5 things I already liked from the iOS 27 beta

iOS 27 has only been out for a few hours, and I’ve been messing around with the production beta on my iPhone 16 Pro. I would love to try out the new Siri AI, but unfortunately, I’m still on Apple’s waiting list. Meanwhile, I’ve been looking at a lot of things that aren’t AI and I’ve found a lot that I’m happy about – although this doesn’t seem like a big change like in previous years, the fit and finish in the whole operating system is already good to see.

Here are a few good things that jumped out at me.

The Liquid Glass opacity slider should be there from the start

I’ve always thought that the Liquid Glass update, which was introduced with iOS 26 last year, was good – not great, but not too bad (well, after Apple cleaned things up. early problemsat least). But the new opacity slider in iOS 27 is great: it lets you make Liquid Glass objects look like transparent tabs. or very cold, meaning you can see the objects below them in different opacity modes. I want to do that actually See what’s under your search? Go glasses. Would you like things to count? Choose more colors. (You can guess what I like.)

Apple has taken back many of its icon features that were introduced with iOS 26, and overall, it looks great to me. The changes are subtle – changing to colors or adding a mirror effect – but I think it makes things look much better.

Various volume settings

From the settings, you can – finally – set independent volumes for Ringtones, alarms and timers, and alerts and sounds. In the Sounds & Haptics options, just toggle the switches that let you match alarms and timers as well as notifications and tones to your ringtone, and you can adjust the volume from there.

I have to admit that I don’t use widgets, but I saw that large widgets are coming with iOS 27 this year and I had to see a few for myself. They are very large; takes up the entire software screen (except for the dock). But I find it a very useful way to view the entire calendar or a long to-do list.

You can make a very small time on your Lock Screen

When you change the Lock Screen, you can set the time next to the date at the top of the screen. This frees up more space, which is great if you want to see more of your wallpaper, like a family photo or a nice piece of art, or if you just want a little clutter on your screen.

We’ll be digging up more over the next few days, so stay tuned eye on Seaside. And if you just want to see the big list of promising products coming in Apple’s big updates, I’ve got you covered.