iOS 11 Said to Bring Easy Wi-Fi Sharing, Better Gmail Notifications, and More

While Apple introduced iOS 11 on Monday to the world, some things about the platform were not discussed on stage and have since been uncovered by the developers who have got their hands on the preview already. Now, the list of these new things seems to be growing further as developers have found out that the new iteration of iOS brings along an easy Wi-Fi sharing feature, native support for GIFs, and more. Separately, iOS 11 has been tipped to bring Gmail push notifications back to their former speed as well as expand the NFC features beyond Apple Pay. Notably, not all features in the developer preview may make it to the final public release.

Apple's iOS 11, which will be made available widely this fall, brings along a new feature that allows users to share their Wi-Fi with friends or with their other devices by just a single tap, reports 9To5Mac. As per the report, the feature makes a similar pop-up notification like AirPods do for the establishment of a connection. When you bring a new device in proximity to a device that is already connected to the Wi-Fi network, the connected device will see a notification that informs about the new device trying to connect to the network. Users can then share the Wi-Fi access by a single tap, the report points out.

Moving to the GIF support, although GIF images were already supported by certain platforms within the iOS, some Reddit users have found that now the support for animated images has been added to the native Photos app with iOS 11, as per a report by The Next Web. As Live Photos were already supported within the Photos app, it doesn't come as a surprise that animated GIF support has also been added but it surely is a much needed addition.

Notably, the Cupertino-based company has also added a built-in screen recording functionality that can also be pinned to the all-new customisable notification centre by users, as per the TNW report. As users had to resort to third-party applications to achieve this functionality, this definitely comes as a welcome addition too.

Coming to the Gmail push notifications, users who have got their hands on iOS 11 preview have witnessed a change in the behaviour of the notifications for the better, as per a report by 9To5Mac. Gmail users who have been using iOS would know that the Gmail notifications, from the account synced with device, have been coming with a delay for quite some time. However, if 9To5Mac report is to be believed, Apple has finally resolved this issue with the upcoming version of the platform.

Finally coming to the expanded NFC features, with iOS 11, Apple has added the support for Core NFC to the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, reports Engadget. Core NFC has been defined as "a new framework for reading Near Field Communications (NFC) tags and data in NFC Data Exchange Format" in the released documents, as per the report. While NFC chip in iPhone is currently used only for Apple Pay, the support for Core NFC indicates that the Cupertino-based company has more plans lined up for the technology going ahead.

This means that the company could even enable the functionality where you can tap to pair with Bluetooth speakers with your iPhone, a functionality that is already enjoyed by Android users, Engadget points out. However, this increased functionality can potentially pose privacy issues with the platform, as per the report.