The 10 Best iOS 15 Features You Don’t Want to Miss

Back when iOS 6 hit the market, Apple had also included Apple Maps to replace Google Maps. At first sight, it looked like the better option with features not seen in Google Maps.

Turn-by-turn navigation, fly-over 3D buildings and vector maps were promising, but it showed out to be a publisher’s nightmare in giving wrong directions, incorrect visuals of roads, buildings and more.

Apple quickly redeemed themselves, correcting the many issues, and it has been a solid app ever since.

With iOS 15, you can now explore cities in more detail than ever. View roads, trees, buildings and entire neighborhoods up close in the beautiful visual style Apple is known for. Selected landmarks are available in 3D to give you a better understanding of the structure.

Directions from A to B also have more detail than they once did. Now you’re able to see turn lanes, bike paths, and cross-walks for better navigation in cities. You’ll also be able to see live incidents such as accidents or traffic jams to guide you around it for a better driving experience.

For pedestrians, there are step-by-step directions with augmented reality built in. Meaning you can point your camera and get visual arrows and names overlaid to show the path to your destination.

The health app is useful and has become really advanced with the popularity of Apple’s smart watches which are able to measure heart rate, ECG, blood pressure, and blood oxygen level.

The new iOS 15 health app works with the systems doctors already use, so you’ll be able to share your health data with your doctor and healthcare professionals easily.

The shareable data includes health records, lab results, sleep patterns, trending heart rate and much more.

It is especially useful if you have sick or older relatives and you want to be involved and alerted if any health changes occur.

The health app can also help give you a better night’s sleep. You can manage your sleep schedule and bedtime routine and track your sleeping respiratory rate to see how well you sleep and if changes needs to be made.

The new Safari browser introduces a new tab bar design.

Screen estate is valuable — especially on iPhone’s where every pixel counts. The new redesigned tab bar will take up less space and be located at the bottom of your screen. When scrolling, it will disappear and not reappear again until you decide to turn it on by tapping the screen.

You’ll also be able to organize your tabs into groups for a better overview of open browser sessions, plus they will sync across devices, so you can pick up where you left off on another device.

One of the really exciting things is that iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 will bring web browser extensions to the mobile browser. Web extensions are used to add more functionality to the browser based on the user’s needs and are useful for things like blocking ads, protecting your privacy, downloading videos, and so much more.

The web extensions will be available in the App Store in a new category called Extensions.

Apple is also including Intelligent Tracking Prevention to prevent the oh so prevalent incidence of trackers profiling you based on your IP address. This tracking practice is widely used across the web to follow your everyday online behavior, so any anti-tracking technology is a welcome addition in our opinion.

Voice search will also be available. Just tap the microphone in the search bar, say what you are searching for and the results will populate in the browser.

One of the most used apps on iPad and iPhone is Messages, so it’s only logical that it should get a lot of new features in iOS15, and here Apple certainly delivers.

In iOS 15, when you receive a message with multiple photos attached, they will no longer be listed in a long vertical row you have to scroll through.

Instead, photos will be shown in a new collage design with one photo on top, the rest behind (slightly visible, like a deck of cards) and with a small headline listing how many photos are in the stack. You will then be able to swipe sideways to look at each photo without scrolling up and down in your messages. Pretty cool for an intuitive, non-intrusive way to display photos in messages.

We applaud Apple’s attention to privacy measures in what seems like a free-for-all data hoarding market.

It’s no secret you are the product in anything labeled “free” — most notably the Facebook platform. But Facebook is far from the only one, and in iOS 15 you’ll quickly be able to find out how much apps just love to track your behavior.

By going straight to the App Privacy Report in Settings, you’ll be able to learn how often apps access your location, camera, contacts, photos, and microphone for the past week.

You can also learn what third-party domains each app communicates with and when the last time they did so was.

On iPhone’s and iPad’s with the A12 chip, it is now possible to do in-device speech recognition, meaning the audio recorded will never leave your iPhone or iPad.

While Siri won’t be able to perform all tasks without an internet connection, there are many tasks she can do while you’re offline — and quicker than ever before: messaging, initiating phone calls, changing settings, and audio control.

The new Focus feature may not sound exciting at first, and granted it’s not as flashy as some of the other features being released, but we bet you are going to be able to find a use for it.

With Focus, you can set your phone to react according to your current activity. So if you’re driving, you may not want to be alerted about incoming messages or get app notifications. If you’re sleeping, you can have everything turned off except for emergency calls etc.

Besides the pre-defined rules for driving, fitness, gaming, and reading, you can also set up custom rules for your specific needs.

Your Focus status will even be displayed in Messages, so contacts can see why you are not answering right away.