Michael Burkhardt

Apple has just registered a new subdomain record ahead of WWDC: genai.apple.com. All signs point to WWDC 2026 being Apple’s major AI renaissance, where the company will live up to the promises it made back at WWDC 2024, as well as a few additional new announcements.

Welcome to Indie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If you’re a developer and would like your app featured, get in contact.

In a world full of AI assistants and tools that try to make your life easier, Poppy takes a different approach. Rather than requiring your effort up front, Poppy does its best to be proactive – and give you helpful context before you even know you need it.

Introduced in iOS 16, Focus Filters are excellent in premise. If you’re in say, a Work focus, you can block out distracting apps, websites, and notifications. It even works in Messages, where you’ll only see texts from people in your Work focus.

There’s one caveat with its implementation in Messages though, and it makes it much less useful for me than it could be.

According to the Power On newsletter from Mark Gurman, Apple is planning an interesting new Genmoji feature in iOS 27 to bolster its usage: suggested Genmoji’s based on your photo library and keyboard history.

Next month at WWDC 2026, Apple is expected to finally live up to its AI Siri promises, and more. The company has long been working on a new standalone Siri app to boost how users interact with Siri and Apple Intelligence – and it should be debuting in beta next month.

According to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the new Siri app will come with a privacy feature similar to one on iMessage: auto-deleting chats. He also expects Siri to launch with a beta label even when it’s available publicly in the fall, similar to some previous Apple rollouts.

Welcome to Indie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If you’re a developer and would like your app featured, get in contact.

If you’re a beloved cat owner, you might often have your cat running across your Mac’s keyboard, causing loads of unnecessary keyboard input, and sometimes even unwanted communications. Cats Lock has a solution for it, and soon your cat will be able to roam your MacBook keyboard freely.

As is the case every year, this September – Apple will be unveiling its next-generation Apple Watch model. Apple Watch Series 12 will likely carry on the same design language as the Apple Watch Series 11, but with a few changes. Let’s dive in.

Later this year, Apple is set to debut its first MacBook Pro redesign since 2021. With that redesign, we’re expecting OLED, touch displays, M6 Pro and M6 Max chips, a Dynamic Island cutout, and much more.

There’s another big detail about these new MacBook Pro models, and I’m much more excited for that change.

Apple debuted iPhone 16e last year at its $599 price point – and it’s been an okay phone since. It got refreshed this year with an A19 chipset, more storage, and MagSafe, but for the most part, its positioning in the market hasn’t really changed. It’s an okay phone at an okay price.

It’s been selling decently, but it hasn’t really been a killer appeal to Android users in the same way that MacBook Neo has been for PC users. I think that could change.

Introduced in iOS 15, Hide My Email is an iCloud+ feature that does exactly what it says on the tin – you can create an alternative email address for each individual service you sign up for, and easily cut off said email whenever you’d like. It prevents advertisers from having your primary email address, and gives you better inbox control – a total win-win.

That said, despite being introduced 5 years ago, the feature hasn’t progressed as much as it realistically could have. Here are my suggestions for how Apple could improve Hide My Email.

For the most part, iPad has dominated the tablet market – and that probably won’t be changing anytime soon. In recent years, though, I think many people have been struggling to come up with reasons to buy a new iPad – especially when the previous generations have been so good. While this likely isn’t a huge problem quite yet, I do think it raises some questions going forward.

Welcome to Indie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If you’re a developer and would like your app featured, get in contact.

Most people believe they’re spending too much time on their phones – but don’t necessarily know how to do better. Developer Florian Schimanke has created four great apps to help you with your screen time in different ways. You can get them individually, or you can also buy them all as a bundle at a discounted rate.

This year, Apple is rumored to be doing a code cleanup for iOS 27, as well as overall having a renewed focus for stability and performance – on top of a plethora of Apple Intelligence features. While this on its own sounds good, I think there’s a higher reason for why we should expect an impressively stable release.

Welcome to Indie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If you’re a developer and would like your app featured, get in contact.

Everyone probably has a massive photo library going back for years, maybe even over a decade. Over time, that consumes more and more storage – and this becomes a problem, especially if you’re paying for iCloud storage. On the other hand, decluttering isn’t easy.

This Day turns photo decluttering into a habit, by designing an interface that allows you to address it one day at a time.

Welcome to Indie App Spotlight. This is a weekly 9to5Mac series where we showcase the latest apps in the indie app world. If you’re a developer and would like your app featured, get in contact.

Mood tracking apps can be really important and useful, whether you want to be more mindful – or if you need to track it for your therapist. That said, lots of apps either charge a subscription, are lacking in depth, or don’t have everything you might need. InnerPulse aims to solve that, while keeping privacy at the center.

Apple Vision Pro has been one of the most perplexing Apple product launches in recent history. It’s meant to serve as the beginning of an all new product category for Apple – and more importantly – the next generation of computing. And yet, it feels like a complete afterthought to the company.

Under John Ternus, I’m slightly hopeful that we can start to see the product live up to its full potential – though there’s also reason to be skeptical.