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Marques Brownlee - iOS 15 Hands-On: Top 5 New Features!

Thumbnail of the video “Marques Brownlee - iOS 15 Hands-On: Top 5 New Features!”
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Author: Marques Brownlee
Categories: Technology Productivity Real Estate
Tags: technology, productivity, real-estate
Views: 2 · Last viewed: 2026-10-16 08:09 UTC

Short Summary

Main recommendation: Marques Brownlee's top five new iOS 15 features, ranked from least to most exciting to him, are the redesigned stock apps, FaceTime improvements, Live Text, Notifications, and Focus Modes, with Focus Modes being his favorite by far. He argues that iOS 15 is looking and feeling much better overall, though he notes that Android notifications have long been stronger and that iOS still has a way to go there.

Key Points

  • Redesigned stock apps (5th): The Weather app gets a fresh look with full-screen weather animations, the Clock app lets you type alarm times instead of using sliders, Safari's address bar moves to the bottom, and Apple Maps adds more detailed 3D buildings and landmarks, starting in cities like San Francisco.
  • FaceTime (4th): Adds spatial audio for group calls, a grid view, portrait blur, microphone modes, and SharePlay for syncing Apple Music and Apple TV playback, plus FaceTime events that can be added to calendars and shared as links.
  • Live Text (3rd): Lets you long-press text in any photo to select, copy, paste, or translate it, all on-device, and it also identifies things like animal breeds, though it does not work on videos.
  • Notifications (2nd): Gets a new design with larger app icons and a Notification Summary that rounds up low-priority notifications, though Mkbhd is unsure exactly which notifications count as low priority.
  • Focus Modes (1st): Customize which apps and people can notify you per mode, set modes to turn on by time or location, limit which Home Screens appear, and sync modes across iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, and Mac.

Details Worth Noting

  • Concrete instructions: To use Focus Modes, go to Quick Settings and long-press to access the available modes (Do Not Disturb, Sleep, Personal, and Work by default). Customize each mode's allowed apps and contacts, then set it to turn on automatically by location or time of day, and choose which Home Screens appear while that mode is active. To use Live Text, long-press the text in any photo.
  • Live Text requires an A12 Bionic chip or later, so not every older iPhone will get it.
  • SharePlay has a new API, and at the time of recording, Disney+, HBO, and ESPN were supported, with Spotify, Netflix, and YouTube hoped for later.
  • Apple Maps' 3D detail varies by city: San Francisco has far more modeled buildings and trees, while New York City shows only a few skyscrapers that do not appear at every zoom level.
  • The Safari address bar moves to the bottom, hides when scrolling, and can be swiped across to switch tabs, which the speaker expects will take some getting used to.
  • Other improvements he briefly mentions include improved Spotlight with more Siri suggestions, improved offline speech-to-text recognition, and various performance tweaks.

Bottom Line

iOS 15's most useful upgrade is Focus Modes, which give far more control over notifications and Home Screens and sync across Apple devices, while the other changes make the system feel more polished overall.