From price drop updates to easier bill-splitting: New and helpful iOS 27 features to try
Apple’s latest iPhone update has arrived, and the iOS 27 comes with a handful of new tricks designed to make your phone feel a little more helpful.
Through its smarter AI and a more capable Siri, the system introduces new ways to search, organize, communicate, and get things done without taking a few extra taps. However, some of the most useful additions are hiding in plain sight, such as using it to help split a restaurant bill or have Safari watch out for a product you've been eyeing.
But you don’t have to spend an afternoon digging through settings to appreciate what’s new as we've rounded some of the handy upgrades worth trying right away:
Split a restaurant bill using the camera
We’ve all been there—spending minutes (if not, coming up with a sprradsheet) at the end of dinner trying to work out who owes what. Fortunately, iOS 27 has a handy trick that takes the hassle out of splitting the bill.
After opening your camera, tap the Visual Intelligence icon and take a picture of the receipt. You can then ask it to split the bill for you.
Keep in mind, however, that the receipt should be clear and readable for the AI to accurately recognize the items and amounts.
Identify objects in front of you
Let's say you saw something interesting right in front of you, but you have no clue what it is even called. Instead of trying to upload a photo of it on Google, you can simply point your iPhone's camera at it and let Visual Intelligence do the work.
The feature can identify objects, plants, animals, food, and other things in your surroundings.
For instance, if you're holding a dish you've never tried before, it can tell you what it is and provide additional details about it.
Save a video frame as a photo
Ever recorded a video because the moment was moving too quickly for a photo? Instead of taking a screenshot and risk reducing the quality of the photo, you can now select a frame from a video and save it as a standalone photo.
Simply pause the video on the frame you want, tap the three-dot menu at the top right of the screen, then tap the “Save Video Frame as Photo” button. The photo will then show up right next to the video.
Let Safari organize your chaotic tabs
If your Safari tabs have become too chaotic to keep track of, the iOS 27 can help you tidy them up and save you the hassle of sorting through every single one.
With Apple Intelligence, your tabs can be automatically grouped into topics so related pages are easier to find.
If, for example, you've opened several pages about a trip, a news story, or something you're shopping for, Safari can suggest a topic and group those tabs together.
First, you must open the app and tap the Tabs button. Tap Organize, then select "Automatically Create Topics." As you browse, Safari will suggest topics whenever it finds two or more tabs that can be grouped together.
Get updates for a price drop
For those of you who have been eyeing a product online, but aren't quite ready to buy it due to the price tag, you no longer have to keep checking the page to see if it goes on sale.
Safari has been upgraded to monitor a webpage for changes and alert you when something happens, such as a price drop or an item coming back in stock.
To set it up on your phone, open Safari and go to the webpage you want to monitor. Click the three-dot menu icon and choose "Notify Me."
From there, enter what you want Safari to watch out for.
Clean up unwanted objects in photos
More often than not, there are times when the otherwise-perfect vacation photo has one problem: someone you don't know is standing in the background. Or maybe there's a trash can, sign, or stray object ruining the shot.
Apple's improved Clean Up photo-editing tool lets you remove unwanted distractions simply by tapping, brushing over, or circling them, with some objects automatically highlighted for you to remove.
But Clean Up isn't the only tool worth playing around with. Extend lets you expand the edges of a photo's original frame, which can be useful if your subject feels a little too tightly cropped.
And if the perspective isn't quite right, Reframe lets you adjust the point of capture after you've taken the photo. You can drag the image to change its perspective, or pinch, zoom, and rotate it until the composition looks better.
Ask Siri to find the thing you can't find
If your iPhone has accumulated years' worth of photos and emails that you no longer remember where you put something, Siri's new personal-context capabilities can search across information on your device and help track down things such as a particular photo or email.
You can try typing something like, "Show me photos from when I went to Spain," and it will gather all the relevant photos.