are also included to simplify building AI agents and skills by swapping tools in and out and updating instructions on the fly. Core AI, an entirely new framework for running on-device models, is built into the OS and designed to take full advantage of Apple Silicon.

App Intents have been updated to connect apps to Apple Intelligence, making content discoverable and actions available through Siri via natural language, with a new View Annotations API allowing users to act on what's on screen just by asking.

The refined Liquid Glass design system features prominently in the recap. Apple said the design is more consistent and personalizable, with better readability. On macOS, every window now shares a tighter corner radius. App icons receive sharper rendering automatically, with new refraction effects available through Icon Composer.

iOS apps are now resizable, allowing users to take advantage of larger displays when running them on iPads or Macs via iPhone mirroring, with a new resizable iOS Simulator to make testing across sizes easier.

SwiftUI received a range of updates, including drag-to-reorder and swipe actions in any container, nested layouts that resize up to twice as fast, and automatic async image caching. Toolbars now offer finer control over visibility as space shrinks, and a new Spatial Preview Framework for the Apple Vision Pro lets developers stream 3D models from a Mac into physical space.

In Xcode 27, projects load faster and the app is 30% smaller as it moves to Apple Silicon-only. Settings now sync via iCloud, the toolbar is fully customizable, and themes including Emerald, Neon Noir, and Coral Reef bring color throughout the app.

Xcode Cloud is easier to set up with builds up to twice as fast. A new Device Hub replaces Simulator, bringing virtual and physical devices together in one place with live resizing and full hardware control from the Mac.

Apple said it is working with Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google to bring their agents into Xcode. Agent conversations now behave like files and can be opened, split, and stacked in the Navigator. Agents can run tests, use Playgrounds, customize previews across light and dark mode and other configurations, and drive a running app end-to-end. Developers can extend Xcode further through plugins that bring skills, MCP tools, and agents via the agent-client protocol, with Figma and GitHub shipping their own plugins at launch.

The full Platforms State of the Union video is available on the Apple Developer app, website, and YouTube.
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Apple yesterday announced several improvements to Apple Podcasts, including video podcast playback on macOS and a fully redesigned tvOS app.


Mac users will gain a new, enhanced video podcast experience in ‌Apple Podcasts‌, including Picture in Picture support for watching episodes while multitasking. The update brings the full mobile ‌Apple Podcasts‌ experience to the Mac, with audio and video content alongside transcripts, timed links, and chapters.

The ‌Apple Podcasts‌ app on tvOS is receiving a complete redesign with video podcast playback, a new sidebar navigation for easier browsing, and support for podcast creators' episode and show artwork. The update is aimed at making it simpler to discover and enjoy video content on the big screen.

Across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Vision Pro, as well as on the web at podcasts.apple.com, Apple is also adding a new search within show feature. The tool allows users to search directly within a show from its See All Episodes view, making it easier to locate a specific episode without scrolling through an entire back catalog.

The updates will arrive this fall as part of iOS 27, iPadOS 27, visionOS 27, macOS 27 Golden Gate, and tvOS 27.
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The European Commission has responded to Apple's announcement that Siri AI will not launch in the EU, saying the decision is entirely Apple's and that the company sought an exemption from its legal obligations rather than a compliant solution.


Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier told reporters in Brussels (via Reuters) that Apple had failed to develop interoperability solutions meeting EU privacy and security standards, and instead asked to be let off the hook entirely.

The decision not to roll out Siri AI in the EU is Apple's and Apple's only. Apple was simply unable to develop interoperability solutions that meet essential EU privacy and security standards. Instead of trying to find a suitable compliance solution, Apple simply made a request to the European Commission to be exempted from their interoperability obligations. That's not an option.

The statement appears to contradict Apple's characterization of events somewhat. Apple announced yesterday that Siri AI would not be available in the EU on iOS or iPadOS, blaming regulators for refusing to engage constructively on proposed solutions.

Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering, said the company was "deeply disappointed" and cited what it described as regulators' refusal to accept any of Apple's proposals, including a system called Trusted System Agent that would have allowed third-party virtual assistants to safely access the same device capabilities as ‌Siri‌ AI.

The Commission's account tells a different story. Rather than negotiating over Apple's proposed solutions, regulators say Apple simply requested a blanket exemption from its interoperability obligations under the Digital Markets Act, something the Commission says is not an available option. Apple's statement framed the DMA's requirements as demanding that any AI system be given "nearly unlimited access" to a user's device.

When iOS 27 and Apple's other major new software updates are released later this year, users in the EU will not have access to ‌Siri‌ AI or any of its new features, including the app for revisiting and starting new conversations. Apple said it hopes to eventually bring ‌Siri‌ AI to the EU and will continue to engage with regulators, but offered no timeline.
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Apple executives have detailed the architecture of the company's new Apple Foundation Models (AFM) and clarified exactly how Google's technology factored into their development.


Craig Federighi, Apple's SVP of Software Engineering, held a post-keynote tech talk (via 9to5Mac) with press on Monday alongside AI VP Amar Subramanya, Siri lead Mike Rockwell, and software VP Sebastien Marineau-Mes to walk through how the third-generation AFM family was built and how it powers Apple Intelligence.

"The amount of the Google Assistant we use is none," Federighi said, explaining that Apple uses none of the Gemini models deployed to Google's customers, none of Google's client-side code, and no Google Search infrastructure as the knowledge backbone.

Of course, we don't have the Gemini app as our app. In fact, none of that client code is part of how we run on iOS. For these models, we use none of the models that Google deploys to their customers, nor do we use the infrastructure and means by which they deploy models to their customers. And then, when it comes to the knowledge base, we of course don't use Google Search or anything like that as the foundation of our system.

Subramanya outlined the new AFM family, which spans two on-device models and three server-side models. The on-device tier consists of AFM Core, a next-generation dense architecture model, and AFM Core Advanced, which uses a sparse architecture and is natively multimodal.

Subramanya said AFM Core Advanced is "unlike any on-device model we've run before," enabling new features including invitation and expressive voices without any cloud requests. On the server side, AFM Cloud handles latency-optimized Private Cloud Compute requests, while AFM Cloud Image powers image generation and editing features including spatial reframing.

The key detail on the Google collaboration came in Subramanya's description of how these four models were trained. "All of these are custom built for Apple Silicon, trained using proprietary data with reinforcement learning and refined using outputs from Gemini frontier models," he said, making clear that Google's contribution was distillation-based, not a wholesale adoption of Gemini.

The fifth and most capable model, AFM Cloud Pro, is designed for agentic tool use and complex reasoning tasks, with quality that Subramanya said is "similar to Gemini frontier models." This model marks a departure from Apple's standard Private Cloud Compute setup.

To run it, Apple worked with both Google and Nvidia to extend its private cloud infrastructure to Nvidia GPUs hosted in Google's cloud. Marineau-Mes said Apple wanted to use Nvidia's latest chips but required them to be configured so they couldn't read the contents of Apple's servers. A recent Nvidia technology called "ambiguous confidential compute" provided the solution.

We wanted to avail ourselves of the latest technology from Nvidia, and so we set out to extend private cloud compute to third-party cloud.

Federighi described the broader system architecture as being organized around a System Orchestrator, a piece of software he called "key to the privacy architecture of our entire system." The orchestrator routes any given query to the appropriate model, on-device or cloud, based on the complexity of the request and the personal context required.

It draws on an App Toolbox for in-app actions, a Spotlight Semantic Index for personal content, and on-screen context for real-time awareness. For queries involving current events, responses are found through Apple's own World Knowledge Service, which Federighi said the company has been building for several years.

Apple also maintains that all Private Cloud Compute infrastructure, including the extended Nvidia GPU capacity in Google's cloud, can be independently verified by third-party researchers to confirm that user data is never stored or accessed.
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Certain Apple Intelligence features in iOS 27 will carry daily usage limits, with iCloud+ subscribers receiving higher allowances than free users.


The company reiterated the details in its press release accompanying yesterday's ‌Apple Intelligence‌ announcements. Apple said the limits apply to features that rely on "powerful server models," with image generation cited as the primary example. According to Apple, increased access will be available with most ‌iCloud‌+ subscription plans.

Some Apple Intelligence features, including image generation, have daily usage limits because they rely on powerful server models. Increased access is available with most iCloud+ subscription plans, which also include Apple Intelligence support for compatible Home cameras.

The phrase "most ‌iCloud‌+ plans" suggests the cheapest tier, priced at $0.99 per month, may not qualify for the higher limits. Subscribers on any higher ‌iCloud‌+ tier, or those with an Apple One bundle, appear to be in line for expanded access to advanced AI image generation and potentially other server-reliant features.

‌iCloud‌+ subscribers will also gain additional benefits in the Home app, including upgraded support for HomeKit Secure Video on compatible smart cameras.
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Apple yesterday detailed several updates coming to Apple Music in iOS 27, including redesigned artist and album pages, an upgraded AutoMix feature, and a suite of performance improvements.


The most immediately visible change is a refreshed artist page, which now features a prominent shuffle play button, a new artist name display, and various other layout adjustments. Apple also says album pages have been updated, though no visible changes are apparent in the first ‌iOS 27‌ developer beta.

AutoMix, Apple's AI-powered feature that blends songs using matching key and tempo, has also been upgraded. Apple says it has improved the underlying algorithms to generate new transition types, making for more seamless blends between tracks. The standard Crossfade option remains available for users who prefer it.

Lyrics Translation is also expanding in ‌iOS 27‌, adding support for seven new language pairings: English to French, English to German, English to Italian, English to Korean, English to Spanish, French to English, and Japanese to English. Apple says the feature uses machine learning with fine-tuning from language experts to preserve the emotion, cultural nuance, and original intent of each song. Lyrics Pronunciation, which helps users sing along when lyrics are in another language, is gaining five new pairings as well, covering Arabic to Romanized Arabic, English to Hangul, English to Katakana, Japanese to Hangul, and Mandarin Chinese (simplified) to Katakana.

‌Apple Music‌ is also bringing Hi-Res Lossless Audio to tvOS in ‌iOS 27‌, in addition to standard Lossless Audio. Subscribers with compatible external speaker outputs will be able to enjoy music at studio quality directly through the Apple TV 4K.

Apple says ‌iOS 27‌ improves the "reliability of ‌Apple Music‌ streaming." Apple has additionally improved the speed at which the Now Playing view loads, as well as the time it takes for streaming playback to begin from a fresh launch, both of which should make the app feel more responsive overall. Users can also now swipe away the Now Playing widget on the Lock Screen to dismiss it.

‌Apple Music‌ gains deeper integration with the all-new Siri AI in ‌iOS 27‌. Users can ask ‌Siri‌ about an artist and then follow up with natural commands such as "play one of her new singles" mid-conversation to kick off a playback session without breaking the flow.
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Apple adds native ultrawide display support in macOS 27 Golden Gate, bringing higher resolutions and persistent display arrangements to users of widescreen monitors.


The update allows ultrawide displays to run at resolutions up to 5K at 120Hz. Apple also says that display arrangements are now preserved across connections, so the layout automatically restores exactly as the user left it each time they plug in.

The feature addresses a longstanding pain point for Mac users with ultrawide setups, who previously had to work around limited native resolution options or manually reconfigure their display arrangements after each connection.

macOS 27 Golden Gate is expected to ship to the public this fall. It is available to developers in beta now.
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Apple has taken a new approach to its stock wallpapers with iOS 27 and macOS 27 Golden Gate, using variations of the same artwork across all platforms for the first time.


In previous years, most platforms shipped with their own distinct wallpaper. This year, they all share a design called "Celosia," featuring sweeping, overlapping curves and soft shadows inspired by layered flower petals or folded paper. In Light mode, warm sandy gold blends into soft purple; Dark mode shifts to moody deep indigos with silvery-blue edges. The curved shapes also form a stylized "27," tying the design directly to the software version.

The ‌iOS 27‌ and iPadOS 27 Celosia collection comes in three variants: a standard ‌iOS 27‌ version, Dynamic, and Color, each with separate Light and Dark versions optimized for the Home Screen and Lock Screen. macOS 27 Golden Gate ships with dynamic wallpapers accessible only through the OS itself. Even CarPlay contains 14 Celosia wallpaper options in the first developer beta, spanning Light and Dark modes across Grey, Purple, Red, Teal, Blue, Brown, Dark Blue, and Green variants, plus a Hero option in both Light and Dark.
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macOS 27 Golden Gate brings a major improvement to iPhone Mirroring, allowing users to resize the window beyond the iPhone's fixed aspect ratio for the first time.



Until now, iPhone Mirroring has been limited to the iPhone's native aspect ratio in a small window. Users could adjust the window's overall size somewhat, but its proportions remained locked. With ‌macOS 27‌, users can now change the aspect ratio of the iPhone Mirroring window itself, offering dramatically more flexibility for workflows that rely on the feature.

The update was revealed in Apple's Platforms State of the Union address. Several fixed aspect ratios appear to be available rather than free-form resizing, meaning the system snaps to the nearest supported shape. Depending on the chosen aspect ratio, iPhone Mirroring renders either an adjusted version of the app's iPhone layout or its iPad layout, when one is available. Aspect ratio adjustments are currently limited to iOS 27-compatible apps, which at present means only native iOS apps.



‌macOS 27‌ also adds Control Center to iPhone Mirroring, joining the Home Screen, App Switcher, and Spotlight as iPhone areas accessible directly from the Mac.

The improvements arrive alongside a broader push Apple made at this year's Platforms State of the Union, where developers were encouraged to move away from designing apps for fixed orientations and specific devices, and instead target what Apple described as "a dynamic range of sizes and aspect ratios." Apple introduced resizable iOS apps in iPhone Mirroring and on ‌iPad‌, with developers who rebuild against the latest SDK automatically opted in. A new resizable iOS simulator in Xcode lets developers test layouts across a wide range of screen sizes and aspect ratios.

That guidance appears to have ramifications well beyond iPhone Mirroring, with wide speculation that the feature is essentially a veiled preparation for the upcoming foldable iPhone. Moreover, iOS 27 contains frameworks that point more explicitly toward foldable hardware: "foldState" and "angleDegrees." A third find, a new key that returns the total count of built-in displays on a device, suggests Apple is also preparing the software stack for a device with more than one integrated screen. Taken together, the strings and the resizability push appear to be laying the groundwork for the foldable iPhone, widely expected to be called the "iPhone Ultra" and anticipated to launch alongside the iPhone 18 Pro in September 2026.
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Apple yesterday held its WWDC 2026 Platforms State of the Union, detailing a wide range of updates to its developer tools and platforms, headlined by a major expansion of the Foundation Models framework.


The main announcement was free access to Apple Foundation Models running on Private Cloud Compute for developers with fewer than two million first-time App Store downloads, removing infrastructure costs as a barrier to building AI-powered features. The framework is also gaining image input support, server-side model integration allowing developers to call third-party models like Claude and Gemini through the same Swift API, and a new Dynamic Profiles system for building multi-agent workflows.

Apple also confirmed the Foundation Models framework will go open source later this summer. Key announcements from the session include:

• Foundation Models framework: Free Private Cloud Compute access for smaller developers, image input support, server-side model support (Claude, Gemini, and others), Dynamic Profiles for multi-agent workflows, and open source release later this summer.


• Core AI: A brand new framework for running custom on-device models, with ahead-of-time compilation, dedicated instruments, and Python tools for converting PyTorch models to Apple silicon. Powers Siri under the hood.


• App Intents and Siri: New entity and intent schemas let apps contribute content to Spotlight's semantic index, making it discoverable and actionable through natural language. A new View Annotations API lets ‌Siri‌ act on on-screen content conversationally.


• Xcode 27: 30% smaller and Apple silicon-only, with iCloud settings sync, customizable toolbar, per-project themes, and a new Device Hub replacing Simulator. Agentic coding is expanded significantly: agents can now interact with the simulator, localize apps, run tests, and fix crashes pulled from Organizer. Xcode Cloud builds are up to twice as fast.


• Liquid Glass forced migration: Support for opting out of the Liquid Glass design language is being removed. Apps recompiled with Xcode 27 will automatically adopt the new design. Liquid Glass itself has been refined with better content diffusion, a new darkened edge for depth, and a user-facing transparency slider.


• Intel Mac deprecation complete: macOS Tahoe was the final Intel release. Developers can now ship Apple silicon-only binaries on the Mac App Store.


• iOS app resizability: iPhone apps on iPad and in iPhone Mirroring now support resizing, with apps automatically opting in when rebuilt with the latest SDK. Speculated to be related to the upcoming foldable iPhone.


• SwiftUI updates: Reorderable containers and swipe actions for any container, layouts that resize up to twice as fast, lazy state initialization, and a new document infrastructure with first-class URL access.


• Swift 6.4: Includes an anyAppleOS availability shorthand, suppressible compiler warnings, async support in defer blocks, and improved type-checker diagnostics. Parts of the OS kernel are now being written in Swift.


• Notion migrating to SwiftUI: Apple cited Notion as a major app moving its UI from cross-platform web technologies to native SwiftUI for performance and consistency.


• Game Porting Toolkit: Major update adding AI skills for coding agents and new Metal command line tools to speed up bringing games to Apple platforms.


• MLX: Apple's open source ML research framework now supports Metal 4 and can scale model training across multiple Macs via RDMA over Thunderbolt.


• Spatial Preview framework: Mac apps can now extend 3D models into space around Apple Vision Pro wearers in real time.

Apple also mentioned that its fifth Apple Developer Center will open this fall in Berlin, joining Cupertino, Shanghai, Singapore, and Bengaluru.

See Apple's full address video for more information. All sessions from ‌WWDC 2026‌ are available via the Apple Developer app, the Apple Developer website, and YouTube.
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Apple yesterday announced a redesigned Find My app in watchOS 27 that brings all tracking functionality into a single, map-centric interface.


Previously split across separate Find Devices, Find People, and Find Items apps, the new app now consolidates everything into one unified view. Apple says the update makes it easier to locate the people, devices, and items you care about, with a map-centric layout as the central navigation paradigm.

The redesign also introduces more flexible sharing options within ‌Find My‌, giving users greater control over how they share their location and item tracking with others.
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Instagram is now rolling out a long-awaited feature that lets users rearrange posts in any order on their profile grid.


The update, which began reaching users on June 8, is available via the Instagram app for iPhone and Android. To reorder posts, users can go to their profile, long-press any post on the grid, select "reorder grid" from the pop-up menu, then drag content to the desired position. Changes save immediately and are visible to all visitors.

Until now, Instagram profiles have displayed posts in strict reverse-chronological order, with the only exception being the ability to pin up to three posts at the top. The new feature lifts that restriction entirely, allowing posts of any age to be freely repositioned. Pinned posts continue to appear at the top regardless of any reordering.


The feature had been available to some users in test groups prior to the wider release. It arrives nearly a year after it was first revealed. Instagram first announced the change in January 2025, partly as an apology to users whose carefully assembled profile pages had been disrupted when the app switched from square to taller, vertically oriented thumbnails.
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Apple expands GymKit support to the iPhone and AirPods Pro 3 with iOS 27, extending the gym equipment connectivity feature beyond Apple Watch for the first time.


GymKit originally launched in 2017 and has, until now, been exclusive to the Apple Watch feature, requiring users to wear the watch and tap it against compatible equipment to pair. The expansion means that iPhone and ‌AirPods Pro 3‌ users can now also connect to supported cardio machines, including treadmills, ellipticals, bikes, and stair-steppers, for more accurate real-time workout metrics, without needing an Apple Watch on their wrist.

The feature works via two-way data exchange, syncing metrics such as speed, pace, distance, calories, and heart rate between the device and the machine in real time, with the goal of aligning what the user sees on their device with what the equipment displays.
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Apple today unveiled watchOS 27, featuring a redesigned dynamic app grid, new gesture controls, and a raft of usability and battery improvements.


The new dynamic app grid surfaces and rearranges five apps based on context and usage. Users can simply tap the bottom center icon to go to the rest of their apps.

A new tap gesture lets users select a widget in the Smart Stack by tapping their index finger and thumb together once, allowing interaction even when the other hand is occupied. Apple is also expanding Smart Stack suggestions to surface more contextually relevant widgets, including birthday reminders for close contacts, a parked car location card, sleep alarm adjustments ahead of select holidays, and transit card balance checks.

Users can now create custom passes for any membership or card that uses a QR code or barcode, such as a library card, using their iPhone and access it directly from the Apple Watch's Wallet app or pin it to the Smart Stack. Transit cards and IDs will also appear in the Smart Stack.

Apple says it has improved Liquid Glass in watchOS 27 to improve readability through more uniform refraction and better contrast. Other improvements include faster Music playback startup, faster app extension launches, improved Wi-Fi connectivity, more efficient water detection, better battery efficiency with suggested optimizations, Guest Key support, and the ability to view card balances in the Wallet app. The settings interface in the Apple Watch app on iPhone also features a new design.

Find My is completely redesigned with a more map-centric layout and consolidates the Find Devices, Find People, and Find Items apps into a single unified view. A new Call Context feature can proactively surface relevant information from other apps during a phone call to a business, such as displaying a confirmation code from Mail when a user calls an airline. watchOS 27 also includes a large number of fitness, workout, and sleep tracking improvements.
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Apple today announced new slideshow features coming to the Photos app, allowing users to play any set of photos and videos as a slideshow.


There are options to set the slide duration, transition style, and music. iOS 27 also lets users save any slideshow directly as a video to their ‌Photos‌ library for easy playback later.

Additional new features include the ability to save individual video frames as photos, more flexible album organization tools, emoji reactions in Shared Albums, a view of recent Shared Album activity, and access to full-resolution photos and videos in Shared Albums. Apple also introduces new collections in ‌Photos‌, including Captured by Me and Identity Documents, alongside improved search results for people and pets.
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watchOS 27 contains a series of enhancements to fitness and sleep tracking, including new Workout Buddy insights, improved indoor run tracking, and more.


Workout Buddy is gaining new data-driven motivation features, delivering progress updates for pace, distance, and workout duration based on a user's fitness history. Apple is also enabling Workout Buddy to function without an iPhone nearby, allowing users to stay motivated during workouts without needing a phone in their pocket or hand. Workout Buddy is additionally expanding to Spanish, letting Spanish-speaking users receive personalized fitness motivation in their preferred language.

Indoor run and walk distance tracking is also getting more accurate in watchOS 27. Apple says improved motion tracking algorithms will more precisely measure treadmill distance directly from the wrist, without requiring a connected iPhone. Route maps in the Fitness app are also receiving an accuracy improvement, giving users a more precise view of their workout paths after the fact.

Sleep tracking is becoming more accurate as well, though Apple has not yet detailed the specific changes underlying the improvement. The update also brings a step count sync fix where steps counted in the Health app will now sync with the Fitness app directly.
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Apple today announced that iOS 27 will expand the Health app's Cycle Tracking feature with dedicated perimenopause and menopause support, including notifications, symptom logging, and educational resources.


The update will enable Cycle Tracking to detect when a user's logged cycle patterns are suggestive of perimenopause and surface a notification accordingly. Users will also be able to log related symptoms directly within the Health app and access educational resources designed to provide guidance and support through the transition. There are also new Fitness+ workouts for perimenopause and menopause.

The new perimenopause and menopause support in ‌iOS 27‌ uses long-term cycle data to detect a hormonal transition that can begin a decade or more before menopause itself. The additions are part of broader Health app improvements in ‌iOS 27‌ that Apple says include more advanced cycle tracking overall, faster data updates across the app, and refreshed design elements.

Apple introduced Cycle Tracking across the iPhone and Apple Watch simultaneously with iOS 13 and watchOS 6, and has deepened the feature set steadily since, most notably with the addition of wrist temperature sensing in the Apple Watch Series 8, which enabled basal body temperature tracking and retrospective ovulation estimates.
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Apple today confirmed that the Apple Watch Series 9 is compatible with watchOS 27, after the device was mistakenly omitted from the software's official compatibility page.


Apple updated its website immediately following its WWDC 2026 keynote, and the watchOS 27 page listed a shorter compatibility list than many users expected: the Apple Watch SE 3, Series 10, Series 11, Ultra 2, and Ultra 3. That would have meant watchOS 27 dropped support for the Apple Watch Series 9, despite both the Series 9 and Ultra 2 containing the same S9 chip.

Shortly after Apple released watchOS 27 developer beta 1, Apple Watch Series 9 owners began reporting that they were able to download, install, and run the beta on their devices. Apple confirmed to MacRumors that the Series 9 omission was an error, and that the device is indeed supported. Apple's website has since been corrected.

watchOS 27 still drops support for the Apple Watch Series 6, Series 7, and Series 8, along with the original Ultra and SE 2, a significant cut that makes it the largest single-year drop in Apple Watch software support to date. The update introduces a new Siri AI app, new workout data insights, Spanish support for Workout Buddy, and more.
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Apple today announced an update to iCloud Shared Albums to allow friends and family on Android and Windows to join and contribute photos more conveniently, with support for full-resolution images.


The improvement for Android and Windows users removes a notable friction point for mixed-device groups, enabling users outside the Apple ecosystem to participate in shared albums via iCloud.com more easily, as well as add photos at full-resolution with no compression for the first time.

Apple has also introduced new ways to filter and react to photos in shared albums, along with updated tools for inviting others to contribute.
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Tim Cook closed out what is expected to be his last keynote as Apple's chief executive officer today with some emotive final remarks.


Wrapping up a pre-recorded video message, Cook reflected on his tenure at the company. "Some of the highlights of my time as CEO have been events like this, sharing powerful new tools with all of you," he said, adding that what developers create with Apple's platforms has been "a constant reminder that imagination has no limits."

One of the greatest highlights of my time as CEO have been events like this, sharing powerful new tools with all of you and what you create with them has been a constant reminder that imagination has no limits.

Over the years, you have helped people create, learn, and experience the world in explain ways, and with the incredible capabilities we introduced today, I truly believe the best is still ahead.

Cook said it had been "an honor" to lead the company, describing Apple's north star as always creating products that serve people's needs. "I truly believe the best is still ahead," he said, before thanking the audience.

Cook has served as CEO since 2011, succeeding Steve Jobs. John Ternus, Apple's SVP of Hardware Engineering, will takeover from Cook in September, just in time for the announcement of new iPhone models.
This article, "Tim Cook Delivers Farewell Remarks at His Last Apple Keynote as CEO" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Apple appears to be laying the groundwork for a foldable iPhone in iOS 27, with new references discovered in the operating system's frameworks and a notable emphasis on flexible app layouts at this year's Platforms State of the Union.


During the Platforms State of the Union session, Apple told developers to move away from designing apps for specific devices and fixed orientations, and to instead target what it described as "a dynamic range of sizes and aspect ratios." The framing appears to go beyond the stated context of iPhone Mirroring and the iPad.

Apple used the session to introduce support for resizable iOS apps in iPhone Mirroring and on the ‌iPad‌. Developers who rebuild against the latest SDK will have their apps automatically opted in to resizability, Apple said, with SwiftUI apps that already use scene lifecycle and standard framework support for basic resizability considered "well on your way to supporting full resizability."

A new resizable iOS simulator and Previews in Xcode were also announced, allowing developers to test layouts across a range of screen sizes and aspect ratios. Apple said it is also providing a skill for coding agents to help identify and fix common resizability issues.

The guidance effectively asks developers to treat every iOS app as something that may need to reflow across a wide variety of form factors, which is a requirement that makes considerably more sense if a future iPhone is capable of folding open to a substantially larger inner display.

As if that wasn't enough evidence for the upcoming foldable iPhone, X user @samhenrigold spotted two strings within ‌iOS 27‌'s frameworks that point directly toward foldable hardware: "foldState" and "angleDegrees." A third discovery, a new key that returns the total count of built-in displays on a device, is a further indication that Apple is preparing the software stack for a device capable of presenting more than one integrated screen.

The foldable iPhone, widely expected to be called the "iPhone Ultra," is anticipated to be announced in September 2026 alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and ‌iPhone 18 Pro‌ Max, with a book-style design featuring a roughly 7.8-inch inner display and a 5.5-inch cover display. Other rumored key features include Touch ID instead of Face ID, a titanium frame and Liquid Metal hinge, dual rear cameras, the A20 chip, and the C2 modem. The device is expected to start at over $2,000, making it the most expensive iPhone ever.
This article, "iOS 27 Hints at Foldable iPhone With App Resizability Push and New Framework Strings" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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