Check your alerts if you have an Apple device: Apple has delivered official upgrades for all of its key platforms. The upgrades to MacOS 13.3, iOS / iPadOS 16.4, and WatchOS 9.4 contain 21 new emojis, enhanced voice separation for calls, and a slew of small bug improvements.
To begin, there are five new animals, two new hand motions, three new coloured hearts, and a handful of household goods such as a folding fan, a flute, and maracas on the emoji keyboard. While you’re not spamming your pals with the new goose emoji, you’ll benefit from the more subtle upgrades. Voice Isolation, which is meant to shut out ambient noise, is now available in cellular conversations. To keep your albums clean, the Duplicates album in Photos will now cross-check with photographs saved in the iCloud Shared Photo Library. There’s also a new accessibility feature that dims the screen when it detects flashing lights or strobe effects in video material, on top of a slew of bug improvements for content control for parents, unintentional alarm muting, and other concerns.
Apple is also reintroducing the new HomeKit architecture that was introduced in iOS 16.2 and macOS Sierra 13.1 last year. Users were claiming that some Siri commands were not functioning properly and that smart home gadgets were not showing up correctly in the Home App at the moment. Not only have those difficulties been remedied, but Apple also claims that a pairing issue with Matter-compatible devices has been resolved.
