Apple Announces iPadOS 17 With Custom Lock Screens and Interactive Widgets

Apple today at WWDC announced iPadOS 17, bringing several new features to iPads, including updates to widgets and the Lock Screen that bring more parity with iPhones.

ipados 17 lock screen
For the first time, iPads will support customized Lock Screens, while Home Screen widgets will be interactive. There's also now support for Live Activities, and the Health app is now available on iPad and takes advantage of the device's larger display sizes.

‌iPadOS 17‌ includes improvements across the Notes, Messages, FaceTime, and Safari apps. In the Messages app, for example, there is a new consolidated sticker drawer that brings all of a user's stickers into one place, including Live Stickers, emoji stickers, and third-party sticker packs. ‌iPad‌ users can also create their own stickers from photos.

Starting with ‌iPadOS 17‌, PDFs appear full width on the screen. Apple has also introduced machine learning that can identify fields in a PDF so that users can quickly add details, such as names, addresses, and emails from the Contacts app.

‌iPadOS 17‌ is available in beta starting today, and will be publicly released later this year. The update is compatible with the second-generation iPad Pro, third-generation iPad Air, sixth-generation ‌iPad‌, and fifth-generation iPad mini and newer.

Related Roundups: iOS 17, iPadOS 17
Related Forums: iOS 17, iPadOS 17

Top Rated Comments

McJobs Avatar
11 months ago
Deleted.
Score: 22 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Johnny907 Avatar
11 months ago
Lol still no MacOS for iPad, multi-user support or a functional file manager that won’t dismount external drives halfway through a multi-gig file transfer.

“What’s a computer?” Not this thing.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
saucykash Avatar
11 months ago
Dont know what the craze is with widgets on the home screen. Just reminds me of old windows software when I had 6 clocks and 2 calculators on the home screen.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
t0rqx Avatar
11 months ago
All these new features but the calculator is nowhere to be seen. Oh wait...it probably needs the M3 to make all those advanced calculations...
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
and 4096 others like this Avatar
11 months ago
This shouldn’t be consider as whole generation update…

I mean, they created so powerful devices and they’re show wallpapers change?

It’s like putting F1 engine to road car and show people how nice cup holder car have :/
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
eicca Avatar
11 months ago
Talk about underwhelming. My decrepit MacBook Pro from 2011 with a fraction of the computing power is still better at just getting basic things done than Apple’s “Most Versatile Device.”
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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