Earlier today, Apple started rolling out the first betas of iOS 27.3, iPadOS 27.3, watchOS 27.3, macOS 27.3 Golden Gate, tvOS 27.3, and visionOS 27.3 to developers. These updates come one week after the release of version 27.2 to the public, which came with a new Apple Music icon, enhancements to Siri AI, Edge Light and Apple Pencil support for the iPhone Duo, and more. iOS 27.3 is a huge update in terms of features, as several new additions are now live on the beta.

  • Apple Health Redesign: During the initial testing of iOS 27.2, specifically from beta 1 to beta 3, Apple gave testers access to the all-new Apple Health experience, including features such as Longevity, Readiness, Insights, and more. However, in beta 4, Apple removed the redesign and displayed this message: “The redesigned Health app will be available later this year. Your data from the beta remains on your device and viewable in Settings.” With today’s release of iOS 27.3 beta 1, Apple is now once again allowing testers to experience the new Apple Health App, and the final version of iOS 27.3 is expected to be released to the public by December.
  • Safari: iOS 27.3, iPadOS 27.3, and macOS 27.3 now come with support for vertical tabs. To enable it, testers can go into Settings>Apps> Safari>Vertical Tabs. The update also brings an ‘Adaptive Dark Mode’ feature for websites that do not support dark mode.

  • Siri: Siri AI is now more capable and can complete more tasks within first-party apps like Safari, Weather, Files, Mail, and more. It will soon have full access to the website rather than just the portion that you look at, including other tabs. This isn’t yet available in the first beta, as noted by MacRumors.

    According to Apple’s developer page, “Today’s preview allows any app to bring its content and actions directly into Siri AI by using App Intents, making it easier for all apps to tap into Siri AI’s newest capabilities, including personal context understanding, onscreen awareness, natural language, and more. So people can just ask for help in their own words, and Siri AI carries out any custom action you’ve built, from checking a delivery to booking a reservation to placing an order. For complex requests, we’re also introducing skills to let you teach Siri AI how to combine several actions into a single experience. And Siri AI can now surface any entity in the Spotlight semantic index, not just the ones that fit an existing schema.
    We started rolling out these new capabilities across many Apple apps, including Calendar, Files, Finder, Journal, Mail, Maps, Messages, Music, Notes, Photos, Preview, Reminders, Safari, Shortcuts, and Weather, so users can do things like find a coffee shop they visited last week or archive files that haven’t been opened in over a year. There are many more actions available now as examples for you to reference. To see what you can do in each app, just ask Siri AI.”

    With this update, certain Apple Intelligence features such as Writing Tools, Genmoji, Priority Notifications, Clean Up, Visual Intelligence, and more are now available in China. Siri AI is now also available in Traditional Chinese, Norwegian, Turkish, and Vietnamese, and this comes after Apple already added five languages, including Japanese, Spanish, Korean, French, and Portuguese, in iOS 27.2, which was released last week.

  • Reachability mode for iPhone Duo: iOS 27.3 brings reachability for the iPhone Duo to move it to the left or right with a swipe on either side. To enable it, you need to go into Settings>Accessibility>Reachability.

  • Updates to StandBy mode: With the introduction of the iPhone Duo, Apple also added new StandBy mode options. This will now extend to other iPhones as well with iOS 27.3.

While the features that are listed above aren’t major new features, they do bring more convenience to the users. We can expect version 27.3 for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, visionOS, and more to be released to the public by early December, as Apple will start preparing for version 27.4 before the holidays. Usually, the first beta of the .3 versions is released mid-December, but since Apple skipped the release of iOS 27.1 for all devices except the iPhone Duo and moved straight to iOS 27.2, it effectively moved the release dates for the .3 versions up by about a month.

Updates that are released towards the end of the year are usually feature-packed, and iOS 27.3 will be no different, and we can expect more new features in the upcoming betas. The update itself is huge in terms of size, with some users seeing around 24GB as the update size.

Apple also rolled out new features on watchOS 27.3; you can read more about them here.

Users who are registered as a developer on www.developer.apple.com can opt in to receive beta updates by going into Settings>General>Software Update>Beta Updates and selecting Developer Beta.

Do note that these versions are not stable and are meant for testing purposes. Did you find any more features in these updates? Let us know down in the comments or write to us on @appleosophy! Be sure to download the Appleosophy App from the App Store or visit our website to stay updated with the latest Apple news!