Apple is working on a broader set of Camera improvements in iOS 27 than what the company announced at WWDC26 this past June, and what iOS betas currently allow users to access. Here are five features in the Camera app currently hidden in iOS 27.

Exposure scopes: waveforms and histograms​

The Camera app in iOS 27 contains a complete implementation of waveform and histogram displays. These can help users judge exposure in different formats. You can use a histogram to get a read on how many pixels fall into the shadows, mid-tones, and highlights. Alternatively, a waveform can show the same information while preserving the horizontal pixel position, which makes it easier to identify a bright or dark area to a specific part of the image.

iOS 27 ships with 3 presets for both scopes: Luminance, RGB Composite, and RGB Parade. The histogram also has a separate choice between a continuous curve or individual bars. The rendering implementation for all graphs was added in iOS 27 beta 2 and is present in the latest beta.

You can see a demo of all graphs against stock photos below. There is no consumer within the Camera app to enable waveforms and histograms, but the graphs use the real LiveVideoAnalytics pipeline, so these graphs match what you’d see inside the camera app.

https://reddit.com/link/1w9ufa7/video/kojmhv6m24oh1/player

Focus peaking and highlight-clipping overlays​

The Camera app in iOS 27 also adds code to overlay important information about the current composition over the preview window. In fact, the system can produce them separately or together under a new preview-processing stage.

Focus peaking​

Focus peaking emphasizes edges with strong local contrast to help users know which parts of the image are clearly defined. The feature can add colored emphasis over the edges. iOS can select a color, adjust how sensitive the effect is, and the transition duration.

There is no consumer in Beta 8 to enable the feature in the Camera app. In the demo, below you can see the effect within the preview window.

Highlight-clipping​

Relatedly, the Camera app can also warn users about highlights that are becoming too bright. The preview window can present an overlay over the affected areas instead of relying on another graph.

The current implementation supports four styles: solid color, pulsing color, diagonal stripes (“zebra style”), and checkerboard. Once again, iOS can control the clipping threshold and overlay color.

There is no consumer in Beta 8 to enable the feature in the Camera app. In the demo, below you can see the effect within the preview window.

Repeated self-timer captures​

The Camera app also includes a new feature named “Captures.” With this, once you have selected one of the pre-determined timer options, you can select a number of repeated captures to take with a countdown of the selected duration before each capture.

The code restarts the timer after requesting a capture, so the app doesn’t have to wait until the photo is fully processed to begin the next countdown.

The interface for this feature is unfinished in Beta 8. Forcing the feature enabled in a test environment causes “A menu cannot be produced for Captures.” error. The underlying capture loop logic is implemented behind an internal development capability in Beta 8.

Manual focus​

Apple has also tested manual focus in the Camera app, with a control for changing the lens position. This would let you choose where the camera focuses and hold that position instead of relying on autofocus. Similar systems ship in Apple’s Final Cut Camera and third-party apps already.

The control showed up in iOS 26 versions as ChromeLensPositionControls, along with the implementation to respond when the user moves the focus slider. Exposing this control in iOS 26 reveals a Focus slider, with acceptable values between 0 and 1. Moving the slider locks the focus and sends the selected lens position to the capture controller.

The story gets more interesting in iOS 27. The lower-level command for locking focus at a selected lens position remains. While the Focus slider and the code to respond to user input was removed in beta 1, Apple added an explicit capability check that checks the device’s first supported iOS version. The current capability check requires a compatible iPhone with a first release of iOS 27 or later, meaning that the feature is not compatible with any existing iPhone.

Aperture-dependent optical processing​

The final change affects image processing and may be relevant to a device with a variable physical aperture. iOS 27 can choose and blend lens correction data based on the aperture value. These corrections are meant to compensate for differences in light distribution across the image.

Apple’s implementation can use calibration references for neighboring aperture values and combine them with varying contribution levels. I tested the original calculation code with sample inputs shown in the graph below. The calibrator accepts 1-4 correction data references. With multiple references, it finds the neighboring values and blends their corrections.

While the code accepts up to four calibration references, it does not mean that the new iPhone has four physical aperture stops. iOS may be using just enough references and extrapolating lens data for intermediate aperture values.

Sources

The following links are pinned to the revision used for this post:

Exposure scopes: waveforms and histograms​

• Luminance, RGB Composite and RGB Parade presets added for both scopes in iOS 27 beta 2
• Histogram rendering, bar-count and smoothing controls added in beta 2

Focus peaking and highlight-clipping overlays​

• Focus-peaking and highlight-clipping preview APIs added in iOS 27 beta 1
• Assistive-overlay processing, clipping styles, colors and thresholds added in beta 1

Repeated self-timer captures​

• Repeated-capture count and remaining-count setters added to Camera in beta 1
• User-selected interval capture count handler added in beta 1

Manual focus​

• Older manual-focus position and lock handlers removed in beta 1
• Older ChromeLensPositionControls UI type removed in beta 1

Aperture-dependent optical processing​

• Aperture-dependent lens-shading calibration conversion added in beta 1
• Lens-shading aperture calibration restricted to one through four references in beta 2

If your call drops, iOS 27 will alert you when cellular outages have been reported in your area by other Apple devices.

There’s also a notification when your carrier has confirmed the outage.

If you haven’t already, iOS will also suggest you turn on Wi-Fi Calling.

Added in Beta 1

Hi there,
Ever since the last two betas, my Apple Watch, AirPods, and iPhone have all been acting completely strange.

This is all happening during my workouts. For starters, when I attempt to play downloaded music off my Apple Watch to my AirPods alone, the music app crashes every time. Then, I play music via my iPhone to my AirPods, and the volume of the songs fluctuates. Not the system volume, that stays the same, but some songs are very loud and some very quiet. Also, the queue isn’t working correctly: it’s repeating songs even though I have repeat off.

All devices are updated to the latest beta, and it was not resolved with the latest beta cycle (beta 8).

Anyone else experiencing these issues? I have logged feedback and have yet to receive a response.

Thanks!

Announced at WWDC26, iOS 27 allows users to pre-allocate storage for high-data-rate video captures across camera apps.

When you have an app that opts in to AVProVideoStorage, you'll see a new “Configure Pro Video Storage” option under Settings > Camera > Formats.

Added in Beta 1

So the stock weather widget is on my Home Screen, it has access to location services "While Using the App or Widgets". Precise Location is turned Off.

The widget is set to My Location.

In System Services I turned Off the Status Bar Icon, but it does not affect apps, only system services.

My problem is that every single time I go to my Home Screen the little arrow on top left next to the clock pops up.

What I mean by every single time, I mean literally.

Like I am on Home Screen, the arrow pops up, I wait till it disappears, swipe to App Library, swipe back to Home Screen the arrow pops up again.

I open an app, go back to Home Screen, arrow pops up again.

Without me making a single step anywhere, and just a few seconds between the interactions.

Does this mean that every single time the arrow comes up, the phone fires the GPS chip, or uses WI-FI, Cellular or Bluetooth for location service? Is this the intended behaviour? Is it really necessary to ask for location every few seconds when I look at the widget, even if it checked for location 5 seconds ago?

I do not know how much it really affects the battery.

Also the arrow pop up and the caused motion of the clock a little to the left is a bit annoying.

I know the workarounds, like set the widget to a fixed location, and set the access to "While Using the App".
However I like how the widget changes automatically when I move to another city.

This has been a bug since the beta first began I think, seems to happen more often if you have album art showing on the lockscreen

Announced at WWDC26, iOS 27 will support switching between two iPhone devices with the same phone number.

The feature will be called iPhone Handoff. Your phone number will switch between the two iPhone devices depending on which one is unlocked.

Carrier bundles for T-Mobile US and Deutsche Telekom in iOS 27 add support for the feature, according to https://redesmoveisfixas.com/carrier. However, T-Mobile's enrollment server currently returns a 'feature disabled' response, so enrollment is not possible. There are some reports that enrollment was available last month.

The relevant support article will be https://support.apple.com/en-us/127274 when Apple releases it. For more publicly available details from Apple, see iPhone quick switch on Apple Developer.

Introduced in Beta 1, with changes along all beta releases

I’m not sure what to tag this as, but I’m pretty sure this is part of the rumors with the upcoming iPhone fold. As iOS does not support multitasking except on iPad which I would expect multitasking to come to iPhone with the fold but as shown in the pictures, this iOS beta version has this feature, although it doesn’t do much, as it only allows me to set it to “full screen apps only”

Bear with me as I don’t know what developer beta number this is but the build number should help.

This has been going on since the first beta. Look at the compact bar on the bottom.

In some cases the refresh button is on the left and the reader on the right and sometimes vice versa. In both cases the image was taken of the same site (so it’s not RTL/LTR).

I cannot seem to get the pattern of when each is shown.

This has been happening for me for a while now, not sure when it started.. probably all the way back at DB2.
I am using an iPad Air 11-inch with the M2 chip. I am using an official Apple Magic Keyboard, first generation. (The one with no escape key)

No matter how quickly my mouse briefly hovers over another tab on Safari, the preview of that tab will appear on screen even when my mouse isn’t on the tab anymore. It moves down when I scroll the page. It only goes away when I re-hover my mouse back to the tab that is displaying the image. This is very annoying. Does anyone else have this issue? I tried looking here but didn’t find anything…

iOS 27 adds more Fitness+ lifetime session awards for long-time Fitness+ users. There are new milestones ranging from 2,500 to 10,000 completed sessions.

Here are the award notification descriptions you'll see: - 2,500: You just hit 2500 Fitness+ sessions. This calls for an energy drink! - 3,000: That was your 3,000th Fitness+ session. Way to stay with it! - 3,500: That was your 3,500th Fitness+ session. Woohoo! - 4,000: That was your 4,000th Fitness+ session. Awesome! - 5,000: That was your 5,000th Fitness+ session. Booyah! - 6,000: That was your 6,000th Fitness+ session. Give yourself a high-five! - 7,000: That was your 7,000th Fitness+ session. Go ahead, pinch yourself! - 8,000: That was your 8,000th Fitness+ session. You’re on fire! - 9,000: Boom! That was your 9,000th Fitness+ session. - 10,000: That was your 10,000th Fitness+ session. You’re the GOAT!

iPhone 17
iOS 27 DB7

Mind you, I don’t have reduce motion on; it’s just annoying. Before, the animation was working that’s so weird.

While indexing is active, the Optimizing Search and Siri section in Settings has a Learn More link. Clicking on the link generated a page not found error.

DB8 has supplied the missing page:
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/127550

Since the second or third iOS 27 DB, the safety filter in Photos has been non-functional. No matter what photo type I try it with, nothing is pixelating, despite the app saying otherwise. I’ve tried a clean install, rebooting, and reported the bug in the feedback app (along with a video replicating the problem and all other data attached). Today Apple emailed me saying that the bug was functioning as intended. I’m kind of at a loss as to how I should fix this. No faces or sensitive content are being obscured. I just updated to the DB8 and the problem persists.

The attached video replicates the issue. Anyone else experiencing this or have any suggestions for fixing it?

Note the step count to distance ratio on and before 24 august and then the 25th and after that. The issue did not occur on DB6

If you have some UI bug, it is probably due to this, disable it and everything should work as intended for now.

I make music and often send the works in progress to fellow musicians. They are all on iOS as well using iMessage. When sending an mp3 or wav audio file to them, they are not playable. This has been consistent for the entirety of the 27 beta.

As the title says, I have a iPhone 16 Pro Max on iOS 27 DB7 (but I also had a weird "updating cards" pop up several times on DB6) that will not allow me to activate anything related to Apple Pay / Sending or Receiving / Add a card / Apple Cash without popping up an error after verifying Apple password. After I updated to DB7 all of my credit/debit cards were wiped out on the iPhone 16 Pro Max but none of my passes/membership cards were wiped. While trying to figure out what the problem was and/or a workaround I realized that my M4 iPad Pro was able to continue doing everything that was mentioned above as unavailable on my 16 Pro Max. This makes me feel like there's an issue with the beta and not my Apple Account.

To add a bit of extra context I already restored my device when I was on DB6 because for some reason it was not allowing the over-the-air update (DB7) to verify on the device. I then attempted the update to DB7 again, which failed again. I then restored the device a third time, from there I manually updated the firmware using my MacBook Pro to install DB7 onto my 16 Pro Max.

Both of these images are when my Magic Keyboard is connected and working. Feedback submitted

Looking for a workaround on this, I drive a lot for a living and it would be nice to be able to send an email, even to myself, while I’m driving and this used to be possible.

I’ve got it set so that Siri is allowed while locked, not sure what else I would have to look at unless it’s just by Design at the moment…?

I’m having trouble working out under what circumstances that Siri will just continue listening as part of the conversation, because a lot of the time you have to hold the button again in order to reply…