Desenvolvedores já podem instalar as quartas versões de teste do iOS 27 (compilação 24A5390f), iPadOS 27 (idem), macOS Golden Gate 27 (26A5388g), watchOS 27 (24R5325h), tvOS 27 (24J5325d) e visionOS 27 (24M5326g).
Além dos sistemas, também está disponível para desenvolvedores a quarta beta do Xcode 27 (compilação 27A5228h).
Os novos sistemas, anunciados na WWDC26, trarão novidades e diversas melhorias para iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple Watches, Apple TVs e Vision Pros — conforme temos acompanhado e detalhado no apanhado de matérias abaixo.
Como de costume, nós estamos de olho para conferir as novidades incluídas com as novas betas e detalharemos tudo sobre elas por aqui, então continuem acompanhando!
A Apple disponibilizou hoje as Release Candidates (RCs) do iOS 26.6 (compilação 23G71), iPadOS 26.6 (idem), macOS Tahoe 26.6 (25G70), watchOS 26.6 (23U67), tvOS 26.6 (23L772), Software do HomePod 26.6 (idem) e visionOS 26.6 (23O770).
Também foram disponibilizadas hoje as sextas RCs do macOS Sonoma 14.8.8 (compilação 23J619) e do macOS Sequoia 15.7.8 (24G822).
É importante não confundir essas versões com os testes do iOS 27 e demais sistemas operacionais anunciados na WWDC26. Enquanto as versões 26.6 provavelmente sairão para todos já na semana que vem, os sistemas 27 só serão lançados lá para setembro.
De acordo com as notas de atualização, o update do iOS 26.6 inclui correções de erros, atualizações de segurança e otimiza a indexação do Spotlight para preparar o sistema para o iOS 27. Caso alguma outra novidade surja com essa última rodada de testes, avisaremos por aqui, é claro. 😉
A Apple está testando uma nova interface na beta do macOS Golden Gate 27 que exibe uma série de atalhos da Siri AI sempre que o usuário seleciona texto em um app qualquer.
Descoberta pelo usuário identificado como “pdfu” em uma comunidade do Reddit, a novidade está claramente inacabada, o que explica o fato de ela vir desativada por padrão nas versões mais recentes do sistema operacional.
Como é possível notar abaixo, a interface assume a forma de um popover que aparece no canto superior esquerdo da seleção feita pelo usuário. Além disso, os atalhos são contextuais, o que significa que ações diferentes poderão ser sugeridas dependendo do conteúdo em destaque.
Caso o usuário esteja trabalhando em um texto, o recurso exibirá atalhos relacionados às Ferramentas de Escrita (Writing Tools), só para citar um exemplo. Ainda de acordo com as informações, o recurso também pode sugerir ações como enviar um email, adicionar um número aos contatos, exibir um endereço no app Mapas (Maps) ou rastrear um voo.
Para desativar a novidade (o que talvez se prove necessário, já que, como dito, ela ainda está inacabada e apresenta inconsistências), basta abrir o Terminal novamente, rodar o comando a seguir e reiniciar o Mac:
Como essa nova interface já está disponível (mesmo que escondida) nas betas do macOS 27, é bem possível que ela dê as caras em uma futura versão de teste do sistema — provavelmente em um estado bem mais polido.
Now that the public beta for iOS 27 is available, even more iPhone and iPad users are going to be interested in experiencing the new operating systems while they’re under active development. And there’s good reason for this, iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 are both shaping up to be notable improvements to the operating systems, ... Read More
Apple has released the first public beta of iOS 27, giving eager iPhone users an early look at the year’s most significant software update. Launched on July 13, 2026, the beta introduces a vastly improved Siri powered by Apple Intelligence, along with speed enhancements, refined visuals, and thoughtful updates to everyday features.
How to Install the iOS 27 Public Beta
Joining the beta is straightforward and free through Apple’s Beta Software Program — no developer account required.
Back up your iPhone first (via iCloud or a computer), as betas can bring bugs, battery drain, or app issues.
Visit beta.apple.com, sign in with your Apple ID, and enroll.
On your iPhone, go to Settings > General > Software Update > Beta Updates.
Select iOS 27 Public Beta.
Return to the Software Update screen and tap Update Now when available.
Apple recommends testing on a secondary device. iOS 27 supports iPhone 11 and newer models (including SE 2nd generation and later). Full Apple Intelligence features, including advanced Siri AI, require iPhone 15 Pro or newer.
Siri AI Steals the Spotlight
The biggest highlight is the complete overhaul of Siri, now rebuilt as Siri AI on the next-generation Apple Intelligence foundation. It supports natural, ongoing conversations, understands on-screen content, searches your personal data across apps like Mail, Messages, Notes, and Calendar, and performs actions within apps.
• Responses appear in the Dynamic Island; pull down for full conversation view.
• A new standalone Siri app stores conversation history (synced privately via iCloud).
• Camera integration adds a Visual Intelligence mode for tasks like turning barcodes into Wallet passes or importing events from flyers.
• New voice controls let you adjust pace and expressivity.
Siri AI starts with select English variants and is unavailable in the EU at launch. Some advanced features need the latest flagship iPhones.
Apple Intelligence Expands Across Apps
Beyond Siri, Apple Intelligence brings smarter tools to several core apps:
• Safari: Auto-organizes tabs by topic, groups bookmarks and Reading List items, offers “Notify Me” for stock alerts or page changes, and can generate custom extensions from natural language prompts.
• Photos: New Clean Up for complex objects, Extend to generate content beyond frame edges, and Spatial Reframing to adjust perspective post-capture.
• Passwords: Automatically updates weak or compromised passwords with Live Activity progress.
• Shortcuts: Build automations from plain-language descriptions.
• Additional perks include Call Context in Phone, photorealistic image generation in Image Playground, and natural-language Calendar editing.
Liquid Glass Gets More Customizable
iOS 27 refines last year’s Liquid Glass design for better clarity and flexibility. Controls better diffuse backgrounds, with improved contrast for readability. The standout new feature is a customization slider in Settings > Appearance that adjusts tint and translucency system-wide, from ultra-clear to fully opaque.
Performance Upgrades for All iPhones
Apple promises noticeable speed gains even on older devices:
• Apps launch up to 30% faster.
• AirDrop transfers up to 80% faster.
• New Photos captures appear up to 70% faster.
Optimizations to the CPU scheduler benefit iPhone 11 and newer. Expect smoother unlocking, navigation, scrolling, and better network switching. Search in Spotlight, Photos, and Mail has also been rebuilt.
Redesigned Screen Time and Enhanced Child Safety
Parents get a major upgrade with a clearer dashboard, one-tap controls, category-based Time Allowances, and flexible Schedules (school days, evenings, weekends). New Ask to Browse extends permissions to websites, while Communication Safety now flags gore and violence in addition to nudity. Full features require all Family Sharing devices on iOS 27.
Other Notable Features
• Messages: Background media sending and consolidated Tapback notifications.
• Photos: Full-resolution Shared Albums, cross-platform support, keywords, star ratings, and custom slideshows.
• Save any video frame as a photo.
• Independent alarm volume control.
• Extra-large widgets that fill entire Home Screen pages.
• AirPods custom equalizer.
• Direct GymKit connections and improved FaceTime/Home features on supported hardware.
MacDailyNews Take: The public beta will evolve through the summer, with the final release expected this fall alongside new iPhones. Users can report issues via the Feedback Assistant app.
Currently, iOS 27 public beta feels like a polished, user-focused OS that meaningfully advances AI capabilities while making the iPhone faster and more enjoyable for everyone. Early testers should proceed with caution, but will in most cases likely be impressed by the refinements already in place. Again, use a secondary device for testing iOS 27 public beta.
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Apple has opened the public beta program for MacOS 27 Golden Gate to all curious Mac users. While betas are typically best reserved for advanced users due to being buggier and less stable than final builds, the public beta program offers an opportunity for users to experience beta development and upcoming features, ahead of the ... Read More
Apple has launched the public beta program for iOS 27, making the upcoming iPhone operating system available as a beta to all interested users. Beta system software tends to be buggier and less refined than final versions, and is generally best reserved for advanced users, but the public beta is fairly stable, and made available ... Read More
Apple has issued what is now the fifth beta versions of iOS 26.6, MacOS Tahoe 26.6, and iPadOS 26.6, for users beta testing the current generations of system software. There’s even a 5th beta build available for MacOS Sequoia 15.7.8 and MacOS Sonoma 14.8.8, which seems like a lot of betas for what is assumed ... Read More
Meta, who owns and operates FaceBook and Instagram, has enabled a setting automatically that allows anyone to use your public Instagram photos, profile picture, and/or reels for AI purposes. This includes everything from your posts, stories, stickers, reels, and even your profile photo. Some users may not like this, whether they’re opposed to AI in ... Read More
Beta 4 of MacOS Tahoe 26.6, iOS 26.6, and iPadOS 26.6, has been released by Apple. The 4th beta arrives just a week after the 3rd beta, which perhaps suggests a final version will be made available in the next few weeks. There’s also a 4th RC build for MacOS Sequoia 15.7.8 and MacOS Sonoma ... Read More
The third beta version of MacOS Golden Gate 27 has been released to users enrolled in the developer beta testing program for Apple system software. MacOS 27 beta 3 carries build 26A5378j, and is available to download now through Software Update, a package installer, or IPSW. MacOS Golden Gate 27 has an emphasis on improving ... Read More
Apple has released iOS 27 beta 3 for iPhone users who are participating in the beta testing program. iPadOS 27 beta 3 is also available for iPad based beta testers. iOS 27 and iPadOS have an emphasis on performance, with improvements to general system performance, a slider for adjusting Liquid Glass intensity to the appearance, ... Read More
Após três meses em fase de testes, o recurso de nome de usuário do WhatsApp finalmente parece estar funcionando entre os usuários que já haviam reservado seu username, ampliando a disponibilidade da funcionalidade.
Aos que efetuaram a reserva, o WhatsApp começou a exibir um banner no topo da lista de conversas, informando que ele já está ativo e explicando que agora ele pode ser compartilhado com outras pessoas. Caso você queira verificar o nome de usuário de algum dos seus contatos, basta abrir a conversa com ele para conferi-lo.
De acordo com o WABetaInfo, o recurso está sendo liberado de forma gradual para quem já reservou um nome de usuário. Se esse for o seu caso, basta tocar no botão de adicionar (na aba Conversas) para abrir a lista de contatos, e em seguida, digitar o nome de usuário na barra de pesquisa.
Vale lembrar que isso não afetará a visualização dos números de telefone nos contatos com os quais você já iniciou uma conversa anteriormente. Nos moldes de rivais como o Telegram, os nomes de usuário apenas introduzem uma nova opção de acionar um determinado contato, alterando a primeira interação dos usuários, já que o número de telefone deixa de ser a única forma de iniciar uma conversa.
O WhatsApp está liberando o recurso completo de nomes de usuário para “uma fração muito limitada da sua base instalada no iOS e Android”, incluindo tanto versões betas quanto estáveis do aplicativo.
The social media giant Meta just added a major safety feature to its digital assistant. When younger users have conversations that involve thoughts of suicide or hurting themselves, the company will step in. Instead of just showing crisis hotlines on the screen, the system will now send a direct notification right to a linked parent […]
Meta executives claimed that a controversial facial recognition feature didn’t “exist.” Fast forward a few weeks later, and they’re describing the feature in public — and in detail.
In June, a Wired investigation revealed that Meta had quietly infused unreleased facial recognition tech into its “AI Glasses,” the tech giant’s chatbot and camera-equipped smart glasses. While the feature, dubbed NameTag, was inaccessible to consumers, it was designed to register faces encountered by Meta glasses wearers “into unique biometric signatures, commonly known as faceprints, and check each one against faceprints stored on the user’s phone,” according to the magazine.
Andy Stone, the tech giant’s spokesperson and VP of communications, declared on X that Wired’s reporting was “intellectually dishonest” and “advocacy-driven click bait.” What’s more, according to Stone, NameTag was fully nonexistent.
“Here’s a thing: Wired reports Meta didn’t answer several questions about how this will work,” Stone added in a follow-up post. “How could we? The feature doesn’t exist!”
In response to Stone, another Meta executive, chief technology officer Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, jumped in.
“Incredibly misleading from Wired,” he wrote. “Absolutely dishonest.”
Yet despite company leaders reassuring us that the feature doesn’t exist, Bosworth discussed it in detail during an interview with The Atlantic CEO and podcaster Nick Thompson. Bosworth’s comments in the interview, which was published last week, seemingly contradicted his fellow executives, revealing that the feature did indeed exist.
NameTag, Bosworth told Thompson, would be “encrypted locally to your device,” and would catalog people who smart glasses wearers “met in person, with your glasses on, who introduced themselves, or you said, ‘okay, this is David, remember this person.'”
This information is “only available to you, when you are wearing your glasses,” Bosworth added. He emphasized that the data captured by NameTag wouldn’t be stored in a centralized database.
“This is a person you’ve met before. Here’s their name. They’re right in front of you. That’s… what we call a NameTags feature,” said Bosworth. “I think people get confused because they hear face recognition and they think, ‘oh, there’s a central face database that everyone’s being scanned constantly into.’ It’s not that.”
In addition to supporting blind or low-vision smart glasses wearers, said Bosworth, NameTag could solve what Meta calls “the cocktail party problem,” saving wearers from any awkwardness that may arise when encountering people at parties who they’re sure they’ve met before, but can’t quite place.
“It’s a very universally human problem,” Bosworth said. “Nearly every human I talk to, no matter what their status of their vision or their memory, understands that this is a problem that would help them feel more comfortable in social situations if they had it.”
To be clear, Wired never suggested that the facial recognition feature it uncovered was being used to build a “central face database” by way of Meta’s smart glasses. Indeed, in line with what Bosworth said in the podcast appearance, Wired reported that “code discreetly added to Meta’s AI app over multiple updates this year shows that the feature, internally called ‘NameTag,’ identifies people captured by the glasses’ camera and, when activated, alerts the wearer when it recognizes someone.” The story also repeatedly noted that the feature was unreleased and inaccessible to glasses wearers.
When journalists and others called out the contradiction between Meta’s past and recent statements, Stone — the comms executive who said that Wired couldn’t answer questions about the feature because it “doesn’t exist” — jumped back in the comments section.
“We have said for months we’re exploring such features, even as nothing has shipped to consumers,” the spokesperson said in response to a post by The Intercept journalist Sam Biddle. “No secret there despite the conspiratorial thinking.”
There’s a big difference between a feature not existing and a feature that exists — if still unfinished — and has yet to be released. Meta appears to be arguing that if a feature remains inaccessible to consumers, it’s technically nonexistent, even if the company has gone as far as to issue multiple updates inserting code for the feature into products that are already in consumers’ hands. (Meta quietly deleted the NameTag code after its existence was made public.)
During the podcast interview, Bosworth took care to emphasize that Meta is considering the privacy implications of a facial recognition-powered feature like NameTag. He noted that it’s likely illegal in states like Illinois and Texas, and that it “has to be done in a way that people feel comfortable.”
Meanwhile, Meta continues to fight an ongoing consumer harm lawsuit, prompted by an investigation by a pair of Swedish newspapers. The publications found that Meta collected recordings by smart glasses wearers and passed them along to human data labelers, despite promising consumers that their recordings would be stored only on their devices.
“Designed for privacy,” reads a webpage for Meta’s smart glasses, “controlled by you.”
Meta patented AI tech that constantly analyzes your voice and surroundings in order to detect your emotional state. Finally, exactly what we were all asking for: Meta being granted constant access to our offline lives.
As first caught by Patentlyze, a patent published on July 2 describes a system that records all the user’s “audible communications” and combines it with “contextual factors” like “time of day, location, user activity, or digital interaction.” Audio may be “transcribed, and an emotional-state machine learning model may interpret verbal and nonverbal cues to determine emotional indicators.”
In other words, the system listens to you and everything you do, combines it with other data, and feeds it all to a mood-predicting AI.
“The system increases the precision and reliability of emotional inference by aligning multimodal sensor inputs on synchronized timelines, which creates a novel data structure that supports richer emotional analysis,” reads the patent. “These combined features deliver a technical improvement in automated audio interpretation, enabling continuous emotional monitoring on everyday devices.”
According to the patent, the goal of this extraordinarily intrusive system would be to better tailor users’ workouts to their emotional state, as “personal trainers cannot provide the level of precision in guidance, such as correcting a pose and/or body movement,” as well as Meta’s imagined device could.
It’s not surprising to see Meta pitch this kind of surveillance technology as a fitness device. Health-tracking wearables have become wildly popular, despite the extraordinary amount of physical data about individual consumers they collect and store.
The key difference in Meta’s case, is that rather than crunch biological metrics, it’s an AI-powered fly-on-the-wall attempting to measure a person’s emotional state by listening in on the world around them, and possibly then connecting that information to all other available data.
“The AI assistant may listen to a user(s) at predefined times to hear various types of communication, such as sighs, laughter, and/or the tone(s) of a voice(s),” reads the patent. “The AI assistant may use these inputs to quantify the user’s emotional state or generate other insights about the user.”
The patent also discusses connecting audio inputs to information like when a user takes their medicine, proposing that “the AI assistant may take multiple inputs in addition to audio inputs (e.g., of a user’s voice) to provide a summary of emotional trends based on various inputs (e.g., a happier emotional state associated with a particular time of day or at a time when medication is taken, etc.)”
It’s worth noting that fellow tech giant Amazon tried and failed to market a similar system. In 2020, the company launched the Halo Band, a fitness band with a built-in microphone that was designed to listen in on users and conduct what Amazon described as a “tone of voice analysis.” Following public backlash in 2021, Amazon nuked the microphones when it launched a next-generation version of the band. It discontinued the product line altogether in 2023.
Whether we’ll ever see Meta attempt to launch a similar mood-tracking device is unclear. In a statement to 404 Media, a Meta spokesperson said that “like other companies, patents at Meta are often filed to disclose concepts that may or may not be implemented, and a granted patent does not guarantee that Meta has pursued or will pursue the technology described.”
The existence of the patent, though, shows that such a device is certainly on Meta’s mind — and is yet another Meta-made product that stands to strengthen the bridge between our online and offline worlds.
A nova ferramenta Muse Image, da Meta, vem ativada por defeito em todos os perfis públicos de adultos no Instagram, e qualquer pessoa pode usar as suas fotos para gerar imagens com inteligência artificial sem que seja avisado. Eis como travar isto em menos de um minuto.
Entre as novidades anunciadas pela OpenAI e pela Meta estão mais controlos para os pais, mecanismos de segurança reforçados e ferramentas concebidas para adaptar a experiência aos utilizadores mais jovens.
Summer beta season is in full swing, with a new wave of testers coming aboard via the just-released public OS 27 betas. While visionOS hasn’t ever been included in the public beta program, now is as good a time as any to check in on visionOS 27. What’s it like living with the features Apple highlighted at WWDC, and if you’re jumping on the public betas with your other devices, is it a good time to give the visionOS 27 developer beta a try, too? Let’s dig in and find out.
Siri AI
Given the massive overhaul Siri is receiving this year and the fact that the Vision Pro has always been a little behind when it comes to Apple Intelligence features, I didn’t expect visionOS to get the full Siri AI treatment this year. Thankfully, I was wrong. Not only is Siri AI fully present in visionOS 27, but the experience of interacting with the assistant has even been adapted to fit a spatial context.
For starters, Siri is much more capable in visionOS 27 than ever before. It’s not just for opening apps anymore. With access to your personal context, Siri can handle tasks I would have never imagined prompting it for until now. Questions like, “When was the last time I ate at this restaurant?” or, “How many years in a row have I attended this local event?” used to lead me down time-intensive rabbit holes of scavenging emails, texts, calendar events, photos, and more. Now, Siri can pull all of that information for me and answer the question in just a few seconds.
That “in a few seconds” bit is important. At least this point in the beta cycle, every request I give the assistant takes some time. Even tasks like checking my calendar and opening apps have a bit of lag to them on my M2 Vision Pro. This seems to be a side effect of Siri’s new architecture: it can do more, but parsing input, coordinating resources, and performing tasks takes a little longer than you might expect.
Of course, Siri has access to world knowledge now, too. We’ve all run into the classic, “Here are some web results for you,” response when asking Siri a question it considers too complex to answer itself, but those canned responses are no more. Now, Siri can dive into its (scraped) trove of knowledge to answer questions about pretty much any topic: history, science, pop culture, and more. Siri is the all-knowing bot we’ve always wanted it to be; just be sure to double-check its answers because, as Siri will remind you, AI can get things wrong.
Interacting with Siri in visionOS 27 is a whole new experience. The purple, blue, and green sphere evocative of Siri’s previous era (before all of Apple’s other platforms switched to the rainbow outline UI that never came to visionOS) has been replaced with a semi-translucent glowing white orb matching the Siri aesthetic on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. The circular “thinking” animation mimics what you see when you interact with Siri on other devices, too, making for a much more cohesive cross-device experience.
When you invoke Siri via voice, the orb appears with a window above it displaying the text of your conversation. You can grab the window and place it anywhere in your environment. To continue the conversation, you simply look at the Siri UI and start speaking again. It all feels very natural, and I appreciate the way you can converse with Siri while interacting with other windows in objects in visionOS, a task that doesn’t translate as well to Apple’s other platforms. For those on the M5 Vision Pro, Siri has a new, more natural voice with customizable speed and expressivity as well, though my M2 model isn’t capable of running the local model necessary to power these changes and the improved dictation system.
visionOS 27 also includes a gesture for activating Siri that’s a little nostalgic. If you hold your palm open and upward then look at it, you’re present with a Home button as before. But if you pinch and hold the Home button, a tiny Siri UI will appear above it, just like in the old days when iPhones had physical Home buttons. You have to hold your fingers together the whole time you’re speaking to Siri, which seems a bit strange to me, but once you’ve made your initial request, the standard Siri UI appears, and you can carry on as usual.
The new version of Siri also brings Visual Intelligence to the Vision Pro for the first time. You can ask Siri about the content of a virtual window or objects in your real-world environment. When Visual Intelligence is activated, the system displays a very cool animation of your environment being scanned, and then, Siri can use what it sees to answer your questions. I’ve used this to ask Siri about webpages, documents I’m working on, and items I see around me, and it’s very cool to have an always-available digital assistant who can see what I see. It did a great job identifying my water bottle and then pulling up the receipt from my email to let me know how old it was, which I found to be a great combination of Visual Intelligence with my personal context.
There’s also a new Siri app that contains a history of all your conversations with the assistant, including those synced from other devices. On visionOS, the Siri app is a horizontally-scrolling list of glassy cards that reminds me a lot of the Spatial Gallery app. It’s a handy way to pick back up on conversations started elsewhere, search for a previous answer, or simply interact with Siri via keyboard rather than voice.
At WWDC, Apple showed off a Siri mode where the orb persists in your environment, waiting for you to look at it and start a conversation. I have not been able to get that method to work yet. Once I start a conversation with Siri, I can keep the conversation window open and place it anywhere, but that’s not the same as having a small Siri UI sitting on my desk out of the way until I need it. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for it in future beta releases.
Siri AI is marked for release “later this year” (as opposed to the OS 27 updates listed as coming “this fall”), so there are still some rough edges to work out. Sometimes, conversations simply stop, with Siri telling me an error occurred. The Siri conversation UI will sporadically disappear, and I have to force quit the Siri app to get it to show up again. And Visual Intelligence sometimes struggles to understand what I’m trying to get it to look at, focusing on the wrong window or even the keyboard. But that’s beta life for you; it’s what I signed up for, and I’m trusting it will all be worked out before the public release.
Beta UI bugs aside, Siri AI is a huge upgrade for Apple’s digital assistant, and I’m happy to see visionOS getting the first-class treatment here. It isn’t simply ported over from iOS. It’s been carefully adapted for a spatial UI, and it makes for a powerful overall experience.
There is one other major way Siri differs on visionOS from other platforms: it hasn’t been integrated with Spotlight Search. For now, at least, the search feature on visionOS is dedicated to finding apps, app content, and web results, without even an ‘Ask Siri’ button in sight. With so many other ways to interact with Siri on the platform, it might make sense to keep it separate from search, but it’s certainly an oddity given the way the two features have been merged on every other platform. I’m still trying to figure out if I find this a helpful separation or a missed opportunity for cross-device cohesion.
Panoramas and Environments
There’s a lot more to visionOS 27 than just AI. Big changes are coming to panoramas, including the ability to act as persistent Environments. And, of course, Apple has to throw in a new Environment of its own, too.
Over the past couple of years, Apple has continually pushed the capabilities of its spatial photo conversion technology. Last year, that came in the form of spatial scenes across all of the company’s platforms, and this year, it’s coming to panoramas. In visionOS 27, you can convert panoramas into spatial scenes, adding layers of depth and perspective to the already stunning experience of viewing panoramas on the Vision Pro.
Being immersed in panoramic photos in visionOS was already breathtaking. This takes it to a whole new level. Experiencing memories in deeper ways than I ever thought possible is one of my favorite uses for the Vision Pro, and now, I can use it to revisit places I’ve been and feel like I’m standing there once again.
The system takes this experience one step further by allowing you to set panoramic spatial scenes as custom Environments. In the Environments view, there’s a new folder called My Environments where you can add up to 34 panoramas from your photo library and use them as immersive backgrounds for your content. You can even adjust the immersion level to make the photo wrap around you.
I love that we now have the option to use our own photos as Environments, but it does come with some tradeoffs. Panoramic photos are static, so they don’t have the subtle motion elements that make Environments feel alive. They also don’t expand as far vertically as Environments do, which means you’re likely to see your real-world surroundings if you look up or down. Still, this is the first time visionOS users have been able to set their own custom Environments using their own photos or images purchased online, so it’s a win. It’s definitely inspired me to start taking more panoramas than I did before.
The new built-in Thórsmörk Environment is gorgeous. Apple always knows how to pick the perfect spot. Between the snow, the slow-moving river, and the aurora borealis in the sky at night, it offers a beautiful, peaceful place to relax, watch a movie, or trick your mind into cooling off on a hot summer’s day.
Safari
Spatial browsing is continuing to mature in visionOS 27, this time with the help of curved windows. Safari is one of the few built-in apps – Freeform and TV being the others – that are receiving special curved window modes this year, similar to what we’ve seen in the past with Mac Virtual Display. When a window is expanded beyond a comfortable width for side-to-side viewing, it automatically starts to curve, wrapping around the user’s head to make it easier to take in the window’s contents.
To be honest, I’m not sure how useful curved windows will be for browsing normal websites. While some, such as Apple’s OS Overview page are optimized to display content like image galleries at such wide aspect ratios, most sites don’t expand beyond a certain point, displaying blank space on either side of a centered column of content. Perhaps that will change with time, but for now, I don’t foresee these ultra-wide windows catching on for single-tab browsing.
Where the curved Safari window does shine, though, is in the browser’s new multi-tab view. A new button on the right side of the tab bar activates the view, which displays all open tabs side by side in a horizontally-scrolling curved window. These aren’t previews, either. Each tab can be scrolled, navigated, interacted with, and even closed as it if it were an independent browser window.
I’ve already found numerous use cases for this view in my own workflows: editing article previews, comparing product pages, and reviewing multiple research sources at once, just to name a few. Displaying multiple tabs at once in a large, ergonomic window view makes for a fantastic interaction method that I think could apply far beyond Safari webpages and sports multiviews in TV. I imagine this feature will be used far more than last year’s spatial browsing.
Apple Intelligence can sort your bookmarks and Reading List entries based on topic if you like, though the automatic tab sorting feature present on other platforms is curiously missing. Personally, I like managing my own tabs anyway, but add that feature to the long list of strange feature parity omissions on visionOS along with Focus filters, photo editing, and – as of the current beta – Describe a Shortcut.
Platform Improvements
There’s no doubt that this is a refinement year for Apple’s platforms beyond AI. The company is taking the opportunity to revisit and optimize OS features that have long been considered mature, and that’s the case even for visionOS, a relative newcomer.
The time it takes the Vision Pro to connect to Wi-Fi upon power-up has been reduced significantly. Given the device’s short battery life and tendency to go into deep sleep when not in use, this is a quality-of-life change that you’re going to feel. When I turn my M2 Vision Pro on, I can’t log in quickly enough to open Safari or the TV before it’s connected to the Internet. That definitely was not the case before visionOS 27, and I appreciate it.
I’ve long been on the record as a critic of the notification system on visionOS, but it’s taking a big leap forward this year with expanding notifications. When an app icon appears at the top of your view to alert you to a notification, you expand it with your gaze and actually see what you’re being notified about. You can even long-press a Messages notification to reply directly without the need to open the full app, which is so convenient. And with any app, just seeing notifications in full without losing the context of what I’m doing is a major improvement.
Unlike notifications, I was a fan of the redesigned Control Center in visionOS 26. Alas, Control Center has been redesigned again, now featuring a three-column layout instead of a single window. I’m still getting used to the new look, but it does make sense conceptually to split different types of controls into separate columns, so I’m hoping this will make the feature more intuitive once I’ve adapted to it. Regardless of any other efficiency wins, though, this redesign gets my approval simply because it finally brings the AirPlay menu to the top level of Control Center, saving me an extra tap every time I want to switch sound output to my AirPods.
Sharing screenshots and videos from visionOS is going to be much easier thanks to high-quality screen recordings, which can be enabled in the Settings app. Now, the Vision Pro can take unfoveated videos of its screen for up to three minutes, as well as full-quality screenshots. In the past, on-device screen recordings were fuzzy outside of the viewer’s focus, resulting in a poor representation of the visionOS experience and requiring a Developer Strap and Xcode on a Mac as a workaround. This change alone is going to make my review process much simpler, and it’ll make it easier for all Vision Pro users to show others what using the device is like.
visionOS 27 now supports extra-small widgets, which are basically Lock Screen widgets brought to life in the user’s space. Like any other spatial widget, they can be placed on a wall or a horizontal surface such as a desk, and they are entirely customizable. Apple is introducing its own extra-small Mac Virtual Display widget for starting up a virtual connection with a Mac even if it’s asleep. Extra-small widgets take up much less space on a desk than even small ones, and there are already a bunch of them available from iPad apps running on the Vision Pro, so I think they’re going to be very useful.
Finally, there are some other Mac Virtual Display improvements included in visionOS 27. Virtual Display sessions can optionally persist even when you take your Vision Pro off, and macOS can stream spatial previews of 3D objects directly to visionOS with instant updates and two-way editing. I don’t have a Mac running Golden Gate yet, so I haven’t been able to try these features myself, but I plan to soon. If you work with 3D objects on your Mac and Vision Pro, I imagine this will speed up your workflow significantly.
And that’s visionOS 27 – so far, at least. There’s a still a lot more summer left: bugs to be squashed, refinements to be made, and third-party apps to be updated and introduced. My experience with the new version up to this point has been very positive, and I think it’ll make for a great update.
If you want to try out some of these features early, you can enroll in the Developer Beta anytime in the Software Update section of the Settings app. Whether you upgrade now or hold off for the public release, Apple’s got some great things in store with visionOS 27, and I look forward to continuing my testing over the summer in preparation for a full review this fall.
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