New iOS 17 features I will be using immediately

iOS 17 has just released for iPhone and iPad and it has some fantastic new features. Many are small but they have a big impact. Here are a few of my favourites.

Live Voicemail

This is great. If someone is leaving you a voicemail message you can see it as live text coming through. If it is someone you want to speak to you can answer and interrupt the voicemail.

This allows me to silence all unknown callers and be confident that I wont miss something important. All while still keeping all those scam calls at bay.

Standby mode

Standby is a new mode that activates when your phone is charging and is horizontal. Luckily my charging stand still works when my phone is horizontal so I tried this last night and it is awesome.

You can choose some widgets to display (I just chose the date and the clock to start) and if the ambient light is low it will display in a muted red colour which is perfect when you wake in the middle of the night and need to check the time without searing your retinas!

Interactive widgets

This is huge. The widgets that you already can have on your home screen are now interactive. I am using this with Things (my task manager of choice) so that I check things off my list without opening the app.

This is also great with the Home app so you can turn lights on and off directly from the home screen without opening the app. This one is a great quality of life improvement.

Oh and don’t forget to update your apps, as many app authors will be thinking up even more clever uses for these widgets over time (and make sure you check out WidgetSmith which allows you to create your own custom widgets!)

Verification codes email autofill

You know when you log into a site and they send you a 6 digit codes as a text? In iOS 16 they would autofill those for you which was super convenient but only for SMS messages. In iOS 17 it now detects codes in your…