SAN JOSE—iOS 12 is official, and, as predicted, it puts a heavy emphasis on improving performance and stability. At the same time, the latest iteration of Apple’s mobile OS is poised to bring a handful of noteworthy new features to iPhones and iPads as well.

The software update was announced during a keynote presentation at Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). A developer preview is available today, with a public beta scheduled for later in the month. A full release will then arrive in the fall.

Apple says the update will be available on all the same devices as the current iOS 11 release, which includes the iPhone 5s and later, every iPad released since the original iPad Air and iPad mini 2, and the 6th-generation iPod Touch.

The company said it is putting a particular focus on ensuring the update works smoothly on older devices. To give a point of reference, Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, said iOS 12 will launch apps up to 40-percent faster and bring up the keyboard up to 50-percent faster on an iPhone 6 Plus. Federighi said the update will make a compatible phone "instantly ramp up performance to its highest state" when it recognizes that it needs a performance boost—such as when you're loading an app—and then more quickly bring it down to help preserve battery life.

ARKit 2 and more augmented reality

Also as expected, Apple is updating its augmented reality functionality with iOS 12. The company announced the launch of ARKit 2, the next iteration of the AR development framework it introduced last year. Apple says the update will bring improved face-tracking performance, more realistic rendering, and the ability to create multiplayer augmented reality apps. (Google announced similar multi-user functionality for its ARCore platform last month.) LEGO demonstrated an app in which multiple users could play with a shared virtual LEGO kit, for instance.

Beyond that, Apple said it worked with movie studio Pixar to create a new open-file format specifically designed for AR called usdz. The company says this will help make it simpler for developers to share AR files across iOS and create 3D objects that can be pulled into the real world. Federighi gave the example of customizing a guitar on the Fender website in Safari, then tapping on it to pull out a 3D model that can be inspected with AR. Adobe was listed as one company that will support the new file format, so the idea is that developers could make an AR object in an app like Photoshop and bring it to iOS in a more straightforward fashion. Along these lines, Apple introduced a new app called Measure that can use an iPhone's camera to measure real-world objects.

Apple

Apple

Apple

Photos

The company said iOS 12 will improve its Photos app with a beefed-up search library and better suggestions. Apple says the app will use object and scene recognition, letting you combine multiple search terms to more accurately find a specific photo. So you could, say, refine your search to pictures of (1) your dog at (2) the beach in (3) New Jersey, much like you can with Google Photos today. There's a new "For You" tab within the app as well, which will compile photos, Memories, and iCloud Shared Albums the app thinks are significant and suggest photos to share with specific people. Apple says Photos uses encrypted "on-device machine learning" to make these suggestions.

Siri shortcuts for third-party apps

The update will bring new features to Apple's Siri digital assistant as well. The biggest of the bunch is a feature called Shortcuts, which will let users create a voice prompt to ask Siri to perform commonly made actions with third-party apps and let developers integrate further with the assistant for certain quick actions. Apple gave the example of assigning the phrase "help me find my keys" in conjunction with the Tile app: if you say that, Siri could be made to automatically activate the Tile app and use it to help you find your keys right from within the Siri interface.

You could also assign a multistep routine to the assistant: a custom phrase like "heading home," for instance, could prompt Siri to start up a favorite radio station, adjust your home thermostat, send a message to your spouse, and tell you how long you'll take to get home. This would seem to explain what the Workflow team has been up to after Apple acquired the automation app last year.

Along with that, Apple says Siri will be more proactive about suggesting things you do on a regular basis. If it's a loved one's birthday, for instance, Siri could present a home screen shortcut reminding you to call them. If you regularly order coffee from a specific app, it could give you a quick link to do that in the morning. There's a dedicated editor for setting up custom prompts, and Apple says this kind of behavior will work across iPhone, iPad, the Apple Watch, and the HomePod.

Grouped notifications

Apple says iOS 12 will bring long-anticipated updates to how the software handles notifications, too. Most notably, it will now group notifications by app, text thread, and the like. Instead of getting individual notifications for each text from a given person, for instance, everything from said person will be bundled in one bubble, which you can swipe aside if you wanted to dismiss everything altogether. This is something Google's Android OS has allowed for many years, but it should be a welcome change nonetheless. (That said, when you go to expand and ungroup a bundle of notifications, iOS 12 will then lay them out the old way, one by one.) Apple says users will be able to turn off notifications for specific apps right from the lock screen as well.

Group FaceTime

FaceTime will be updated as well with the ability to chat with multiple people in a group call. Group FaceTime, as Apple calls it, will support up to 32 people on a call. Apple says these calls won't discriminate by device, so people could join at any time from an iPhone, iPad, or Mac or through an audio-only feed on Apple Watch.

Digital health features



Similar to Google's "digital well-being" initiative with Android P, Apple touted a few new features designed to curb iPhone overuse. The Do Not Disturb setting, for instance, will now let you designate a specific time period as "bedtime;" the feature will then mute any incoming notifications over that time and let you tap an icon in the morning to have them start rolling in again.

A new "Screen Time" feature will give a weekly activity summary of how you've engaged with your iPhone or iPad, telling you things like which apps you've used, which apps are sending you the most notifications, how often you pick up your phone, and what time of day you've used certain apps. Another new feature called "App Limits" will let you set a limit on how long you want to use a specific app, then send you a notification when that time is nearing its end. Apple says this can be set up for kids, too, and can make it so they only see certain movies, apps, or websites.

“Memoji” and more Animoji

The new iOS will update Apple's "Animoji" icons, which for now are limited to the iPhone X but will likely arrive on the next crop of iPhones when they are introduced later this year. The headline feature is "Memoji," which looks like Apple's spin on the vaguely horrifying AR Emoji feature of Samsung's Galaxy S9 phones. This lets you make an animoji of yourself using a compatible phone's front-facing 3D camera, complete with customizable options for hairstyle, facial features, skin tone, eyewear, and so on. Apple is adding ghost, koala, tiger, and T-rex Animoji to the current set, too. The company says all of these will now be able to capture winks and tongue movements. The company is also adding Animoji, along with Snapchat-like filters and stickers, to the camera function in the Messages app.

Apple

Apple

Apple

Apple

Apple

CarPlay, Apple Books, Voice Memos, and more

Several other Apple apps will receive small refreshes as part of the iOS 12 update as well. CarPlay will support third-party navigation apps like Waze and Google Maps. iBooks will be rechristened as Apple Books; it will include an overhauled store page and a "Reading Now" tab that lets you jump back into the spot you left your last-read book. Voice memos will gain a new look and be able to sync recordings across iOS 12 devices through iCloud. Apple News will get a new sidebar on iPads to make it easier to navigate topics and outlets. The Stocks app will arrive on the iPad and use Apple News to present financial news stories.

All told, iOS 12 doesn't promise a ton of show-stopping changes, but its many smaller-scale improvements should help polish up iOS from a quality-of-life standpoint. It's worth noting that all of these new features may not roll out with iOS 12 right away, though. It took Apple several releases over many months to add all the features that were promised in iOS 11. For example, Messages in iCloud was promised in iOS and macOS at last year's WWDC, but it just hit both platforms last week.