Last week, Apple took the wraps off
iOS 11, their next major release for iPhones and iPads. We’ve been exploring the developer preview and pouring through documentation to see what’s new. There are several changes we wanted to highlight for our users. In short, you should expect to be more productive with your iOS devices, and have more immersive experiences in the future.
Password App AutoFill
Apple took steps in iOS 11 to make it easier to log into native apps. The feature only uses credentials saved to your iCloud Keychain, however, so it requires you to have saved passwords from Safari. Although this new feature doesn’t support third-party password managers like LastPass at this time, we’re encouraged to see a company like Apple acknowledge what a pain it is to log in to apps and deliver new ways to make it easier.
The LastPass iOS extension will still help you sign in to over
200 popular apps, as well as any website in Safari or Chrome.
True Multitasking
Apple has invested a lot of effort to refine its multitasking experience in iOS 11. Whether you’ve got two apps running in Split Screen or in Slide Over, both apps remain active simultaneously. In fact you can combine Split Screen, Slide Over, and Picture-in-Picture to run up to 4 apps at once. Apple even remembers how you’ve laid out your apps, similarly to how Spaces works on macOS. The new Drag and Drop experience enables more fluid interactions between these apps, too.
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Image source: Apple.com
For LastPass users, these improvements will help you stay more productive while you work or browse the web. If you like to bring LastPass in via Slide Over to grab items from your vault, LastPass won’t lock when you switch focus back to the other app.
Scan and Save Documents
If you keep contracts or receipts stored as attachments in your vault, you’re going to love the new Document Scanner. From the Notes app in iOS 11, you can take a photo of a document, and Apple will automatically crop the image, remove glare, and fix any perspective or tilt issues, making it easy for you to fill out the page or add a digital signature before you send or save it.
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Image source: Apple.com
We know a lot of you work in technology, so you probably take a lot of screenshots. In iOS 11, Apple has introduced an entirely new workflow for annotating and sharing these images. After you grab your screenshot, it minimizes to a thumbnail in the corner of the screen for a few moments. Tapping the thumbnail opens a new edit mode that lets you mark up and draw over the screenshot before you save or share it. We know we’re going to make frequent use of this feature around the office.
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