With WWDC Five Months Away, What Do You Want to See in iOS 16?

The Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple's annual five-day-long conference to announce updates to its major operating systems, services, and sometimes hardware, is five months away. At this year's conference, we expect Apple to announce iOS 16, iPadOS 16, macOS 13, watchOS 9, and tvOS 16.

iOS is Apple's most important operating system as it runs on the iPhone and shares many features with the iPad that runs iPadOS. Every year as WWDC gets closer, speculation brews over what new features and changes the next version of iOS will include. While it is one of several operating system updates that gets announced, it's undoubtedly the most anticipated one.

With iOS 15, Apple refined the experience by adding new system-wide features, such as Live Text and Translation. iOS 15 also expanded on Do Not Disturb with Focus modes and completely redid the notification experience. iOS 15 alongside macOS Monterey also introduced SharePlay to FaceTime, allowing friends and family to watch movies, listen to music, and play games together over a call.

A year prior, with iOS 14, Apple looked to further redesign the core iOS experience by introducing completely new widgets and placing widgets on the Home Screen. iOS 14 also introduced App Library, an automatic way for iOS to categorize users' apps. iOS 14 also brought with it a smaller Siri and call banner UI and new features to the Messages app, like pinned conversations.

Looking back two years, iOS 13 introduced dark mode to iOS. It was also the year Apple officially recognized the ‌iPad‌ as its unique platform and introduced iPadOS. iOS 13 also included updates to Maps, Photos, Reminders, CarPlay, AR, and more.

The current design of iOS was introduced with iOS 7, which was and has remained the most significant overall redesign of the iOS experience since its introduction. While Apple has continued to refine the design and the experience of its core apps, the design language has largely remained the same.

One fan-made concept that has garnered over a million views has envisioned iOS 16 redesigning the lock screen experience while also bringing Split Screen capabilities to the ‌iPhone‌. With iOS 16 around six months away, Apple's software teams are likely still firming up plans for the next update and often may look to the community for ideas and inspiration.