From getting Siri to control your iPhone to crazy new photo editing features, here are the top new features of iOS 27.
Quick new iOS 27 features
The updated Timer control
In the Control Center, you’ll find the updated Timer control that has a cool new visualizer. It is so much better to use in iOS 27. You swipe to set the time from anything between 1 minute to 2 hours. It also has a satisfying haptic effect as you swipe, which is nice.
Shortcuts you can describe out loud
Another great iOS 27 feature is in the Shortcuts app, where you can create shortcuts by saying what you want them to do. For example, you can say make a noise to tell me to put my phone on charge when the battery is below 20%. You hit Send and then it’ll make that shortcut for you in a matter of seconds. These used to be hard to make but now they’re easy.
Shake to undo
Let’s say you’ve made a bunch of changes customizing your home screen. If you shake, you can undo that one change. If you shake again, you can undo the previous change. And if you shake again, you can undo the previous change and keep on shaking until you are completely satisfied with all your changes.
Shake to undo also works in other apps. In Notes, for example, you can bring back any deleted text. In Safari, maybe you deleted a tab, you can bring the tab back. Even with Messages, if you deleted something by mistake, you can shake to bring it back. This is useful, especially when it comes to customizing your home screen.
Customization
The Liquid Glass transparency slider
There have been a bunch of updates to customization. In the Appearance settings, under Liquid Glass, there’s now a new slider that makes everything less transparent or more transparent. This means you can now control the transparency of let’s say your app icons or widgets to make things look a lot more visible. Nice.
Minimizing the lock screen clock
The lock screen also had a major update that I love, starting with the clock, where you’ll find a new icon. If you tap the icon, that minimizes the clock and puts it inside the top widget section. So if you want a better view of your wallpaper, now you can. Sweet.
Extend for wallpapers
If you want to set a photo or image of yours that doesn’t fit too well as a background, you can now pinch to zoom out to get the new Extend option. If you tap Extend, your iPhone will extend that image and generate everything around your wallpaper to get that perfect framing. Extend also works with regular photos you want to use, basically any image you might have. You’ve got to admit that is crazy cool.
Image Playground wallpapers
If you don’t have an image, you could instead choose the new Image Playground option. All you do is type in a description of what you want, like desert dunes at midnight, hit Send, and in a couple of seconds, it’ll generate a brand new wallpaper for you. That looks good. You can get some pretty cool results and even take your own photos and generate them into multiple different styles.
The resizable connectivity control
This is super hidden, but in the Control Center, when you go to edit your controls and you resize the connectivity control, it now has a few other sizes. So you get the large original one, a new medium size, the pill-shaped sizes, and the small size you already know.
Full screen home screen widgets
The home screen widgets also got a new size in iOS 27. If you tap and hold down and extend the handle, you can now have full screen widgets. This works with the photo widgets, the weather, notes, reminders, music, and the calendar. Basically all the good ones. And don’t forget, you could stack these giant widgets all into one, because you do get a lot more detail with them.
App updates
Custom passes in Wallet
Three apps got some big changes in iOS 27: Wallet, Weather, and Camera. But Wallet is probably my favorite update, because when you go to add a card now, you can create your own custom pass. So finally we can add membership cards, loyalty cards, tickets, all that jazz. All you have to do is scan the card. Your iPhone then automatically creates the pass for you and you can then customize it.
If you hit the little palette icon, firstly, you can change the background color. There are a few different options to choose from, nothing too crazy. Then there are four different background options to choose from. You can have a bit of fun with it. Then you can also choose a completely custom icon. Mine was a gym pass. I went with a little gym bro. In all the text fields, you can put down exactly what info it is you want.
In iOS 27, there is no need to carry around a stack of cards. You can add them to your iPhone. The crazy part though is Samsung has had this feature for 10 years. So it’s about time, Apple. Thank you.
A more detailed Weather app
The Weather app got way more detailed in iOS 27. There are three new buttons at the top. The first one is Conditions. That shows the temperature and cloud cover. The second is Precipitation. That shows you how likely it is to rain and also how many inches it’ll rain. Then you get the Wind button that shows speed graphs and directions.
The redesigned Camera settings
As for the Camera app, it got a slightly updated design because all your camera settings now live at the top of the camera screen. If you swipe down, you can see all of them, but the important ones are still right at the top, like your flash and resolution.
Siri mode in Camera
The biggest upgrade in iOS 27 has got to be the brand new Siri mode. You’ll notice it’s got a new logo that looks like something you might find on a can of soda. If you take a photo in Siri mode, Siri will give you some information on what it is you took a photo of, like the product’s name, for example. You can then even chat about that product and ask it things like, “where do I buy this?” And it’ll quickly respond with a couple of links, which is cool.
The new photo editing tools
To find the new photo editing tools in iOS 27, all you do is open any photo, tap the Edit button, then tap Tools, and they’re all at the bottom. We’ve got Clean Up, Extend, and Reframe.
Reframe
Reframe does something nuts. It scans your image, then you can pinch to zoom out and swipe either left or right to adjust the angle the image was taken in, which is crazy. Then tap Reframe and it’ll recreate your photo as if it was taken from that angle. It works incredibly well.
Extend in Photos
The Extend option works the exact same way as the wallpaper. You pinch to zoom out, but you can also adjust the aspect ratio. I went with the square, you then tap Extend and, like magic, it fills out the empty areas. That was a lot of extra detail to get right and it did such a good job. That is impressive.
Clean Up
There’s also the Clean Up tool. We have had Clean Up for a while, but it has been updated in iOS 27. All you do is draw over what it is you want to remove and your iPhone will remove that specific thing from the photo. Much better. It even highlights suggestions for you. And if you tap on the highlights, poof, they are gone.
Siri
Probably the craziest new feature on iOS 27 is Siri can now edit photos for you. Wow.
How to open Siri
Straight off the bat, to open Siri in iOS 27, you can either swipe down on the Dynamic Island and start chatting with it in a new interface, or you can press and hold down the side button just like before, or you can use the new Siri app that comes with iOS 27. The Siri app is where you’ll find all your conversations with it.
Switching from Siri to ChatGPT
Essentially it’s like ChatGPT, but for Siri. By default, when you start a new conversation, it’ll use the updated Siri AI model, which is way more advanced than before, but you can also tap the text input field, then tap Ask and change from Siri to ChatGPT. That’s in case you ever wanted to do more complex things like in-depth research, writing, or even coding.
Siri can see your screen
Besides for chatting, Siri can now also see what is on your screen. So you can ask it any questions about what is on your screen, like “summarize this page for me,” and it comes back with “The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed by Apple.” Or “please reply to this message,” and it comes back with “I’ve drafted a reply for you.” Siri will look at your conversation and put a reply together. Whoa.
Siri can act inside your apps
In iOS 27, Siri now works in your photos. This works in a few different ways. For example, you can ask it, “please open the Photos app and make my most recent photo black and white.” Siri will then open the Photos app, open the editing menu, go to the filters and give it a black and white filter. I’m amazed this actually works now.
Or you could say, “Hey Siri, take a photo,” and it comes back with “Photo in three, two, one.” You can also say: “please open Amazon and search for dog toys,” and again, Siri opens up Amazon and searches for that specific thing. This is handy now.
Siri in the keyboard
Siri is now also in the keyboard too. If you get a message from someone, straight away it gives you a suggestion on what to reply with. Nice. Or if you press the Siri icon, you can straight up ask it to write a reply for you. Then give it a couple seconds and boom, you got yourself a reply. There are a ton of new things Siri can do, and I’m impressed.
More new features in Photos
Image search
Inside the Photos app, if you open an image, then swipe up on it, there’s a new image search option, which looks that item up on Google and then gives you a bunch of search results. This is handy for finding things like products.
Star ratings for photos
In iOS 27, you’ll notice a new star icon on the top right hand side of your images. This is for rating your photos from one to five stars. So now you’ll be able to filter your photos out based on what star rating you gave them. This is off by default, but all you do is tap your profile icon, scroll down and turn on Show Ratings Control.
Captions in videos
In videos, there’s now also a new captions button in the play bar. If you tap the captions button, then turn it on, it’ll show you the subtitles for any and every video in your Photos app. What’s even cooler is there are four different subtitle styles to pick from, but unfortunately this doesn’t work for US English for now.
Save Video Frame as Photo
Still in videos, if you ever want to grab a still from a video, you tap the three dots in the top right and you have the new Save Video Frame as Photo option that will extract a literal frame out the video for you. Love it.
Insight buttons
If you open a photo of something like a loyalty card and swipe up, there are new insight buttons, like Add Pass to Wallet. Different buttons show up for different things. So with a poster, you’ll get an Add to Calendar button. For a business card, there’s Add to Contacts along with a couple other ways to directly contact that person. Sweet.
Identity Documents
This is pretty hidden, but back inside the Photos app under Collections, if you scroll down to Utilities, there’s a new option, Identity Documents. This groups all your photos of IDs, passports, and cards into one spot, which is handy.
Connectivity Assist
If you go to Settings, tap Wi-Fi youll see an option called Connectivity Assist. What this does is it makes your iPhone instantly switch from Wi-Fi to data when your Wi-Fi signal drops. So if you’re on a call or anything, it doesn’t get interrupted. Nice.
Separate alarm and system volumes
This setting is something you should turn off. This one is found inside Sounds & Haptics, and by default Alarms and Timers, as well as Alerts and System Sounds, are turned on, but when you turn them off, looky, looky, you can now finally adjust those volumes on their own. So if you want it, you can now set your ringtone to max, your alarms and timers to mid and system sounds to low. I am glad we can finally do this.
The redesigned AirPods settings
In iOS 27, AirPods settings got something brand new too. When you connect a pair of AirPods, then jump into Settings and AirPods settings straight away, you’ll notice that everything now looks different. Compared to the old iOS, everything has now been categorized into its own separate sections.
For example, if you wanted to find the biggest new AirPods feature in iOS 27, all you have to do is go into Audio & Routing. You’ll find the equalizer. Yeah, that’s right. After literally 10 years of having the AirPods, we finally get the equalizer. It’s nothing too complicated. You can adjust your lows, your mids and your highs. This is how I like to have it for some extra bass. So if you want that extra bump in your tunes, then copy this setup.
Shortcuts
My favorite new shortcuts
Here are a few of my favorite shortcuts in iOS 27 that you got to try. Inside the Shortcuts app, all you do now is hit the plus icon and describe what shortcuts you want. For example, “create a shortcut that gives me a summary of the temperature, my phone’s battery, my commute time to home, and add a nice affirmation.” You tap Send. What’s crazy is it does everything for you. You don’t have to know exactly how Shortcuts works anymore.
What I also love is if you don’t like its response or the way it looks, you can go back into the chat section and say something like “stylize this with bullet points and emojis.” Then hit Send, it’ll do its whole AI thing. When you’re done with the shortcuts, add it to your home screen. You can customize the icon as well if you want. But now anytime you press that shortcut, boom, you get a rundown of all that info in a nice stylized form.
Another cool shortcut you can try in iOS 27 is “create a shortcut that automatically finds and delete screenshots older than 10 days.” Again, you hit Send, it’ll do its thing. And now anytime you run that shortcut, it’ll bring up all your screenshots older than 10 days and you can delete them with one tap.
Another one you can try is “create a shortcut that shows me five pictures I took on this day two years ago.” But as cool as shortcuts are, shortcut automations are even cooler.
Shortcut automations
You can say “create an automation where every time I put my phone on charge, it says, oh yeah.” I also like this one: “create an automation that shows me a picture of coffee and an inspirational message every day at 3pm.” Now every time it hits 3pm, I automatically get a sick inspirational message and a pic of coffee. What’s not to love? There is so much more you can do with shortcuts.
