iPadOS 17: First Thoughts After 57 Hours

Summary: not bad

Finally.

Here’s my thoughts after 2.5-ish days of using the iPad’s latest software update.

The Lock Screen

Woah—I'm so happy that we finally got a customizable lock screen.

In particular, my favorite addition is the new mini-widgets on the Lock Screen:

With one glance, you get a ton of information, ranging from your AirPod's battery percentage to how many new emails you have.

If you add Shortcuts widgets (cool little automation scripts for people who don't know), this could be insanely powerful.

On top of the new widgets, you also get access to all of the things iPhones got last year: cool planet wallpapers, text customization, and more.

Only one kinda small issue: customizing the home screen is super glitchy. Hopefully this gets fixed in a future update.

Interactive Widgets 👈

Here's another cool feature: you can interact with widgets without having to open the app.

If that's confusing, take a look at this:

I can play whatever podcast I want without having to actually open up the Podcasts app (don't judge my podcasts).

That might sound like a super basic feature, but it's been pretty useful so far.

There's another small, but cool feature that you probably haven't noticed yet—check where the Podcasts widget is in the picture I just showed you.

You can put widgets ANYWHERE now. No more trying to drag apps and widgets around until they fit properly. Thank you Apple 🙏

The Health App 🩺

I just moved into college, and the freshman 15 is my #1 enemy (college freshmen gain 5.5x more weight than the rest of the population).

The new Health app is so useful it's almost not useful—it gives me way more data than I'll ever need.

Like do I really need any of this:

Apple also has some cool health articles for anyone who's interested:

As someone who's at least trying to become healthy, this app is pretty cool. I don't know how often I would use it, but it's nice to know that I don't walk normally (my friends were right).

NEW WALLPAPERS 🚨

Finally dropped a second set of wallpapers. You can check it out here (they’re completely free).

Fun fact: I designed this wallpaper set with Concepts (who also happen to be sponsoring this post).

Concepts is a cool "unlimited canvas" note-taking app I've used for a few years. I've used it to take notes, brainstorm ideas, and even design a science fair project.

It's one of the few apps I highly recommend for every iPad user out there. And I genuinely believe this (again, check my post history if you wanna verify this claim).

Concepts has been kind enough to offer a free 30-day trial. And no, you don't have to enter your credit card info.

PDFs 📄

The PDF updates look pretty cool.

(in case you forgot, the Notes app got a PDF editor and the Files app can find fillable fields in your documents)

Here's a sample photo of automatically identified PDF fields:

Safari 🔎

Safari got a couple big-ish updates: profiles and locked private browsing.

I'll be completely honest—I can't figure out how to setup profiles. It's a cool idea though (you can set up different Safari profiles for work stuff, home stuff, school stuff, etc).

Locked private browsing is also cool. If you're doing some sketchy stuff, you can lock up your private browsing windows with Face ID or Touch ID depending on what iPad you use.

Stage Manager 🎭

WOAH.

Stage Manager is genuinely cool now.

If you haven't already: Download iPadOS 17 → Enable Stage Manager → Resize Your Window. It's so smooth (doing it on an iPad Pro is super cool) and there are a ton of  window sizes to pick from.

I can't figure out how to upload a video here, so I'll just include a snapshot from when I was messing around with the window sizing:

Last year's Stage Manager was weird to use. This year's Stage Manager is actually cool (I might finally start using it).

FaceTime 😁

FaceTime got a couple updates too—you can leave messages (aka voicemails) and you can add cool reaction things to your screen.

Haven't been able to test it out though (WhatsApp >>> FaceTime).

Messages 💬

Messages also got some small updates.

It basically got everything the iPhone got: emoji stickers, Live Stickers, search filters, the jump-to-the-last-read-message arrow, swipe-to-reply, and location sharing.

Final Thoughts

"If I had to sum up my first impressions of iPadOS 17 in a single word, I would say 'flexibility'"—Chance Miller (9to5Mac)

Thanks for reading!

Adi