Apple Announces iPadOS 17 With Custom Lock Screens and Interactive Widgets

Apple today at WWDC announced iPadOS 17, bringing several new features to iPads, including updates to widgets and the Lock Screen that bring more parity with iPhones.

For the first time, iPads will support customized Lock Screens, while Home Screen widgets will be interactive. There's also now support for Live Activities, and the Health app is now available on iPad and takes advantage of the device's larger display sizes.

iPadOS 17 includes improvements across the Notes, Messages, FaceTime, and Safari apps. In the Messages app, for example, there is a new consolidated sticker drawer that brings all of a user's stickers into one place, including Live Stickers, emoji stickers, and third-party sticker packs. ‌iPad‌ users can also create their own stickers from photos.

Starting with iPadOS 17, PDFs appear full width on the screen. Apple has also introduced machine learning that can identify fields in a PDF so that users can quickly add details, such as names, addresses, and emails from the Contacts app.

iPadOS 17 is available in beta starting today, and will be publicly released later this year. The update is compatible with the second-generation iPad Pro, third-generation iPad Air, sixth-generation ‌iPad‌, and fifth-generation iPad mini and newer.