WWDC 2023: iOS 17 and macOS 14 features I hope to see at the Apple event

WWDC 2023 is so close, I can see it from my house. What better way to kill time than think about last-minute feature requests for iOS 17 and macOS 14? You can also read about the features I thought Apple Watch would have before watchOS 10 – custom tones, anyone?

iOS 17

Starting off with the next version of iPhone software, I would love to see version history in Notes. The Mac has this feature for documents. Lose something you needed 10 steps ago? Undo only goes so far. Versioning, however, lets you see a timeline view of progress over time. This lets you go back to a state the document was in hours ago if needed.

Versioning in Notes could work the same way. If you delete a note, you can find it in the Recently Deleted section for weeks. If you delete text or media in a note, your only attempt to recover it is to use undo if available. Realize you accidentally deleted something hours ago? It’s probably too late.

It’s like Time Machine, but for documents – only the iPhone doesn’t have Time Machine either.

Shifting gears, let’s talk about Shazam. Did you know Apple owns it? Yeah, they bought the company five years ago. It’s not always obvious, especially when Shazam on Android can do more than Shazam on iOS. For example, Shazam for Android can display a persistent notification that always identifies what song is playing around you. A feature like that could be cool for Apple’s rumored journaling app!

This is also a good time to mention that Apple Music on Android has crossfade and iOS doesn’t. The Mac has it, iPods had it, and oh my gosh it would be a huge finally if the iPhone got crossfade too.

Something I think is likely is the ability to rearrange tiles in the Weather app. Okay, maybe not likely, but the Weather app team has been killing it for years now. From adding new data sources and integrating Dark Sky precipitation alerts to finally shipping an iPad app, Weather is doing just fine.

This year I hope we see the ability to rearrange data sources. I care a lot about humidity and UV index, but air quality is not a concern where I live. Moving those tiles around would be great. Going further, making those tiles widget options on the Home Screen would be superb. Seriously, humidity is much more of an indicator of how it feels outside in lots of places than temperature.

iPadOS 17

I’ll sneak in a couple of things for iPadOS 17 while I’m here. Bringing Lock Screen customization from the iPhone to the iPad will be a big one if they pull it off. A smaller request that would make the iPad more Mac-like is the option to position the app Dock on either side, not just the bottom. People have opinions about Dock position on the Mac. Left is off limits for some people, bottom is a bad default, and right is the only right answer. I favor bottom on MacBooks and right side on desktops.

Lastly for iPadOS, I would go nuts if this was the year the iPad could become a podcast studio in the same way as the Mac. My workflow on the Mac involves recording my audio from Zoom with Audio Hijack and using Zoom’s recording of the call as a backup. For editing, Ferrite on the iPad is so good that I hope it comes to the Mac soon. It’s just recording local audio while a conferencing app records the call that is the hangup.

macOS 17

As for macOS, giving notifications and widgets some love would be great. Something more subtle I want to see is iOS-like alternative icon support. You can run iPad apps on the Mac now, but alternative app icons won’t work. You can set a custom icon in Finder, but it resets with software updates. This seems doable.

What about you? What are some feature requests you have this year? The more obscure, the better!