A 'byte' of Apple: WWDC 2025 highlights

Each June, Apple execs take to the stage at Apple Park to charm app developers with updates to its mobile and computing platforms, but if you pore through the announcements, you’ll find something or the other that will dramatically improve how you use the Apple device(s) in your life. Having installed the early betas of the upcoming iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS platforms – they’ve now moved to being numbered based on the year following their introduction, so iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and so on - here’s my pick of standout features that will matter to you when they launch to consumers later this year.

Major updates from Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference 2025

iPhone: Apple’s got a whole new design language – its first overhaul since iOS7 in 2013 - a new aesthetic that takes heavy inspiration from the glass-like, translucent interface used on Apple’s Vision Pro headset…without drastically changing the new-familiar navigation and how iPhone users interact with their phones. It’s called Liquid Glass, and it goes beyond new coat of paint – the interface leans on a lens-like appearance with specular highlights and dynamic movements as you change the viewing angle. Not only does it look stunning on the iOS lockscreen and interface, but it also serves up more on the screen, be it the seeing more of a web page in Safari as you scroll or the see-through menus in the Music or Notes app. Keeping things cohesive for folks who use multiple Apple devices, the Liquid Glass user interface elements will span across all of Apple’s platforms.

The bigger highlight for iOS26 for me personally was the AI-infused boost to calling, messaging and FaceTime. Sample this - the new Call Screening feature can be set to pick up calls from unknown numbers, ask the caller for the reason why they’re calling and display the text on your screen before ringing the call through to you, perfect for handling spam callers! You have to try Live Translation though. As the name suggests, will offer on-the-fly translation across Phone, Messages and FaceTime apps – bringing up live captions in your default language on a FaceTime call if you’re conversing with someone in a different language, adding a spoken translation alongside the voice of the person you're speaking with on a regular phone call, or translating the message into the recipient’s preferred language and vice versa. Only works in five languages right now in Phone and Facetime, but it’s all on device, with nothing being sent to the cloud.

iPad: My personal favorite, one that iPad users have been clamoring for years – true Mac-OS style multitasking on an iPad! With iPadOS 26, you get an all-new windowing system which allows you to resize full-screen apps into floating windows, ready to be tiled or moved around just as you would do on a Mac. Plus, believe it or not, a menu bar on the top and an Mac-Exposé style multi-tasking view which shows you thumbnails of all open windows. Add to this a pointier pointer and better file management capabilities, and you get about as close to the touchscreen Mac as Apple would allow it to get.

Mac: Aside from the visual ‘Liquid Glass’ overhaul, macOS 26 is a manna from heaven for power users of the platform, with the Spotlight search feature getting a massive boost, from just being able to search and open stuff, Spotlight can now perform actions. That is, once apps provide access to Spotlight to individual actions within the app, like playing music or sending an email, you can then invoke these actions without even leaving the home screen. Clipboard history is now a thing, so you can go back to thing you copied yesterday, and elsewhere the Shortcuts app is getting better, with access to AI models (including ChatGPT) to summarize, compare or fill in any details you may have missed. 

Watch: Say hello to Workout Buddy, a new feature that uses Apple Intelligence and your fitness history to give you pep talks before, during and after your workout, plus a summary of your workout stats at the end of your workout. If you’re the sort who exercises alone, this cheery companion may be the buddy you need to stay honest.