Apple

Apple's iOS 27 bill-splitting feature is now live, letting Apple Cash users photograph or select a receipt, assign individual items to different people, and calculate each person's share before sending payment requests.

iOS 27 arrived earlier this month, and among its Apple Intelligence features is a new way to build automations: describe what you want in plain language, and the Shortcuts app builds it for you (MacRumors; EFF). Tap New Shortcut and the app can open to a "Describe a Shortcut" screen instead of dropping straight into the manual action editor, based on MacRumors' testing during the beta this summer (MacRumors). The update also brings new automation triggers and several new actions across...

Developer Sam Henri Gold says he built Light Touch, calling it a "full-featured iPod touch 2G emulator for Mac" that sends graphics calls out of the emulator to the Mac's own OpenGL implementation instead of rendering them internally (Sam Henri Gold, Hachyderm, 3 days ago). That's the claim, posted three days ago, with no download link, project page, or install instructions attached to the post itself.

A Tom's Guide reporter spent about four hours trying to book a family trip to Disneyland Paris, phone parked in an online queue the whole time. The reporter said the checks on that booking page came about every 20 minutes in that case, part of a range the same person observed elsewhere running anywhere from 10 minutes to a full hour (Tom's Guide, last week). That inconsistency is the whole problem with an otherwise clever tool.

iOS 27 splits Apple's Clean Up tool into three processing modes: Auto, Fast, and High Quality, and picking the right one is the difference between an edit that holds up and one that looks obviously doctored. This guide covers how to use Clean Up in iOS 27 Photos to remove unwanted objects from iPhone photos, including which mode to trust and when to override it. Hands-on tests from Macworld and TechRadar show High Quality producing noticeably more convincing results than Fast in complex...

Apple's iOS 27 update, released Sept. 14, adds a new layer of parental controls that lets parents approve or deny specific requests as they happen instead of relying only on restrictions configured in advance.

iPadOS 27 became available as a free update Sept. 14, and the headline addition is Siri AI, Apple's rebuilt assistant. Installing the update is one decision; getting Siri AI to work is another.

For years, every iMessage conversation looked the same: the standard plain Messages backdrop, no matter who you were talking to. That changed when Apple shipped iOS 26, which lets you swap that plain canvas for a photo, a solid color, an animated preset, or an AI-generated image. Learning how to change the background on iPhone Messages takes about thirty seconds once you know where to look, but the feature works differently than most people expect. It isn't a personal theme sitting quietly on...

Continuity isn't one setting tucked into a menu. iOS, iPadOS, and macOS bundle nearly a dozen distinct tools under that name, everything from AirDrop and Handoff to lesser-known features like Continuity Sketch and Instant Hotspot (Apple Support, earlier this year). Knowing how to use Apple Continuity well means matching the right feature to the right task, not switching everything on and hoping it sorts itself out.

Apple's macOS 27 "Golden Gate" puts Siri AI into Spotlight, the right-click menu, and screen-aware queries, but the first hands-on account of it found Siri itself only "occasionally useful." Gizmodo's Kyle Barr spent time with the macOS 27 beta two months ago and came away more impressed with a different feature: AI-assisted Shortcuts, which he called "the real gold" of the release.

For years, Apple Notes was a one-way street. Text went in and mostly stayed there, with no built-in way to hand a note back out in a format other writing tools could actually read. iOS 26 changes that by building native, two-way Markdown support into Notes, and this guide walks through how to import and export Markdown in Apple Notes on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

iOS 27 restores a real Home Screen icon for the Apple TV Remote app, but the release candidate also contains two more additions most users can't touch yet: an app launcher and a Top Shelf content carousel. Both of these iOS 27 Apple TV Remote app hidden features sit behind disabled feature flags, so installing the update on its own won't switch either one on, according to MacRumors and Cult of Mac.

Apple has brought the App Switcher back on Apple Watch in watchOS 27.2 beta 2, and it works differently than the version longtime owners are used to. Instead of double-clicking the Digital Crown, testers now press and hold the bottom of the screen while inside an app.

Apple didn't quietly bolt on a new financing tier this week. It shut down the iPhone Upgrade Program and iPhone Payments in the United States and replaced both with the Apple Upgrade program, a Klarna-backed lease that now spans iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, and Mac (Apple Newsroom, this week). Leases start at $17.99 a month for iPhone and run 12 to 36 months depending on device category, sold through Apple's own retail and online channels in partnership with buy-now-pay-later provider Klarna...

Apple quietly previewed a way to switch one phone number between two iPhones at WWDC 2026, but it left the mechanics largely unexplained. What sounded at first like a small continuity feature now looks more substantial: one iPhone can serve as the main device, a second can act as its companion, and the same phone number can move between them without repeatedly transferring the primary eSIM.

Apple's WWDC26 preview of iOS 27 showed off video playback in the car and a much smarter Siri, but installing the update on an iPhone doesn't unlock either feature by itself. Working out iOS 27 CarPlay features compatibility means checking three separate things at once: the iPhone's model, the car parked in the driveway, and whether the apps already installed have caught up to Apple's new tools.

Tucked inside CarPlay's Accessibility menu are three tools: Voice Control, Sound Recognition, and a set of display adjustments covering text size, boldness, and color. These count among the hidden Apple CarPlay features that go unused simply because accessibility submenus rarely get opened without a specific reason to check them. None of them is a universal upgrade. Each solves a specific kind of friction for a specific kind of driver, and figuring out which one applies to you is the actual...

TechCrunch's hands-on verdict on the rebuilt Siri AI is blunt: the assistant finally works the way Apple promised, though the review reads more like relief than excitement, closer to a bug fix than a breakthrough (TechCrunch's hands-on review). Scientific American frames the wait differently, noting that Apple has promised, and repeatedly delayed, this more proactive Siri for two years (Scientific American). Whichever framing feels right comes down to something more basic than opinion: can you...

Apple Watch owners testing the watchOS 27 beta have found two features missing outright: a Digital Crown double-click shortcut and the Walkie-Talkie app. A third change reshuffles rather than removes, merging three separate Find My apps into one. These are the watchOS 27 changes reported so far in beta testing, and each one comes with a different level of certainty depending on which build was checked and when.

Pocket Casts does not currently support Apple TV. That is the last documented position from the company, stated on its support page two and a half years ago, with a note that support may come in the future. Nothing in the app's current App Store listing changes that picture. What has changed is the platform Pocket Casts would be entering: Apple announced last month that it is rebuilding Apple Podcasts on tvOS from scratch, adding video playback, optional 4K creator support, and in-show episode...

Wikipedia's iOS app picked up a new Home Screen widget yesterday that does exactly one thing: open a random Wikipedia article the moment someone taps it. The Wikipedia iOS random articles widget shipped in Monday's iPhone and iPad update, joining the trending, featured, and Picture of the Day widgets the app already offers, 9to5Mac reported.

Apple Maps ads are now live in the US and Canada. Ad delivery began on August 21, and Apple confirmed a few days later that the rollout would keep expanding over the coming weeks, according to 9to5Mac and PPC Land.

Updating to iOS 27 doesn't automatically give you Apple's new Siri. Siri AI began rolling out in beta on Sept. 14, but hardware, language, region, age, and waitlist requirements mean some iPhone owners still won't see it after installing the update.

Apple's long-rumored Home Hub display is shaping up to be less a single shared screen and more a device that can serve personal content depending on who's using it.

Some App Store apps now let you pay for an annual subscription in monthly installments instead of one upfront charge. Apple calls these monthly subscriptions with a 12-month commitment, and they're easy to mistake for flexible, cancel-anytime monthly plans.

Safari looks almost the same after installing iOS 27. Open it, and the address bar, tab bar, and reading view sit right where they always have. But WIRED found that Apple tucked several new tools into Safari's menus, changes easy to miss if you're just scrolling through a webpage.

WhatsApp's in-chat search feature for iPhone would let users jump straight into a chat's search mode with a single tap, skipping the detour through chat info the app currently requires. The feature was discovered in WhatsApp beta for iOS 26.31.10.70 on TestFlight, but WhatsApp has not enabled it for beta testers and has not announced a release date.

Apple's next few years in the smart home are starting to take shape, at least according to people briefed on the company's internal plans. The Apple smart home product roadmap now being reported includes refreshed Apple TV and HomePod mini hardware, a first-ever room-by-room display hub, and Apple's first self-made security camera and doorbell (9to5Mac, 2 days ago). Apple has not publicly announced any of it in the reporting cited here.

GM confirmed last week that Apple CarPlay and Android Auto will remain in the 2027 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 and GMC Sierra 1500, but with a redesigned infotainment interface arriving later this year on the company's highest-volume vehicles.

iOS 27 began rolling out on September 14, and it arrived with a screen most people may be tempted to tap through without reading: a prompt titled "Improve Siri & Apple Intelligence" offering two choices, "Share Audio and Text" or "Not Now."

Apple Music subscribers don't have to wait until the end of the year to see their listening habits laid out. The 2026 Replay playlist has been updating since early February, tracking top songs throughout the year rather than appearing only as a year-end recap.

Apple's macOS 27 Golden Gate doesn't dramatically redesign Photos, but it delivers one of the app's broadest feature updates in years. The changes span generative AI editing, upgraded Shared Albums, new organization tools, and improvements to slideshows and search.

tvOS 27 adds a Settings control that can block a household member from launching specific apps, according to release-note wording 9to5Mac reported Monday. That's the extent of what tvOS 27 Apple TV profiles app controls are confirmed to do right now. Apple's cited release notes don't specify whether the restriction is tied to a single profile, whether it applies only to child-type profiles, or whether a passcode protects the setting once it's turned on.

Apple is testing its redesigned Health app in iOS 27.2, giving beta users an early look at the new Insights and Longevity tabs before the full experience launches later this year.

Downloading a map to an iPhone before a hike doesn't guarantee it will still work once the signal drops. Gaia GPS's own support documentation warns that its app caches recently viewed tiles, so a trail can look available offline even though it was never actually downloaded. That's a quirk specific to how Gaia checks download status, not proof that offline map apps generally fail (Gaia GPS Help, 5 months ago).

Most CarPlay customization doesn't happen on the car's screen. App order and widgets are managed from the paired iPhone, while wallpaper, display appearance, text size and Smart Display Zoom are adjusted through CarPlay itself.

Some Mac owners running macOS 27 have watched Apple Intelligence balloon to 20GB or more in the Storage pane, well beyond what Apple's own documentation says it should need. If you're trying to figure out how to remove Apple Intelligence models on Mac and claw back some of that space, start by separating what's actually been measured from what's circulating on Reddit.

The Apple CarPlay settings worth changing after that first pairing live in two places: the iPhone's Settings app and CarPlay's own Settings app on the vehicle display.

Apple shipped watchOS 27 on Sept. 14, and the update removes a familiar Apple Watch multitasking shortcut.

Here's how iPhone Handoff works in iOS 27: supported carriers can put the same phone number on two iPhones, but only one of those phones is ever active at a time. It's not two simultaneously active lines, and treating it that way is the fastest way to misunderstand what you're paying for (MacRumors explains).