With 2019 already in full swing, we’re now just less than four months away from WWDC and the official unveiling of iOS 13. Though Apple has yet to confirm the exact dates, a leak recently revealed that WWDC 2019 will kick off on June 3 with a keynote address from Tim Cook and a slew of Apple executives and engineers.
Per usual, iOS 13 is poised to be the star of WWDC this year. And if you were understandably underwhelmed by the release of iOS 12, the good news is that iOS 13 will reportedly usher in a number of sweeping enhancements and features that will greatly impact how we use and interact with our iOS devices. It’s admittedly been a while since an iOS update wowed us, but iOS 13 will hopefully change that.
Remember, Apple had some distinctly ambitious features planned for iOS 12 before opting to push them back to iOS 13 in an effort to improve overall system performance. Consequently, Apple has had well over a full year to polish and improve upon some of its grander plans for iOS. In light of that, we thought it’d be a good time to run down some of the iOS 13 rumors we’ve seen making the rounds over the past few months. Admittedly, there haven’t been a ton of rumblings regarding iOS 13 just yet, but perhaps the features below will satiate your appetite before the iOS 13 rumor mill kicks into high gear over the next few months.
Redesigned homescreen
There have been rumblings that iOS 13 will usher in a completely redesigned home screen for quite some time now. An intriguing rumor to be sure, it remains to be seen if most of the new changes impact the iPad as opposed to the iPhone. Regardless, there’s a good chance that we’ll see some noticeable tweaks to a home screen that hasn’t changed all that much in recent years. Now is this to say that the iOS home screen needs a new look and feel? Not exactly. Still, it stands to reason that Apple would only tinker with the home screen if it had some compelling new features to introduce.
Dark mode
At this point, it’s hard to say if people are actually yearning for a dedicated dark mode or if people simply like complaining about not having it as an option. Sure, most people get along fine without a dark mode on their iPhone, but there’s apparently a vocal contingent of users who have been clamoring for this feature for years. Well, the good news is that Apple with iOS 13 will likely deliver. A few concept images of what an iPhone with dark mode enabled might look like can be seen below.
Volume HUD overhaul
It only took Apple more than a decade to get around to this one, but word is that Apple with iOS 13 will finally do away with the intrusive volume HUD that outlived its purpose many, many years ago.
Revamped iPad apps
Word is that iOS 13 on the iPad will introduce a number of changes, including a revamped files app, a redesigned Photos app, and support for tabs.
New Emojis
New emojis won’t be available right when iOS 13 gets released, but we can expect subsequent iOS 13.x updates to introduce an assortment of new emojis, a full list of which can be seen here.
Wish List
We’ve highlighted some iOS 13 wish lists previously, but one feature I especially want to see in iOS 13 is the ability to tinker with the camera settings from directly within the camera app.
