The 13 biggest announcements from Apple
The renamed Apple Vision Pro 26: A fresh look at the latest major OS updates in Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference 2025 keynote
Apple announced the latest major update for its Vision Pro headset during the company’s WWDC 2025 keynote presentation on Monday. It was renamed visionOS 26 in response to Apple naming its mobile and desktop operating systems.
One of the biggest additions is widgets that appear blended into physical environments, , “integrating seamlessly into a user’s space and reappearing every time they put on Apple Vision Pro.” The new visionOS 26 has several new features including a Clock, Weather, Music, and Photos that shows stunning panoramas and spatial photos of their favorite memories, and users can personalize the widgets with frame width, color, and depth.
A key feature that promises to improve the day-to-day use of the Apple Vision Pro is a new hands-free scrolling option. VisionOS required users to pinch their thumb and index finger to grab content and then drag it towards the screen, or perform a gesture to scroll more quickly. The Look to Scroll feature will allow users to explore apps and websites using just their eyes, with the option to adjust the speed of the scroll. Eye scrolling will be available in Apple’s own apps while an API will allow developers to add the functionality to third-party apps.
Apple is also improving Personas in visionOS 26 making the hyperrealistic avatars “feel more natural and familiar.” The new Personas will have a full side profile view that is remarkably accurate hair, lashes, and complexion. When creating a Persona users will be able to preview how their avatar looks spatially and make adjustments as needed.
In addition to the current support for French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish, the Vision Pro will also have English support in Australia, Canada, India, Singapore, and the UK. The Control Center was redesign to consolidate features likeGuest User, Focus, and Travel Mode into one view, and Vision Pro added support for folders to organize and group similar apps.
Apple packed a bunch of major updates into its annual Worldwide Developer Conference keynote. During the event, the company showed off the sleek design refresh coming to its operating systems, as well as a mix of new features for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, AirPods, and more.
As predicted, Apple has given each of its operating systems new version numbers that now align with the year after their release, rather than the version number. The new names are iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS. It’s easier to remember, since they’ll be coming out in late 2025, but they’re not quite as popular as Apple’s other products.
Apple is revamping the design across its operating systems. The Liquid Glass theme will add more transparency to the buttons, switches, and text controls in the interface.
The new look of the date, time, notification previews on the lockscreen will let you see your wallpaper behind all the text.
As part of its broader redesign, Apple revealed revamps for some of its core apps in iOS 26. Now, webpages in Safari will take up your entire screen. You can use the tool bar to find Slow-Mo and cinematic modes, and the camera app shows you two main options, photos and video, with a simplified layout.
The Phone app will get a new layout that consolidates favorites, recents, and voicemails into one panel, but calls, contacts, and keypad remain on the bottom.
Apple is bringing a major update to iPadOS 26 that should make multitasking easier. New windowing capabilities will let you resize app windows, place them around your display, and open more windows at once. It also has a new menu bar, which you can use to scroll down to view various options and commands. It all looks a lot more Mac-like.
You can now change the background of your chats and create polls with Apple’s new Messages. Some other updates include typing indicators for group chats and the ability to screen messages from unknown senders, which will appear in a separate folder instead of your main list.
New Features in Apple WWDC 2025: the 13 biggest announcements ios 26 from the App Store, Play Together, and Spotlight
Apple has a new Games app which will let you play your Apple Arcade games and also discover new ones in one place. You can check out the Library tab to view the games you’ve downloaded from the App Store, as well as use the Play Together option to challenge friends.
The next macOS software update will introduce an upgrade to Spotlight that will make your search results more relevant with personalization and filtering options to help you search for specific files, folders, apps, and messages. It also adds the ability to take actions like sending an email or creating a note.
There’s a new Apple Intelligence feature coming to iOS 26 that lets you use the same buttons you would to take a screenshot to call upon the AI assistant. From there, you can ask additional questions about what you’re seeing on your screen with ChatGPT or search for a particular object on Google or Etsy to find similar images.
Along with the Liquid Glass design language, Apple is bringing a new “wrist flick” gesture to watchOS 26 that you can use to dismiss notifications. The Apple Watch will have a new AI-powered “Workout Buddy,” as well, which will generate personalized advice and encouragements.
Live translation into the Messages, FaceTime, and Phone apps is being built by Apple. There is an integration that will allow you to hear speech spoken aloud and translate texts in the Messages app. You can listen to your conversation partner while you have a live translation displayed in the video conference application from Apple.
Source: Apple WWDC 2025: the 13 biggest announcements
On-Device Large Language Model for the Design and Development of Siri-enabled Speech Recognition on AirPods Devices, from Preliminary Conference Summary
Apple previewed an update that will let users take a photo with their iPhone or iPad by tapping the stem of their AirPods. It’s also working on a new feature that lets users record “studio-quality” vocals in noisy areas with voice isolation. The features of the 4th iteration of the AirPods were Active Noise Cancellation, as well as the Pro 2.
Though Apple’s keynote was a bit light on AI news, the company announced that it will let third-party app developers access the on-device large language model used by Apple Intelligence, allowing them to create tools of their own.
