Apple’s annual developers’ conference WWDC keynote is just around the corner, and that means we’ll get to see what’s in store for iOS 15, the next big update for iPhones.
The final release of iOS 15 is still some time away, though – it will likely arrive alongside the iPhone 13 in September/October – and that means there’s just about time to get our iOS 15 wish list to Tim and the team. Here are five features we’d love to see in iOS 15 on iPhone.
1. An always-on display
The Apple Watch has an always-on display, as do many Android phones – and the iPhone has used the same OLED screen tech as the Androids since the iPhone X, so there’s no technical reason why we couldn’t have an always-on clock and some basic notifications whenever you glance at it. Speaking of which…
2. More nuanced notifications
The existing Notifications system is getting a bit messy on iPhone, and rumours say things will be improved dramatically in iOS 15. We’ll be able to set more statuses than Driving/Do Not Disturb, and we’ll be able to customise notifications’ behaviour accordingly.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could have different notification schemes for work time and personal time, for when we’re home and when we’re out, for when we’re feeling cheery and when we’re in a huge huff? Maybe that last one’s just us.
3. Widgets that work
When we long-press on our Home Screen widgets they just give us the option to customise them, edit our Home Screen or remove a Widget stack. How about widgets that we can interact with and perform basic tasks without opening the related app?
4. Some love for the Lock Screen
The Lock Screen is desperately overdue a revamp, so we’re happy to hear rumours of a redesign for iOS 15. We’d really love to have widgets right there, or Apple Watch-style complications on there so we can do things like check our schedule or the next hour’s weather without unlocking. At the moment the Lock Screen is a lot of wasted space. Go on Apple, put Dark Sky's weather predictions there.
Oh, did someone just say Dark Sky?
5. Do more with Dark Sky
We love the Dark Sky weather app, which Apple acquired in early 2020. Since then it seems to have taken the same approach we do to impulse purchases, which is to leave them in their wrapping and forget all about them.
As much as it’s useful to have hour-by-hour predictions in the iOS Weather app, it’s still reliant on The Weather Channel and feels as if it’s trying to shove too much information onto the screen at once. A revamped and ideally customisable Weather app and widget would be a wonderful thing, built around Dark Sky's data.
And while Apple's at it, making that data freely available to other weather apps to do cool things with would be lovely too.
