iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 - what worked, and what happened on the contrary? Here are the most interesting news

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iOS 15 and iPadOS 15: OCR in several places at once

One of the most interesting new products this year is the OCR (optical character recognition) mechanism, which can be triggered in many different places in iOS 15 and iPadOS 15. The technology itself that allows you to extract editable text from photos is not older than the internet, but what deserves attention is this solution by Apple.

In the case of iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, the ability to recognize characters is available in the camera application, gallery, Safari browser and the window with freshly taken screenshots, and you can interact with it immediately (translate, make a phone, add an event in the calendar etc.) Text can also be captured directly from the level of text boxes.

You can read more about this novelty in a separate material: OCR in iOS 15, i.e. automatic detection of text in photos - how does it work?

iOS 15 and iPadOS 15: Focus mode, i.e. Do not disturb on steroids

The second novelty that caught my eye is the Focus Mode, i.e. the development of the Do Not Disturb mode. From now on, you can define several different settings of this type - separate applications and contacts can be added to the whitelist during training, and others while reading books, playing games, etc. Each of them can also be automatically launched in different situations and is synchronized between phones, tablets, watches and computers.

Interestingly, this feature can be used to change active desktops dynamically or on demand - and each application can be added to the Home screen more than once. The focus mode is also closely related to the new notification system, which allows you to mute some applications and deliver notifications only a few times a day. Configuring all of this, unfortunately, is not very easy and requires a lot of work ...

You can read more about this news in a separate material: I am checking the new Focus Mode in iOS 15 and macOS 12. Do not disturb on steroids

PS Operating systems with Focus Mode in mind try to combine our IM contact profiles to pass something besides e-mail and iMessage, but so far this integration doesn't work any more than it works.

iOS 15 and iPadOS 15: The all-new Safari isn't forced

One of the most controversial news from WWDC 2021 was the new web browser interface for smartphones. It is true that Apple in the course of work on iOS 15 decided that in this case it will allow users to return to the old interface on request. By default, however, the address bar turns into a left-right tab bar, and you can save different groups of tabs for this.

I myself was very skeptical about both of these novelties, but both the tab bar and grouping them in the cloud and the new view of all open tabs, which shows rectangular flat thumbnails, instead of the previous carousel, turned out to be a bull's eye. Jumping between open pages as well as between applications is intuitive.

In the case of iPadOS, there are no such revolutionary changes, but also here you can choose two interface modes that are consistent with those available in iOS. One is based on the new iPhone interface and links tabs with the address bar within one bar, while the other is more classic and displays the tab bar under the address bar.

I just hope that Apple will solve one problem - after holding your finger on the link, the link copy function usually goes to the very bottom of the interface, near the Home bar! It really annoys it, because in most cases it is just about copying the web address when I keep my finger on the hyperlink for a longer time.

iOS 15 and iPadOS 15: Safari extensions are here

Mobile editions of Apple's browser received support for extensions other than the so-called. Content Blockers to remove ads and trackers. It now depends on the developers whether and which desktop Safari add-ons will go to iPhones and iPads, and the first mini-programs of this type have already appeared. Among them are, for example, Noir (adds Dark Mode where it is not), Amplosion (redirects from AMP to regular pages) and Achoo (website inspector).

iOS 15: New half-screen pop-up.

There are many such delicate changes in the interface in the form of a different shade of bars in the main view of the application and a change of the margin, but they never catch your eye, unlike the new type of pop-up window. It covers half the screen just like the sharing screen and you can see them, among others. after launching the reading room mode. The question of which developers will decide to implement this solution at home remains an open question.

iOS 15 and iPadOS 15: the return of the carousel and the magnifying glass

iOS 14 removed two features that users have been missing out on. The first is the ability to conveniently set the date and time using the so-called the carousel, and the other is the magnifying glass as you move the cursor, which magnifies the characters, making it easier to target the desired piece of text. I missed both of these solutions, but I'm glad that Apple was able to admit a mistake.

The Loupe is back in iOS 15 with a slightly changed shape, and the new carousel brings together the best of both worlds. For iPhone, the carousel is the default, but you can start typing on the on-screen keyboard when you tap a number, and on tablets, the carousel is displayed when you roll your finger over it, but when you hover, the default is to enter numbers from the keyboard.

iOS 15: drag and drop, or drag and drop between apps

The drag-and-drop mode has so far worked on iPhones only within one application, but now you can hold your finger, for example, a photo and transfer it to another program - just like on tablets. However, it requires a bit of exercise and I will rather not use it on a daily basis.

iPadOS 15: drawer for apps, widgets and multitasking

We have been waiting for a year for Apple to implement the app drawer and widgets on iPads and we finally have it, but ... this is not the clou of the latest software update for tablets. The new features in working with multiple windows at the same time are much more important - the screen sharing and Slide Over modes can now be operated from the keyboard level. There's also a new button to help navigate the windows, and it's all a step in the right direction!

You can read more about what's new in iPadOS in a separate article that will appear soon in Spider's Web.

iOS 15 and iPadOS 15: Spotlight now on the lock screen

Until now, to get to the search engine, you had to unlock the phone first and go to the home screen. Now, after user authorization, you can run a search directly on the lock screen. It'll take a while to get used to it, but it's the fastest way to launch an app right now.

iOS 15 and iPadOS 15: Game controller support

For a long time, iPhones and iPads can be connected to pads, both designed for them, as well as those from Sony and Microsoft. Now, attaching such an accessory will allow you to automatically run the Game profile in Focus mode, and in the case of tablets, you can use analogues to select icons on the home screen and go to the desktop with the Xbox or PlayStation button. In addition, there is the option of taking screenshots and recording video of the game with the button by pressing and holding it twice.

iOS 15 and iPadOS 15: Photos and the camera

Here, of course, the biggest news will be introduced by new phones, including, for example, the movie mode and ProRes video format support, but also the owners of older devices have something to be happy about. In addition to the above-mentioned OCR support, the Camera has a new QR code recognition interface and the option to permanently save more settings, and in Photos you can display and edit the metadata of all photos. As for me a bomb!

iOS 15 and iPadOS 15: Shared with you

Apps like Safari, Apple Music, Apple TV and Photos can detect content that friends have shared with us in the messenger and display it in a prominent place. I admit that I did not like this novelty and I quickly turned it off - I do not use iMessage a lot, and I save the content received from my friends on my own, be it in the camera roll, in notes or in the section to read later in the browser .

iOS 15 and iPadOS 15: new video playback window

Applications using the video playback menu system have been refreshed. Buttons that allow you to change the playback speed, select the soundtrack and turn on subtitles are located after the button with three dots. It's easier to read, but it takes a bit longer to get to these options than before, so I'm not very happy with this change.

iOS 15 and iPadOS 15: Find app and new notifications

The locator has changed to the Find app. You can still locate your own and your loved ones' equipment and equipment, and there is an option of notifying the user when, for example, he forgets to take his tablet or wallet with him and walks away from them. You can also add certain locations, such as home or office, to the exceptions.

iOS 15 and iPadOS 15: More iCloud storage, but only when you make a connection

Good news for people who plan to buy a new device, but have run out of cloud space - from now on, iCloud Drive will have the option of storing additional gigabytes for the time of transferring data from one device to another by creating a copy of the data in the cloud. After that, the user decides for himself whether he will continue to pay the subscription or whether he prefers to delete the backup and continue to use 5 GB of free space.

iOS 15 and iPadOS 15: iCloud +

An incentive to use the iCloud service may be new products within the so-called iCloud +. One of them is hiding the e-mail address from external service providers (the automatically generated alias can be turned off at any time) and the so-called. Private Transfer. Traffic is then filtered by Apple's servers to protect our privacy (although this may occasionally cause problems with displaying pages).

iOS 15 and iPadOS 15: AirPods as a hearing aid

Finally, it is also worth mentioning the feature that all owners of AirPods with hearing problems will be pleased. Thanks to the update to iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, you can decide to boost the sounds in the so-called contact mode, so that the Apple headset can act as a quasi-hearing aid.

You can read more about this novelty in a separate material: I turned the AirPodsy Pro into a hearing aid. Finally, I hear it right

Of course, there are many minor changes in iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, including the interface and system applications, but above I have presented the most important news from my perspective. Some of the news announced during WWDC 2021, such as SharePlay, in turn, could not be delivered on time and we are waiting for them to appear as part of one of the updates.

Bonus: iOS 15 and iPadOS 15: what else was missing?

Sometimes I wonder if the Siri voice assistant, developed in 2011, will be able to reach the age of majority before learning Polish, but it is slowly going to happen - it is difficult to expect the voice assistant's debut, since we do not even have a bar with three word suggestions above the keyboard . Typing by swiping the keyboard on the phone and recognizing handwriting in text fields and Notes still does not work.

Apple also does not support our language in the Translate application, and intelligent suggestions in the Spotlight search engine and in Safari are constantly neutered in Poland - just like eg Apple Maps. We also cannot buy series or audiobooks in the iTunes Store, almost no external services integrate with the Apple TV application and we still do not have access to Apple News, Fitness +, and thus the highest plan of Apple One ...

Tags: AppleiosiOS 15iPadipadosiPadOS 15iphone