All My Notes From The WWDC 2021 Keynote
Although I have tried to note down everything that has been presented, it is likely, that I have missed a point here and there.
Still, I find it a pretty impressive list considering it has been presented in under two hours.
You will find all topics in the chronological order as they have been presented.
My top three updates:
- Concurrency in Swift
- AirPlay to Mac
- Measuring respiratory rate during sleep and detecting trends
Feel free to buy me a coffee if you like this post.
FaceTime
- Spatial audio: Voices are spread out
- Voice Isolation: Machine learning blocks out ambient noise
- Wide Spectrum: All sounds get picked up
- Video: View all people in a grid view
- Video: View caller in portrait mode
- FaceTime Links: Schedule FaceTime calls and share it anywhere, other platforms can join in browser, still end-to-end encrypted
- SharePlay: Listen together to music, watch movies and series, share your screen, extend video to Apple TV, while everyone is still watching in sync, with SharePlay API developers can bring their own apps right into FaceTime
Messages
- Shared with you: What has been shared in messages will be present in News, Music, Photos, Safari, Podcasts and Apple TV
Notifications
- New icons
- Notification Summary: On device intelligence to arrange the summary, ordered by priority
Focus
- A new way to match device to current mindset: work, personal, based on location, time of day
- Home Screen matches current mode
- Automatically sets on other devices
Live Text
- System wide OCR (optical character recognition)
- Capture and digitise notes with camera
- Also works with old photos
- Look up text, automatically call numbers with just a tap, display information on recognised objects
- For 7 languages on iPhone, iPad and Mac
Spotlight
- Search photos
- Can even find text in photos (Live Text)
- Find everything from contacts
Photos Memories
- Intelligently curates your favourite moments
- “For You”-tab
- Memory Mixes
- Selects look and feel along with the right music
- Intelligent song suggestions
Wallet
- Keys for everyday places, house, apartment, flat, car, office, hotels
- Identity cards: Personal IDs, drivers licenses, etc.
Weather
- New design, changes according to weather conditions
- Additional information
- Full screen high resolution weather maps with multiple overlays
Maps
- New map roll out to other countries
- Interactive globe
- Incredible new details for cities, elevation, new road colours and labels, custom designed landmarks
- New night time mode
- Driving: more details for roads, turn lanes, bus and taxi lanes and more, cross walks, bike lanes
- Highways: More detailed overlays for complicated intersections
- Later this year this comes to car play as well
- Public transit users get infos on lines, notifies to get off train
- Also available on Apple Watch
- When lost, scan buildings with camera, AR shows the right direction
AirPods
- Conversation Boost: Help people with mild hearing challenges, focuses to the person in front of you, reduce amount of ambient noise
- Announced Notifications: Siri tells you who is calling
- Find My: Find lost AirPods and play sound, proximity view
- Notification when leaving AirPods behind
- Spatial Audio and head tracking will be extended to tvOS, macOS
- Dolby Atmos on Music for selected artists
iPadOS 15
- Widgets: Can be added to home screen, larger widgets that accommodates for iPads larger screen
- App Library: Access is right in the dock, hide pages that you no longer need, or reorder them
- Multitasking: Menu to select “split view” and other modes
- The shelf: place where minimised apps are stored, apps can be removed from there as well
- New set of keyboard shortcuts
Notes
- Mention other people in shared notes
- Activity view about a note
- Tags
- Quick note: Fast and easy way to get to a note, swipe from the corner of the screen to work on note, then swipe it away when done, aware of app that is being used using, e.g. add link from safari
Translate
- New for iPad
- Auto Translate: Detects when speaking
- System wide translation: Select text anywhere and let it translate, even in photos
Swift Playgrounds
- Build apps on iPad: With SwiftUI, works with Xcode on Mac, try it locally, when ready, submit it to the AppStore
Privacy
- Mail Privacy Protection: Hides IP address, location and if emails have been opened
- Safari: Hide IP address
- App Privacy Report: New section in settings, e.g. domains that have been contacted
- Siri: On device speech recognition, all audio that is recorded is processed locally, no internet connection is needed, more speed when commands are spoken to Siri
iCloud
- Account Recovery: New way to get into account, add people you trust to help them recover your account
- Digital Legacy Program: Pass down digital information, add people to your account as legacy content, your information can be passed along
- iCloud+: Private Relay, browse with Safari in a more private way, all traffic leaving device is encrypted
- Hide My Email: Easy to setup many email addresses and also easily delete them
- HomeKit Secure Video
- All at the same price
Health
- Walking Steadiness: Get insights if fall risk increased
- Detailed descriptions to interpret lab data
- Trends: Insights on long-term changes, alert when there is a new trend in the data
- Share health data that you choose with health care provide in a safe way
Family
- Health Sharing: A private and secure way to receive alerts concerning health status of family members, also trends will be highlighted
watchOS
- New Mindfulness App: Breathe and Reflect
- Sleep App: Respiratory rate can now be measured
- New workout types: Tai-Chi, Pilates
- Apple Fitness+: New series of workouts, new artist spotlight series
- Portrait Swatch Face: Share photos via tap directly to message or mail
- Gifs in messages
Home
- Home keys feature to lock or unlock door
- Ask Siri to play something on Apple TV
- Watch movies in sync with friends online
- Apple TV: Shared with you
- New group in Apple TV for the whole family: For all of you
- HomePod mini as speakers for TV 4K
- HomePod mini for more countries
- Voice recognition to all countries where iPod mini ships
- Siri for 3rd party devices
- matter: New smartphone interoperability standard
- HomeKit enabled doorbell on watchOS, with video feed
- Package detection: Get notified when package has been delivered to door
- While viewing camera, enable nearby accessories
macOS Monterey
- Universal Control: Single mouse and keyboard to move between Mac and iPad and iMac
- AirPlay to Mac: Forward screen from iPhone to Mac for example
- Shortcuts to Mac: Automate everyday tasks on the Mac, import Automator workflows
- Safari: Tab Groups, they sync to all devices
- Extensions: New for iPad and iPhone
Developer Technologies
- APIs: Object Capture, series of 2D images to photorealistic 3D object and all other features mentioned before
- Swift: Concurrency with async, await, actor
- App Store App Product Page: Multiple custom product pages to address different users of your app
- App Store In-App Events: Sign-up to events, new App Store widgets displays upcoming events
- Xcode Cloud: Commit code, build in the cloud, runs tests, simulate on any kind of apple device, tests results displayed in Xcode, distribute apps to team and TestFlight
- TestFlight for Mac