3 India-specific Apple features you must try on iOS 17

Apple has included India-specific features on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS. These are likely to help region-specific audiences. (Image: Apple)

Apple released the Public Beta of its iOS 17, iPadOS 17, macOS Sonoma, watchOS 10, and tvOS 17 last night. The new versions of each operating system (OS) is packed with a slew of features.

But most importantly, Apple has included India-specific features on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS. These are likely to help region-specific audiences. Here are three India-specific Apple features you must try on the iOS 17:

Also read | Apple releases iOS 17 public beta: Here's how you can try it out

Siri goes Bi-lingual

I didn’t think I’ll be able to say this but Siri is getting smarter, at least in terms of understanding speech. The voice assistant can now reognize two languages at once. For instance, if you are speaking and mixing English with Hindi, it will still understand your command. This feature works on iOS, iPadOS, macOS and watchOS.

The new Siri bi-lingual feature works when you mix a language with English. It won’t work if you are mixing Hindi and Punjabi. But it will work if you are combining one of Telegu, Punjabi, Kannada and Marathi with English. You can use these for a variety of commands including help with setting an alarm or timer, sending messages, making calls, playing music, checking the weather, and looking up directions.

Transliteration keyboard gets a bunch of new Indian languages

You know when you want to send a message in Hindi but use the English keyboard to type the letters and the iPhone converts the words to Hindi, that’s called transliteration. Apple’s iOS 17 adds new transliteration keyboards across major Indian languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.

The feature comes in handy when you want to send a message in your regional language but use the English keyboard for better access. Up until now, Apple offered transliteration keyboards for Urdu, Punjabi, and Gujarati, which were introduced in iOS 16.4, while Hindi, Bengali and Marathi have been a part of iOS since earlier. This feature is available for iOS, iPadOS and macOS.

Plus, Apple is adding a Punjabi dictionary so you can easily get definitions of words and phrases from a variety of sources in Punjabi.

iOS gets better with dual-SIM

A lot of people in India have two SIMs that are part of a single phone. It can be a mess trying to figure out which SIM received a specific message or which SIM I’m using to send a message. To counter this, iOS 17 will let you sort messages by primary and secondary SIM, so you can easily sort personal messages from work messages.

Other ways to differentiate between the two SIMs is by setting different ringtones for each SIM, which you can do with iOS 17. It will help you better understand if iPhone is ringing because someone is calling a work phone number or personal phone number. Plus, if you miss a call, you can choose the SIM with which you want to callback.

Also read | Woman ordered an Apple Watch Series 8 on Amazon for Rs 50,900. What she received

BONUS: Even more lesser-known new iOS 17 features

• The ability to sign into your Apple ID using your phone number instead of an email address.
• You can now see a more extended call history in Recents within the Phone app, which includes calls from FaceTime and WhatsApp as well.
• When taking a full-page screenshot in Safari, Mail, or Notes, you can choose whether to save it to iPhone and iPad as an image or a PDF.
• iPadOS 17 now also allows you to filter messages by unread, known senders, and unknown senders on iPad. Earlier, this was only possible on the iPhone.