Introduction

At a glance, iOS 11 may not seem much different than iOS 10, but there are major changes afoot.

Two things might throw you for a loop: Control Center has been redesigned from the ground up to cram a new array of customizable controls into a single page, and Notification Center has been done away with, having been merged with the Lock screen.

The new Control Center offers a slew of new capabilities, such as screen recording, taking notes from the Lock screen, and quick access to the Apple TV remote. Don’t let its strange look fool you—it’s a huge improvement over the old design.

There are numerous improvements for all iOS devices, but this year the iPad is the star of the show. Apple has rethought how multitasking works in iOS 11, with a more efficient App Switcher, a Mac-like Dock, and improved Slide Over and Split Screen views.

Additionally, iOS 11 offers new markup capabilities for email attachments, PDFs, screenshots, webpages, and more. These features, marketed as Instant Markup, are highlighted on the iPad, but work on all iOS devices. But if you have an iPad Pro paired with an Apple Pencil, they work all the better.

For years, Apple fought Finder-like access to the filesystem on iOS. It finally relented somewhat with iOS 8 and the iCloud Drive app, but in iOS 11, Apple has replaced it with the Files app, which offers access to not only files stored in iCloud, but locally stored files as well, if the app that created the file supports it.

iOS 11 offers niceties for every iOS device, but it pushes the iPad one step closer to being a peer to the Mac.

This is a preliminary release of the book, prior to iOS 11’s official launch. After it’s released to all iOS users, I’ll update the book as needed.