The iOS 27 Features Nobody's Talking About (But You'll Use Daily)

You've probably seen all the big iOS 27 headlines by now. This year Apple was clearly playing catch up in the AI race. Siri got her biggest AI upgrade yet, there's new generative AI photo editing. Shortcuts can now build itself just from you typing what you want in plain English, and Safari uses AI to organize your tabs and even monitor a webpage for changes and notify you. Basically all the stuff everyone's obsessed with. But nobody's talking about the smaller updates, and honestly? Those are the ones I'll actually be using every single day.

Let's start with the first underrated feature I'm loving, Dual Capture in FaceTime. Now you can show your face and your surroundings at the same time. This is genuinely great for group calls when you want people to see where you are, not just your face crammed into a box.

Next up, if you've ever dug through your purse for that one punch card or membership pass that's definitely crumpled at the very bottom, this is for you. You can now scan a physical loyalty or membership card and add it straight to Apple Wallet. This is definitely going to come in handy.

Home screen people, this next one is for you. There's a new extra large widget size that takes up an entire page on your home screen. My calendar is moving there immediately. Thank you, Apple.

Speaking of small tweaks that make a big difference, if the big clock on your lock screen has been blocking your wallpaper this whole time, you can now shrink it down to a tiny version at the top. Small change, huge difference.

Staying on the theme of little details, another one I've been loving is you can send little hand drawn sketches in Messages now, which is such a cute, random addition.

Now let's talk location sharing, because Find My got some real upgrades too. Before, you could only share your location for an hour, until end of day, or indefinitely. Now you can set a custom time window, which is way more flexible for actual real life plans. And you can temporarily pause sharing with someone until end of day without fully turning it off, which is perfect if you're planning a surprise party and cannot risk getting caught.

If you're someone who sings along to everything, this next one is for you. Apple Music is expanding Lyrics Translation to more languages and adding more support for Lyrics Pronunciation, so you get phonetic lyrics and can actually sing along properly. As someone who exclusively wants this for Bad Bunny, I am thrilled.

And last but not least, for shared albums, full resolution photo sharing is coming, along with temporary shared albums for short term events so your iCloud doesn't turn into a graveyard of one time use albums. Android users can also now join and contribute to shared albums through the web, which is a big deal if you've got friends stuck in green text bubble purgatory.

iOS 27 is available in public beta right now and launching soon.

Did I miss any features you're excited about? Let me know.

Watch my video on this here and follow @jessicanaziri for the latest tech updates.