5 Cool New iOS 27 Features to Try in the First Public Beta

After more than a month of developer testing for iOS 27, Apple is now offering the public beta to users. While this is a far cry from the stable version people will get in September once the official release happens, it’s still a good first look at what Apple has in store for its next big iOS cycle. Some cool features that public beta testers should try include the new Siri AI, the new Image Tools bundle, and the Passwords AI feature. While in general iOS 27 isn’t packed with many new features, Apple is focused on improving the overall experience because apps can open faster, battery life will (allegedly) last longer, and connectivity features will be more responsive.

As Apple sets the stage for the next iPhone Fold, iOS 27 aims to deliver long-promised AI features from a few years ago, but also eliminate years of old lines of code, perfect the iOS experience by better integrating with iPadOS and macOS, and prepare the iPhone for its next 20 years, which will be celebrated in 2027.

Here are some of the cool features of iOS 27 that I have been using since last month and think you should try too. Please remember that this is a beta version; the features may not work as expected and you should not install them on your primary phone. That being said, here’s what you can try right now.

I had my doubts when Apple announced the new Siri AI. After a disappointing experience with iOS 18 and the first batch of Apple Intelligence features, it was unclear whether the company would ever deliver a satisfying experience. However, testing the new Siri AI over the past month has been a great experience. The personal assistant only speaks one language at a time, but I can type in another language and it can answer me perfectly in that one.

Most importantly, Siri is exactly the kind of AI I wanted: it doesn’t flirt with me, it doesn’t keep asking me to ask follow-up questions, and it gets to the point. If I’m satisfied with his answers, I can move on, I don’t need to wait. Additionally, Siri is great for searching for things on my iPhone, like a message, email, podcast, or helping me with something happening on my screen. Siri can actually become the best AI on the market because it’s not trying to sell you a product, it just wants to help you with your daily tasks.

On top of that, the new Siri app is a great way to find past conversations or start a new chat. Apple has made the new Siri so interactive that you can summon it just about anywhere on the screen, whether by using the side button, calling it, selecting text, etc.

A few years ago, Apple introduced the Clean Up tool. At the time, the company said the feature wasn’t designed to fundamentally change an image. In fact, it wouldn’t try to guess your face if you hid half of it, and had trouble removing multiple people or objects from the background of your photo. With iOS 27, Apple not only improved the cleanup tool, making it much better for tasks it wasn’t originally intended to do, but it also released Spatial Stretch and Crop. These additional tools make editing a photo with iPhone’s built-in Photos app more powerful and enjoyable and give users more options, although you might start to wonder, “What is a picture?”

That said, the Clean Up tool now offers a new generation of image templates that improve it. With Expand, as the name suggests, users can enlarge the background of a photo, making it look like a portrait was taken in landscape mode or vice versa. If you adjust a tilted image, the Enlarge version may appear to compensate for the space you cropped.

Finally, Spatial Crop uses technology introduced with Apple Vision Pro, allowing users to slightly change the angle at which the photo was taken. The photo can be centered or realigned using the spatial models made by Apple for its mixed reality headset, and the results are quite good.

Apple’s most significant design change since iOS 7 wouldn’t come without a lot of criticism. While most of them seemed valid, especially due to the lack of adequate accessibility for reading the user interface, the company seems to have finally found the right balance. Users can now decide how much of a Liquid Glass experience they want, as it can be as translucent as Apple envisioned, or it can be truly tinted, almost bringing back the iOS 18 look.

Apple also makes refraction more uniform, apps sharper, and adds improved contrast. Although the company has continued to tweak Liquid Glass over the past three beta releases, it’s likely that it will continue to do so until the final version is available. However, if you are one of the bravest public beta testers, your feedback on the new Liquid Glass may be helpful in improving the overall experience for all users later this fall.

That said, iPhone users can now enjoy the accessibility features and previous improvements in iOS 26 introduced for Liquid Glass, but Apple is currently adding a new set of visual changes to make the experience better for everyone. For example, the latest iOS 27 beta added a tinted background for widgets on the lock screen, making them much more visible than before.

Apple has a long history with its Passwords app. At first, it took the company forever to remove the Passwords tab from Settings and create a standalone experience. Once that was finally done, users expected it to add credit card support and other perks. As new software updates were released, the Passwords app improved but introduced an annoying problem: it would tell you when one of your codes was compromised or if you were using the same code on multiple websites, and suggest you change it.

However, it was nothing more than a suggestion, meaning it was simply pointing out the problem without solving it. Like probably most of you, I’ve never updated my 200+ compromised passwords because they’re probably not “that compromised” (please don’t listen to me and update your codes). That said, iOS 27 finally brings a fix for those reminders that you need to take care of your digital security.

With this upcoming software update, Siri/Apple Intelligence can connect to some of your accounts, update your passwords with a new strong code, and automatically update it on the Passwords app with a single command. This doesn’t work with all platforms, sometimes a 2FA can break this simple experience, but it’s such a great feature that it’s probably one of the first things you should do once you’ve installed the iOS 27 public beta.

Since iOS 27 doesn’t bring entirely new experiences to apps like iOS 26 and its many Apple Music features, this update is all about small features that can make a big difference. For example, Apple claims that apps can launch up to 30% faster, new photos load up to 70% faster, and AirDrop transfers can become up to 80% faster. These improvements are particularly important because they not only affect the latest iPhone 17 models, but older models as well.

Another nice improvement is that Apple promises a smoother network transition so that the iPhone quickly decides whether it’s better for you to stay on Wi-Fi or a cellular connection. Some everyday examples that can make a big difference are when you’re talking to someone on FaceTime while you’re leaving the house or getting off a plane, and the iPhone can go from slow Wi-Fi to reliable 5G internet.

Still speaking of FaceTime, you can finally double capture a conversation, messages that failed on iMessage will automatically retry being sent, you can ask Android and Windows users to join iCloud shared photos with high-resolution images, and even AirPods get a custom EQ so you can adjust the feel of the bass, mids, and highs. In addition to the iOS 27 public beta, Apple is also offering a public beta for iPadOS, watchOS, macOS and tvOS, so users can also enjoy what’s new in these updates.