What is still missing in iOS in 2023?

[pgoelz]

This so much. I can create a shortcut to send a notification at 80% but I want a built in setting that does this or maintains 80% (or 50-90%) charge.

The phone says it learns but I don't trust it because I've never actually seen it stop charging at 80%. At about 90-95% it starts to slow down but not at 80%....maybe it does a little but the phone will still hit 85-90% real quick.

Which is even more meaningless if you have NO pattern to learn. I am retired and use my phone occasionally. I don't live on it and I charge it when it needs it. This happens irregularly, so there is no way the phone can learn that "pattern" and limit charging so it is charged just before I want it.

Simply adding START CHARGING and STOP CHARGING automation actions, triggerable at a specified battery level, would take care of it neatly and would be a lot simpler than trying to learn my pattern.

 

[contacos]

I mostly would like more convenient tweaks to existing parts of the OS.

• DELETE ALL button for iMessage Attachments - alternatively at least a SELECT ALL button
• Auto Reply for iMessage
• Status on iMessage
• Wallpapers on iMessage
• Auto delete option for photos sent via iMessage
• Share ACTUAL Focus Status (Opt In of course)
• Photos should show which photos have already been sorted into albums in the „all photos“ feed and which album they are part of in the photo details
• App icons should be able to be put anywhere on the screen - seriously, what’s up with that? Does android have a patent on that or something?
• Change Flash and Camera buttons to something else on lockscreen
• Redesign of Control Center
• Linking Apple Watch to more than one iPhone and depending on what iPhone it is connected to, it will automatically update the app layout / settings / etc

There is probably more I can’t think of right now

 

[fastbagger]

nothing, iOS 10 was the perfect amount of functions I want in my phone, all just meaningless bloat ever since

Agree 100%

 

[scorpio vega]

I just want a compete redesign of photos apps. The fact I have to search through a crap ton of pics to find a specific image is so tedious.

 

[Blue Hawk]

- Other browser engines like Blink or Gecko
- Add On Support for third party browsers
- Split Screen
- More options for the home screen. I don't want that camera icon there
- DNS over TLS support without profiles and without DNS
- Color changes in the system (i dont like the green buttons, i want them blue)
- more options for battery health

 

[Kottu]

A better phone app. Ability to delete all calls from a specific contact at once. Ability to view all previous calls and messages from contacts/numbers at once.

 

[TwoBytes]

split screen for iPhone pro!

 

[sjsharksfan12]

Another thing that Android has that I wish Apple adopted was when you long press on an app icon, one of the options is to take you directly to those app settings. The fact that I still have to go to Settings and then find the app and use up so many extra steps is silly in 2023. Things should be more streamlined.

 

[LIVEFRMNYC]

1) Opacity settings for widgets. I would like to set some widgets to have a transparent background. And also be able to remove the text label underneath the widgets. I don't need to be told the weather widget is a weather widget.


2) The ability to easily set the volume for multiple things.
Example: S23 Ultra



3) Allow 3rd party cloud apps to sync without the need for it to be open in the background or forefront.

4) Would love the option to be able to set swipe down to bring up the "control panel" or "notification panel". I pretty much never use "search" on my iPhone.

5) Would like it if we can add just one more app icon to the dock. (for 5 icons). At least for the Pro Max models.

6) Speed up the scrolling or give us the option to select scrolling speed.

 

[JulianL]

Better use of home screen real estate on devices with bigger screens. This is particularly true on the bigger iPads where it's absolutely crazy that a 12.9" iPad Pro has the same 6 x 4 icon grid layout as on an 8.3" iPad Mini. I want as many of my apps accessible with a single touch without needing to click into a folder so bigger screens having more icon slots would actually give me extra benefit from those bigger devices. This gets even more important now that the home screens also support widgets because once you've added a few widgets (or even only 1 or 2 on an iPhone home screen) you've taken out quite a few icon slots so restricted even further the number of free slots on your home screen available to quickly launch your most used apps.

Apple has even gone backwards on this with iPad. With I think it was iOS 14 on an iPad you could set the left-side widget pane to always be on screen so you could get 3 or 4 double-width widgets permanently displayed on the left side of the home page and still have the 6 x 4 icon grid to use for apps and on my 10.x" iPad that didn't look at all cramped to me. Apple removed that always-visible option for the left-side widget pane in I think iOS 15 so now we are back to just that 6 x 4 icon grid (plus the dock of course) that I consider over-spaced even on the regular10.x inch iPads and on my current 12.9" iPad Pro a 6 x 4 icon grid is just absurdly over-spaced for the available screen size.

I also have the same issues of what I consider to be inefficient/lazy home screen layout on my iPhone 14 Pro Max. That search box at the bottom takes pretty much an entire row of extra potential icons. Surely Apple could rejig things slightly, come up with a less screen-space-intensive way to quickly launch search, and as a result give the user the option to have an extra 4 icon slots on their home screen. They could even offer a full-width 1 x 4 icon search widget so for users that really hated whatever alternative tap target Apple offered to get to search quickly those users could simply add that search widget across the newly created 7th row of icons to make the home screen look like it does now.

Not optimising home screen layout for different screen sizes just seems to me to be laziness on Apple's part and it robs those of us who have paid for devices with bigger screens of one of the potential benefits we could have from that buying decision.

 

[snow755]

I like to see a Redesign phone app from the ground up. The phone app has not been Redesign since iOS 7

 

[ultra16]

Split screen on iPhone. Just outrageous that this hasn't been in the iOS for the past 10 years...

 

[ManuCH]

I actually just found out that some Android phones can act as a Wifi repeater (so basically do personal hotspot but based on an existing wifi connection instead of cellular). That can be very useful in some specific settings (like a business wifi or a hotel). It actually just saved my day today as I happened to have a test Samsung Galaxy S23 with me. So it would be nice to have that on iOS too.

 

[bigjnyc]

Split screen

Home screen layout options - should not be restricted to the current grid... let us resize widgets and place them anywhere.

 

[tomtad]

Numbers on the top of the damn keyboard

 

[cmChimera]

Delete all voicemail.

 

[HouseLannister]

• Place apps anywhere on the home screen (without needing a full homescreen)
• More interactive notifications
• Option to remove leftmost widget screen (so I stop swiping to a blank page by accident)
• Toggle for App Library to default show alpha sort without an extra swipe
• Ability to reorganize and rename categories for App Library
• Ability to hide/unhide apps (like Safari plugins and bluetooth device apps clogging up the library)
• Ability to rename/nickname apps
• Hide widget names
• Split screen apps
• Toggle to turn off or speed up FaceID animations (this seems even slower in iOS 17 than before)
• Ditch the waveform animation in dynamic island (this is horribly distracting)
• Dynamic island press action defaulted to the long-press action (like it always should have been)
• Bring Dark Sky UI to the weather app
• Better background uploading/downloading for apps
• When you delete the Mail app, actually have mailto links in Safari redirect to the Gmail app (or other email app)
• Clipboard history app with keyboard integration
• Passwords app
• Aperture (or some pro photo editing app)
• Battery Health include cycle counts
• Battery Health in iPadOS
• Remove iMessage apps without deleting the actual app (like it worked before iOS 17)
• Have apps actually auto-update when updates are available instead of weeks later (this should have an active hours setting and know to check and install updates at night)

 

[SnowCrocodile]

A lot of good suggestions. Other than the ones already mentioned, iOS could use a few features available on Android. Heck, most of them were available on Windows Mobile.

- T9 name dialing.
- Resizable interactive widgets
- User-defined folders in AppLibrary
- A proper file system. Listing it last not because it’s not important but because there’s a slim chance of this happening.

 

[MisterSavage]

This is "pie in the sky" but I'd like some kind of intelligent spam call/spam sms filtering. Blocking all unknown numbers is not an option for me.

 

[d5aqoëp]

A proper file manager where I can simply access Downloads folder after connecting my Phone to PC or iMac using USB cable. Current implementation where you have to use iTunes to transfer files from App’s individual folders is truly “Wretched” and people responsible for this evil design should get capital punishment. 😆

Jokes aside, Apple sells 1TB models with no easy way to transfer data. I am still baffled why EU or any politician not getting inside Apple and doing a colonoscopy on this issue! Certain things are just beyond me lol.

 

[Ledsteplin]

Option to set "Keep Messages" separately per thread or contact. I have a few I only want to keep 30 days, and some forever.

 

[MisterSavage]

Option to set "Keep Messages" separately per thread or contact. I have a few I only want to keep 30 days, and some forever.

I've never considered this but I would love this option!

 

[pgoelz]

DESKTOP MODE...... or at least the ability to screen mirror to my iPad (hopefully with touch / mouse control).

I have unlimited phone data but my hotspot data is limited. I have a couple data intensive apps that I like to use when away from WiFi and it would be very useful to be able to use unlimited phone data but on the larger iPad screen without having to use hotspot data.

Several Android phones have had this ability for a long time.... why not Apple? I'm seriously considering going back to Android because of this limitation.

 

[mebehere]

But that's the thing. It wouldn't be 'hugely beneficial', it would encourage useless behavior by people who don't know (or don't care) how their phone works.

My mom doesn’t know or care how her phone works. This would be a good feature for her.

 

[missingar]

My mom doesn’t know or care how her phone works. This would be a good feature for her.

Your mom shouldn't even be thinking about 'quitting' apps. She should just use her phone. Quitting apps is something only techy people obsess about. My mom is 67 and has had an iPad and an iPhone for almost a decade and barely knows how to get to the app switcher. Not having a way to remove recent apps from the task manager has not affected her in literally any way.