WatchOS 27 Updates and Features

Welcome to ninetiney five Mac Daily for Wednesday, june tenth, twenty twenty six. I'm your host, Chance Miller We are supported this week by card Pointers Leading off today, we've already talked about the overarching bigger updates included in IOS twenty seven But there are other things coming to specific apps that are worth mentioning First, there's cararPay IOS twenty seven brings a handful of improvements to cararplay. Apple's Siri overhaul is the tent Pole addition to IOS twenty seven and the new Siri AI capabilities on the iPhone are available in CarPlay as well Siri has a new user interface that's more like the pre IOS eighteen design, but with less color It appears as a glowing orb at the bottom center of your carplay screen. Just like on your iPhone, Siri and CarPplay as part of IOS twenty seven is much better at answering questions of any kind and it's better at retaining the context of your current conversation conversations you have in CarPlay are also automatically synced to the Siri app on your iPhone so you can continue conversations or just view your history later. Meanwhile, Apple added video in the car support for carPay with IiOS twenty six, but it was limited to airplay streaming With IOS twenty seven, developers can now make dedicated video apps for cararplay so that users can browse and watch videos right on their carplay screen Unfortunately, automakers need to sign on to support this feature so it won't be available automatically in every car We're still waiting on updates from automakers about their plans to support video via Carplay IOS twenty seven brings new carplay wallpapers and several design updates The new set of wallpapers resembles what's also available across IOS twenty seven and MacOS twenty seven Golden Gate. and app icons have been updated with refreshed liquid glass designs Media apps like Podcast and Apple Music now feature a mini player in CarPplay This is available in the top right corner of the app And via the mini playayer, you can see artwork and player controls. without having to have the full now playing screen open Finally, you can also now do audio scrubbing on the now playing screen So you could reach out and simply drag the audio bar Forwards or backwards to skip ahead or rewind Next up, Apple Wallet is getting a handful of new features in IiOS twenty seven Create a pass is a new feature that you'll find when you hit the plus button inside the wallet app in the upper right corner It enables you to create a pass in one of two ways You can scan a physical pass to import it into your Apple Wallet app using your iPhone's camera. This feature is powered by Apple Intelligence You can also create a pass manually from scratch. across three different categories. standard membership and event. bill with Apple Cash is another IOS twenty seven addition to wallet Now you can scan a receipt in the camera app and you'll see an option to split the bill easily with Apple Cashe You can assign different items on the receipt to different people and then easily send those people payment requests for the exact amount that they owe Beyond those two main features, IOS twenty seven's wallet app also has some small user interface changes, such as making the orders feature easier to access and showing more product details in the order tracking interface Apple also says that IOS twenty seven will offer an enhanced experience for hotel keys in Apple Wallet So if you're staying at a hotel that uses Apple Wallet for room keys You'll see more details about your trip receive timely updates about certain activities and access available services at your hotel We are sponsored this week by Card Pointers, the best way to earn more from your credit cards every day With card pointers, most users save over seven hundred and fifty dollars per year Pointers shows you inpth details about the rewards and offers for each of your cards One of my favorite features is the Safari extension that shows you exactly what card to use and which offers are available for that purchase to maximize your awwards Nine to five Mac daily listeners can exclusively save fifty percent on card pointers and you can get lifetime access to hotel slash A members only hotel booking tool that helps you find lower hotel rates Just hit the link in the show notes to get started today Next up to today, watch OS twenty seven didn't get much stage time during WWDC twenty twenty six, but the next generation Apple Watch software update still packs some great new features The flagship feature of course is Siri AI, as we've talked about before And Apple Watch is actually able to take advantage of some of these changes For example, Apple Watch is adding the dedicated Si chatbot app as well as personal context understanding in app action capabilities and broader world knowledge. Apple Watch was pretty left out of the original Apple intntelligence story So it's great to see the feature on Apple Watch becoming almost as capable as it is on the iPhone, iPad and Mac Next, when you press the digital crown on Apple Watch with W OS twenty seven, you'll see a new dynamic app grid This is a set of six series suggested apps. And if Siri AI is enabled, the Siri app takes cner position If you want to launch the full app grid, you'll have to hit another button located in the bottom of the circle Other recommended apps in the new grid are chosen based on recency and popularity, according to Apple Cllicking the digital crown once will invoke this new dynamic app grid Cicking it again will take you back to your watch face Workout Buddy is a feature that launched for Apple Watch as part of Watch OS twenty six, but you needed to have your iPhone nearby to take advantage of it With WOS twenty seven, however, Apple has removed that requirement So you can now use workkout buddy even if you're doing your workout without your iPhone nearby Watch OS twenty seven is also adding a new gesture to the Apple Watch this year. Double tap was the first way to interact hands free with your Apple Watch. letting you open the smart stack to cycle through app widgets from your watch face Starting with watchOS twenty seven, a single tap gesture will let you interact with app widgets in the smart stack This means that you can tap your thumb and index finger together twice to open the widgets view Double tap again to move to the next widget or tap your thumb and index finger together once to interact with those widgets The smmart stack is also getting smarter, expanding the number of widget suggestions that can automatically appear. Some new examples include showing your parked c location, showing the new Sira app day messages, pinned messages and more And finally, watchOS twenty seven includes a handful of improvements and bug fixes under the hood Apple Watch will also now suggest ways to save battery life Music playback will be faster Gass has been updated to focus on readability with more uniform refraction and better contrast and a bunch of other smaller changes that you can read about at the link in the show notes below That wraps up another episode of Night fiveive Mac Daily As always, you can find all of the latest Apple news on ny fiveMac. com Follow along with me on threads at Chance H Miller And we'll be back tomorrow for a new episode of Night to fiveive Mac Daily