Apple made the visionOS 27 beta available to Vision Pro developers after Monday's WWDC 2026 keynote, and in this version there is a new Environment that allows you to immerse yourself in the Icelandic highlands.
"Thórsmörk" is a mountain ridge in Iceland that was named after the Norse god Thor. It offers a nighttime and daytime experience of the icy landscape surrounding a lake, complete with wintry sound effects and running water. It also includes a view of the Northern Lights.
Environments let you transform your physical surroundings into a different place, like Yosemite, Mount Hood, or the Moon. Environments can be used while you're using apps or they can provide a backdrop when you're watching movies. In Thórsmörk, for example, if you're watching a video, the scene's colors are reflected in the snow and the water for extra immersion.
Last year, visionOS 26 introduced an interactive Jupiter Environment that uses imagery from NASA for maximum authenticity.
There were only a handful of passing references to visionOS 27 during Apple's keynote, but the Vision Pro software is set to benefit from the same Siri AI features that are coming to iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 Golden Gate. visionOS 27 is expected to be released in the fall.
Instagram is now rolling out a long-awaited feature that lets users rearrange posts in any order on their profile grid.
The update, which began reaching users on June 8, is available via the Instagram app for iPhone and Android. To reorder posts, users can go to their profile, long-press any post on the grid, select "reorder grid" from the pop-up menu, then drag content to the desired position. Changes save immediately and are visible to all visitors.
Until now, Instagram profiles have displayed posts in strict reverse-chronological order, with the only exception being the ability to pin up to three posts at the top. The new feature lifts that restriction entirely, allowing posts of any age to be freely repositioned. Pinned posts continue to appear at the top regardless of any reordering.
The feature had been available to some users in test groups prior to the wider release. It arrives nearly a year after it was first revealed. Instagram first announced the change in January 2025, partly as an apology to users whose carefully assembled profile pages had been disrupted when the app switched from square to taller, vertically oriented thumbnails.
Apple expands GymKit support to the iPhone and AirPods Pro 3 with iOS 27, extending the gym equipment connectivity feature beyond Apple Watch for the first time.
GymKit originally launched in 2017 and has, until now, been exclusive to the Apple Watch feature, requiring users to wear the watch and tap it against compatible equipment to pair. The expansion means that iPhone and AirPods Pro 3 users can now also connect to supported cardio machines, including treadmills, ellipticals, bikes, and stair-steppers, for more accurate real-time workout metrics, without needing an Apple Watch on their wrist.
The feature works via two-way data exchange, syncing metrics such as speed, pace, distance, calories, and heart rate between the device and the machine in real time, with the goal of aligning what the user sees on their device with what the equipment displays.
Apple has expanded the number of major U.S. cities where its Apple Pay for transit feature is supported, providing a simple way for those who use public transportation to pay for rides.
Apple Pay for transit now works in Atlanta, the Bay Area, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Orange County, Philadelphia, Portland, San Diego, Seattle, and Washington, DC.
Some of these cities have supported Apple Pay for transit purposes for several years, and in others like Dallas and Houston, support is new as of June 2026.
In cities that support Apple Pay for transit, iPhone users can enable Express Mode to pay fares without unlocking their device or using Face ID or Touch ID. To choose a card, open Settings, go to Wallet & Apple Pay, and tap Express Transit Card.
When a credit or debit card is set for Express Mode, it can be used automatically at transit terminals. On iPhone XS and later, Express Transit may also work for up to five hours after the battery runs out, thanks to power reserve.
Some cities allow standard credit or debit cards for transit, while others require a dedicated transit card in the Wallet app. For example, in Houston, users add a virtual RideMETRO card, whereas in Dallas users can pay their DART transit fare with any contactless credit card or debit card.
The iPhone 6s, 2016 iPhone SE, and later support Express Mode for Apple Pay transit. It also works on Apple Watch Series 1 and later with watchOS 5.2.1 or newer.
Apple Pay transit is available in several cities around the world, including London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Toronto, Beijing, and Shanghai.
Transit support varies by city, so check local requirements before traveling. In supported areas, Apple Pay can make public transit easier by letting you pay at the gate without buying tickets in advance. Apple lists supported transit systems on its website.
Apple held its WWDC 2026 keynote today, introducing iOS 27, macOS 27, iPadOS 27, watchOS 27, visionOS 27, and tvOS 27. It took Apple an hour and a half to walk through the major new features in the updates, but we have a quicker 10 minute recap for those who want the highlights.
Apple debuted an all-new smarter Siri, added Apple Intelligence features to multiple apps, and shared details on a long list of performance improvements and bug fixes. We have a recap of all our coverage below.
Apple today unveiled watchOS 27, featuring a redesigned dynamic app grid, new gesture controls, and a raft of usability and battery improvements.
The new dynamic app grid surfaces and rearranges five apps based on context and usage. Users can simply tap the bottom center icon to go to the rest of their apps.
A new tap gesture lets users select a widget in the Smart Stack by tapping their index finger and thumb together once, allowing interaction even when the other hand is occupied. Apple is also expanding Smart Stack suggestions to surface more contextually relevant widgets, including birthday reminders for close contacts, a parked car location card, sleep alarm adjustments ahead of select holidays, and transit card balance checks.
Users can now create custom passes for any membership or card that uses a QR code or barcode, such as a library card, using their iPhone and access it directly from the Apple Watch's Wallet app or pin it to the Smart Stack. Transit cards and IDs will also appear in the Smart Stack.
Apple says it has improved Liquid Glass in watchOS 27 to improve readability through more uniform refraction and better contrast. Other improvements include faster Music playback startup, faster app extension launches, improved Wi-Fi connectivity, more efficient water detection, better battery efficiency with suggested optimizations, Guest Key support, and the ability to view card balances in the Wallet app. The settings interface in the Apple Watch app on iPhone also features a new design.
Find My is completely redesigned with a more map-centric layout and consolidates the Find Devices, Find People, and Find Items apps into a single unified view. A new Call Context feature can proactively surface relevant information from other apps during a phone call to a business, such as displaying a confirmation code from Mail when a user calls an airline. watchOS 27 also includes a large number of fitness, workout, and sleep tracking improvements.
Apple today announced new slideshow features coming to the Photos app, allowing users to play any set of photos and videos as a slideshow.
There are options to set the slide duration, transition style, and music. iOS 27 also lets users save any slideshow directly as a video to their Photos library for easy playback later.
Additional new features include the ability to save individual video frames as photos, more flexible album organization tools, emoji reactions in Shared Albums, a view of recent Shared Album activity, and access to full-resolution photos and videos in Shared Albums. Apple also introduces new collections in Photos, including Captured by Me and Identity Documents, alongside improved search results for people and pets.
watchOS 27 contains a series of enhancements to fitness and sleep tracking, including new Workout Buddy insights, improved indoor run tracking, and more.
Workout Buddy is gaining new data-driven motivation features, delivering progress updates for pace, distance, and workout duration based on a user's fitness history. Apple is also enabling Workout Buddy to function without an iPhone nearby, allowing users to stay motivated during workouts without needing a phone in their pocket or hand. Workout Buddy is additionally expanding to Spanish, letting Spanish-speaking users receive personalized fitness motivation in their preferred language.
Indoor run and walk distance tracking is also getting more accurate in watchOS 27. Apple says improved motion tracking algorithms will more precisely measure treadmill distance directly from the wrist, without requiring a connected iPhone. Route maps in the Fitness app are also receiving an accuracy improvement, giving users a more precise view of their workout paths after the fact.
Sleep tracking is becoming more accurate as well, though Apple has not yet detailed the specific changes underlying the improvement. The update also brings a step count sync fix where steps counted in the Health app will now sync with the Fitness app directly.
Apple today announced that iOS 27 will expand the Health app's Cycle Tracking feature with dedicated perimenopause and menopause support, including notifications, symptom logging, and educational resources.
The update will enable Cycle Tracking to detect when a user's logged cycle patterns are suggestive of perimenopause and surface a notification accordingly. Users will also be able to log related symptoms directly within the Health app and access educational resources designed to provide guidance and support through the transition. There are also new Fitness+ workouts for perimenopause and menopause.
The new perimenopause and menopause support in iOS 27 uses long-term cycle data to detect a hormonal transition that can begin a decade or more before menopause itself. The additions are part of broader Health app improvements in iOS 27 that Apple says include more advanced cycle tracking overall, faster data updates across the app, and refreshed design elements.
Apple introduced Cycle Tracking across the iPhone and Apple Watch simultaneously with iOS 13 and watchOS 6, and has deepened the feature set steadily since, most notably with the addition of wrist temperature sensing in the Apple Watch Series 8, which enabled basal body temperature tracking and retrospective ovulation estimates.
Apple Maps is getting a visual update in iOS 27, with Apple planning to introduce new aerial imagery that's combined with Visual Intelligence models.
Apple said everything will have sharper detail, from the "shapes of individual trees to the way light reflects off the glass of skyscrapers."
Flyover is an Apple Maps view that lets users see more than 350 cities in 3D with detailed landmarks, roads, trees, parks, buildings, and more. It uses aerial imagery captured by planes, and it is a signature Apple Maps feature.
The more detailed Flyover visuals Apple described at the WWDC 2026 keynote do not appear to be implemented in the iOS 27 beta as of yet.
Back at WWDC 2025, Apple revealed that it was planning to allow CarPlay users to watch video via AirPlay in their vehicles while they are not driving, but we did not hear many specific details about this functionality until now.
In a WWDC 2026 video aimed at developers, Apple said the CarPlay video feature is available in new vehicles that support it. When playing a video in an iPhone app that supports AirPlay video streaming, users can select the car's display from the AirPlay menu on iOS and watch the video on a compatible vehicle's screen.
New in iOS 27, Apple is allowing developers to create CarPlay apps with video browsing capabilities, so you can find videos to watch right on CarPlay.
This feature can keep you entertained while you are not driving. For example, Apple said you may use it while waiting in your car at the airport, or charging your electric vehicle. For safety reasons, video playback is only enabled when the vehicle is parked.
In addition, the more personal and intelligent version of Siri — aka "Siri AI" — will be available on CarPlay when it is used with an iPhone 15 Pro or newer. Apple offered the following example for using Siri AI via CarPlay: "On the road, ask Siri which trailhead your friend suggested and get the answer instantly."
In a slide shown very briefly during the WWDC 2026 keynote, Apple revealed four additional enhancements coming to CarPlay:
Audio scrubbing within CarPlay's Now Playing interface
Improved GPS accuracy and navigation heading
A mini-player for audio within apps
Improved wireless CarPlay reliability
All of the new CarPlay features require an iPhone running iOS 27, which is available in developer beta. A public beta will follow in July, and the software update should be released to all users with a compatible iPhone in September.
Apple today confirmed that the Apple Watch Series 9 is compatible with watchOS 27, after the device was mistakenly omitted from the software's official compatibility page.
Apple updated its website immediately following its WWDC 2026 keynote, and the watchOS 27 page listed a shorter compatibility list than many users expected: the Apple Watch SE 3, Series 10, Series 11, Ultra 2, and Ultra 3. That would have meant watchOS 27 dropped support for the Apple Watch Series 9, despite both the Series 9 and Ultra 2 containing the same S9 chip.
Shortly after Apple released watchOS 27 developer beta 1, Apple Watch Series 9 owners began reporting that they were able to download, install, and run the beta on their devices. Apple confirmed to MacRumors that the Series 9 omission was an error, and that the device is indeed supported. Apple's website has since been corrected.
watchOS 27 still drops support for the Apple Watch Series 6, Series 7, and Series 8, along with the original Ultra and SE 2, a significant cut that makes it the largest single-year drop in Apple Watch software support to date. The update introduces a new Siri AI app, new workout data insights, Spanish support for Workout Buddy, and more.
Private Cloud Compute is Apple's cloud intelligence system for private AI processing, used to keep Apple Intelligence requests secure while handling processing in the cloud. PCC has been limited to Apple silicon servers in Apple data centers, but Apple is now relying on Google servers to handle some Apple Intelligence processing.
Apple partnered with Google to use the technologies behind Google's Gemini AI models for its own Apple Foundation Models. While some processing is done on-device, agentic tool use and complex reasoning require cloud processing. Apple says it worked with Google and NVIDIA to extend its PCC infrastructure to Google Cloud systems that run NVIDIA GPUs without compromising privacy and security protections.
Our core PCC requirements remain exactly the same: stateless computation, enforceable guarantees, no privileged runtime access, non-targetability, and verifiable transparency. What's new with PCC on Google Cloud is the implementation: NVIDIA Confidential Computing with NVIDIA GPUs, Intel CPUs with TDX, and Google's Titan chip.
All server components and software are part of a trusted computing base subject to verifiable transparency and no-privileged-access guarantees, plus Apple has a cryptographically verifiable ledger of all Google Cloud hardware that is part of the PCC fleet to mitigate the risk of supply chain attacks. PCC on Google Cloud also uses many of the same architectural security patterns as PCC on Apple silicon.
Apple says the efforts it has made to bring PCC to Google Cloud will mean user data continues to be protected by PCC's security and privacy properties even outside of Apple hardware and data centers. Apple maintains control over PCC software and Apple devices will only trust PCC software cryptographically approved by Apple.
PCC on Google Cloud is not fully implemented, and Apple plans to gradually add the full set of protections throughout the beta testing process.
PCC on Google Cloud binaries will be available for public inspection. Apple plans to provide public research tooling and access to live PCC nodes in research mode through its Apple Security Bounty Program.
Apple today announced an update to iCloud Shared Albums to allow friends and family on Android and Windows to join and contribute photos more conveniently, with support for full-resolution images.
The improvement for Android and Windows users removes a notable friction point for mixed-device groups, enabling users outside the Apple ecosystem to participate in shared albums via iCloud.com more easily, as well as add photos at full-resolution with no compression for the first time.
Apple has also introduced new ways to filter and react to photos in shared albums, along with updated tools for inviting others to contribute.
At the WWDC 2026 keynote, Apple detailed iOS 27 changes like a new version of Siri with a dedicated Siri app and Apple Intelligence features across multiple apps, but there are dozens of smaller but still important changes that Apple didn't have time to go through.
Apple shared an image summarizing some of the bug fixes and optimizations it made in iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27, and there are some interesting changes.
Dual Phone Numbers
Apple says you'll be able to switch between two iPhone devices with the same phone number, which presumably means you can set up two iPhones with one number and then swap between them as needed. It could work similar to how an iPhone and Apple Watch can share the same phone number. It should be a useful change for anyone who wants to get a foldable iPhone and a standard iPhone 18 Pro this year.
Sharing numbers between two iPhones may require carrier support, so it's not clear if it's implemented in the beta.
Two FaceTime Cameras
Dual camera in FaceTime is a listed feature, and that likely means you'll be able to use the front and back cameras at the same time during FaceTime calls.
Faster AirPlay and AirDrop
AirPlaying content to the HomePod and Apple TV is faster than before thanks to multiple system improvements. AirDrop transfers from the iPhone to other devices are also faster, and it's quicker for an iPhone to find nearby AirDrop recipients.
Messages Drawing App
There's a drawing app in Messages where you can handwrite a message or draw a picture. It uses the same drawing tools that are available in the Notes app or when annotating images.
Extra Large Widgets
There's a new extra large widget size you can select on the iPhone's Home Screen. The extra large size takes up an entire app page and displays more information from an app.
Shared Album Expirations
You can now set a shared photo album to expire after a set time, so it doesn't exist indefinitely.
Independent Alarm Volume
Alarm volume can be controlled separately from system volume, as can alerts and system sounds. In Settings > Sounds & Haptics, there are toggles to match Alarms, Timers, Alerts, and System Sounds to Ringtone Volume or to decouple them. Toggling off the match option lets you select a preferred volume level for alarms and system sounds.
Markdown in Notes
You can now copy and paste Markdown in the Notes app.
Save a Video Frame
There's a new option to save a video frame as a photo in the Photos app.
Weather
The Weather app has a "Highlights" view with at-a-glance information, plus it includes updated hourly and 10-day views for precipitation and wind speed.
More power efficient personal hotspot on devices with N1 chip
Failed messages will automatically try resending
Improved Bluetooth power management
Support for time zone changes in Sleep
Improved unread badge accuracy in Mail
These are just some of the improvements and changes that Apple has introduced in iOS 27. We'll be sharing more new features in iOS 27 as they're discovered by the community. The iOS 27 beta is available for developers right now, with Apple planning to introduce a public beta in July. iOS 27 will launch this fall.
Anyone with an Apple Developer account is able to install the iOS 27 developer beta for free, with Apple Developer Program membership for $99 per year no longer required in recent years. After registering, restart your iPhone and open the Settings app. Next, tap on General → Software Update → Beta Updates and select the iOS 27 Developer Beta option. From there, you can install the beta on your iPhone.
Apple said the first iOS 27 public beta will follow in July.
To install a public beta, first sign up at beta.apple.com. After enrolling, restart your iPhone and open the Settings app. Next, tap on General → Software Update → Beta Updates and select the iOS 27 Public Beta once it is available.
Keep in mind that the revamped version of Siri — aka "Siri AI" — has a waitlist.
iOS beta versions can have bugs and performance issues. Backing up your iPhone before installing beta software is highly recommended.
Tim Cook closed out what is expected to be his last keynote as Apple's chief executive officer today with some emotive final remarks.
Wrapping up a pre-recorded video message, Cook reflected on his tenure at the company. "Some of the highlights of my time as CEO have been events like this, sharing powerful new tools with all of you," he said, adding that what developers create with Apple's platforms has been "a constant reminder that imagination has no limits."
One of the greatest highlights of my time as CEO have been events like this, sharing powerful new tools with all of you and what you create with them has been a constant reminder that imagination has no limits.
Over the years, you have helped people create, learn, and experience the world in explain ways, and with the incredible capabilities we introduced today, I truly believe the best is still ahead.
Cook said it had been "an honor" to lead the company, describing Apple's north star as always creating products that serve people's needs. "I truly believe the best is still ahead," he said, before thanking the audience.
Cook has served as CEO since 2011, succeeding Steve Jobs. John Ternus, Apple's SVP of Hardware Engineering, will takeover from Cook in September, just in time for the announcement of new iPhone models.
iOS 27 includes an entirely revamped Genmoji creation experience. There's an updated interface that supports describing an emoji that you want to create, with options to start from existing emoji, choose an image from Photos, or select a person.
After uploading an image or using a text phrase to create a Genmoji, there's now a "Describe a change" interface for making updates to what you've already created. You can iterate on designs and change specific elements of a Genmoji, tweaking colors and objects.
Apple's AI is smarter than before and it is able to successfully make iterative updates for better Genmoji customization. Each change uses the old base rather than regenerating a new Genmoji with every request. With a series of requests, it is possible to make a complicated, multi-element Genmoji. Along with describing changes, you can also add in additional emoji, and the interface makes suggestions on what to do next.
Genmoji output is also more consistent, and Genmoji look more like real emoji with a 3D, cartoonish style by default. There is now an option to change style, so if you don't want the cartoonish look, you can ask for something else like a drawing or a sketch.
Generating a Genmoji does not take as long, and it appears to be less system intensive with less battery drain.
Apple also overhauled Image Playground in iOS 27, and both Image Playground and Genmoji use updated Apple Foundation Models. Image Playground now supports generating photorealistic images and adding AI elements to just parts of photos.
Apple's first foldable iPhone, with a book-style design featuring a ~5.5-inch outer display and a ~7.8-inch inner display with a minimal crease down the middle.
