Incredible new updates coming to iPhones in iOS 17 update

You don’t need to buy a new iPhone to benefit from a bunch of great new updates that are coming on iOS 17 today.

An avalanche of new Apple products and shiny new iPhones are coming to stores this Friday.

But if your old iPhone is still perfectly fine, or you haven’t been tempted by the promise of faster chips and USB-C chargers, then don’t despair, your iPhone will look shiny and new this week too, thanks to the new iPhone operating system – iOS 17 – being available to download from Tuesday.

Here are the biggest and best new features for you to look out for.

Mental Health

The Health app will now let you keep track of your mental health, by asking you up to a couple of times each day to log how you’re feeling in the moment and why. This is helpful not just so you can take a moment to be mindful and check in with yourself, but also lets you see trends, like whether you feel better on days when you get more sleep, or do more exercise. There’s also a mental health questionnaire that can give you an indication of your depression and anxiety risk, and then give you helpline numbers and articles to help you find treatment, if necessary.

The Health app will enable you to track your mental health. Picture: Apple

You will be able to see whether your mental health is better on days when you get more sleep. Picture: Apple

Check In

“Let me know when you get home safe” is such a beautiful thing for someone to say. It’s shorthand for, “I love and care about you and want to make sure you’re OK”. However, it’s also really easy to just completely forget to let your friend/mum/partner know when you get home safe, because life happens so much. That’s why Apple has introduced a new feature called ‘Check In’, which will automatically send a notification to a nominated person when you get home safe. More than that, if you stop making progress on your way to your destination, it’ll check in with you, and if you don’t respond it’ll send helpful information to the other person, such as your location, battery level and mobile connection status of your iPhone.

Check In will let people know you’re arrived home safely. Picture: Apple

Audio Message Transcription

We all have that one friend who sends lots of voice messages in the group chat. Now, you can find out the gossip without having to pause your music, because there’s a new audio message transcription feature.

Stickers

Stickers are great in messages, because they can either express your emotions more clearly than emoji, or just be used to really annoy your brother in new and exciting ways. Now, you can create custom stickers from your photos and easily use them in Messages. Did your dog do something cute that would make a good reaction to this text from your co-worker? Or did your mate do something hilariously stupid that you got a photo of, and now you can haunt him with it forever through the language of sticker? The possibilities are endless.

Contact posters and stickers are coming with the iOS 17 update: Picture: Apple

Contact Posters

Choose how to present yourself when calling or sharing your contact with someone through Contact Posters. You can put a picture of yourself or use a Memoji, paired it with your preferred font, and then make sure your name is never misspelled in other people’s phones again.

Airdrop is better now

Before, whenever you wanted to Airdrop something to someone, you had to work out what they’d named their phone in the Airdrop menu, and then keep your phones close until the transfer was done. Now, you just bring the two phones close to each other, the other person presses accept, and then you can disappear into the night while Airdrop continues to drop over the Air.

Other cool stuff

There will be a Journal app coming later this year that’s integrated with your Photos and other apps. You can collaborate on Playlists in Music to democratise your road trip music. Then there’s offline Maps, the ability to look up similar recipes based on photos of food, lockdown mode if you think you’re being hacked, and more.

iOS 17 is available to download for free from Tuesday, September 19.