Announced in June, the new OSs for your iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch are now available! Of course, upgrade by going to Settings > General > Software Update. These OSs are well tested and it is safe to upgrade today. This blog will provide some practical tips on configuring and using the new features. I will focus on the iPhone, but the iPad has many of these same features, configured in the same way.

Note that some of the features announced in June are not yet released to iOS 15, but will be later in the fall (SharePlay, Digital Legacy, Keys & IDs in Wallet and Universal Control).

Here are the major new features and how to configure and use them:

Preventing tracking of opening an email. Yes, “they” can tell whether you opened an email or not…until iOS 15, that is. This prevention may not be on by default. You turn it on in Settings > Mail > Privacy Protection. Once there turn on “Protect Mail Activity”.
This next feature requires no configuration, but it is worth checking out so you are familiar with it. Open your Camera app and hold it up to a sign, a hand-written note or even something written another language! When the camera recognizes the text, click the new text icon in the lower right corner of the screen. You can copy, translate, look up on the web and share the text from the screen! This works without taking a picture of the object, but, if you do take a picture of it, the same process works on that picture in your Photos app. This also works on pictures you have taken before iOS 15.

Examples: Hold your Camera to or take a picture of something that has a phone number on it. Tap the phone number and call it right from the Camera or photo! Take a picture of a recipe a friend has on paper, copy the text from the picture and paste it into Notes, Pages, Word, an email or whatever. Photograph something from a foreign language and it can translate it into English for you! Amazing.

Also in the Photos app, open a photo then scroll the screen up to reveal details about the photo, camera settings as well as when and where the photo was taken. You can even adjust the photo’s date and time or location by clicking on the blue Adjust word.
Home Screen arrangement - you can now move your Home screens around! Press and hold anywhere until everything wiggles. Then, tap the page indicator dots in the bottom center of a Home screen. You can then move pages around with your finger into different orders!
iCloud+ - renamed for some new features, iCloud+ provides some more useful functionality. iCloud+ is free for those who pay for extra iCloud storage. It is not available for the free 5GB iCloud storage accounts.

Open Settings > [your name] > iCloud. You will notice that iCloud Backup and Keychain are now at the top of the list where they should have been all along based on their importance. Remember, nothing in the tech world is more important than backing up your computing devices.

Private Relay (Beta). Tap on it and turn it on. This is much like a VPN in that it encrypts your web traffic from prying eyes! You can now safely browse the internet on open Wi-Fi networks like hotels, airports and coffee shops without fear of having your Wi-Fi traffic intercepted and read!

Back to the main iCloud list, just below Private Relay, you will find Hide My Email. You don’t have to turn it on, but you can read about how it works. Tap on Forward To and select the email address you want the service to use. If you register with a website using Apple it will provide the website with a random email address that forwards to your main email address, so that the website never knows your real email address.

Notifications - Finally, Notifications can be treated differently based on their urgency. Go to Settings > Notifications and turn on Notification Summary at the top. There you can schedule non-urgent notifications to show up grouped and at the time of day you choose. Select the apps you want to group into the summary, the time(s) you want those summaries and then click Turn on Notification Summary. Once you do that, I recommend turning on Show Next Summary so that if you need to see the notifications before the next scheduled time, you can see them in the Notification Center (swipe down from the center top of your screen).

Once in the main Notification area, it is a good idea to look through the apps that are enabled or disabled from sending you notifications. You will probably see some you want to turn on or off. This is not a new feature.

Focus - Focus is a new area in Settings > Focus. Open it and you can set up settings similar to Do Not Disturb (which blocks pretty much everyone and everything). The difference in Focus settings is that you can define who and what apps will be able to notify you when you want to focus. For example, set up Focus Work so that only people you work with and maybe your family, as well as only work apps, can notify you of activity. I guess I will play with it, but it seems more trouble than its setup is worth.
Translate - The Translate app is all new. Open it and tap the Translation button in the lower-left to enter or speak (using the microphone button) a phrase and the app will translate it for you there on the screen. Also, you can speak to another person who does not speak your language. To do this tap the Conversation button in the bottom center, then tap the circle icon just to the left of the microphone icon to select Face to Face. Your screen is split in two, with the top half inverted for the other person to read. Tap the microphone and simply start talking to each other! Long-press the microphone button to have it continually listen.

Also, the Translate app works in the background throughout your device. Select some text on a website, in an email or whatever, and the resulting pop-up will have a Translate command to translate the selected text into English for you (or whatever default language you have set for your device).

These are not all of the features released this week, just the ones I thought were most important. For the complete list, read these:

https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-15/

https://www.apple.com/ipados/ipados-15/

Gary's Tech Blog

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