iOS 13 Is Now Available to Everyone. Here's What Stands Out

Dark mode, Arcade and more.

At about 8:00 p.m. Kyiv time (10 a.m. in California), Apple made the new version of its operating system for iPhones, iOS 13, available to everyone. Yes, now only for iPhones, because a new operating system for iPads has been created, iPadOS, and its public release will take place on September 30.

1. Dark mode is now available

Dark mode is the main innovation of the new operating system. For some reason, Apple long avoided it, but last year it launched it for MacBooks, and now for smartphones as well. When you first start up after installing iOS 13, you can choose dark mode or stay with the classic light theme.

You can change it in the menu or set up automatic theme switching depending on the time of day. There is a default option that turns on dark mode from night until morning, but you can set the exact switching time yourself.

Most apps now automatically adapt to the active theme. Even Maps.

2. Apple Arcade has arrived

Apple did not make its new service a separate app, but instead added it as a tab in the App Store. The cost, as announced, is $5 per month, but you can try the service for free for the first 30 days.

Games in Arcade are marked separately (the Arcade logo is built into the launch screen of each game), and the games we have been able to test so far fully match the name of the service: arcade games. The others remain available on the Games tab as before. 

The difference is that in Arcade you only pay once per month, and no payments at download or during play will even be offered, whereas for other games, as before, the developer decides: they may be paid at download, or may offer in-game purchases. 

Arcade games will be available on all Apple devices once the new versions of the operating systems for MacBooks and iPads are released, but other games are not guaranteed to be.

Knowing Apple, two gaming sections running in parallel will most likely last only for a while, after which the corporation will try to impose its own rules and draw everyone into Arcade. Whether that will happen, we will see. 

For now, it can be stated that games in Arcade are better optimized and more convenient to control on iPhones, but incredibly monotonous, precisely because of their arcade nature (or is it that we simply haven't managed to appreciate them yet?). Meanwhile, next door there is far more variety in themes.

3. New Shortcuts app

Here you will be able to set up quick execution of the most necessary functions as you wish.

4. Each app now has its own menu, which opens with a long tap

Developers chose for themselves which options to display. Many have already prepared and released updates.

5. Completely redesigned photo and video gallery

It has become easier to find what you need thanks to quick switching of grouping between — by days, by months, by years. The familiar automatic grouping by collections, of course, has also remained.

Yevgeny Blazhko