15 iOS 27 settings you should check or change right away

15 iOS 27 Settings You Should Check or Change Right Away

Just updated your iPhone to iOS 27?

Before you start exploring all the new features, there are a few settings worth checking first. Some are completely new in iOS 27, while others can help improve battery life, privacy, notifications, and your overall iPhone experience.

Here are 15 settings and features I recommend checking after installing iOS 27, including where to find them and what I personally recommend.

1. Customize the new Liquid Glass look

One of the biggest changes in iOS 27 is that Apple now lets you decide how transparent you want Liquid Glass to look.

How to change it

1. Open Settings.

2. Go to Appearance.

3. Find Liquid Glass.

4. Move the slider toward Clear for a more transparent look.

5. Move it toward Tinted if you prefer more contrast and less transparency.

You can move the slider anywhere in between, so you don’t have to choose one extreme or the other.

My recommendation: Start closer to Clear and adjust it until text and buttons remain comfortable to read.

iOS GUIDE

2. Check Reduce Transparency

Does Liquid Glass look much less transparent than you expected?

An Accessibility setting could be changing its appearance.

How to check it

1. Open Settings.

2. Tap Accessibility.

3. Tap Display & Text Size.

4. Find Reduce Transparency.

5. Turn it off if you want the full Liquid Glass effect. Turn it on if you don't want to see Liquid Glass at all.

For example, if you rely on this setting for readability, there’s no reason to turn it off. But it’s worth knowing that it changes how Liquid Glass looks.

3. Check Increase Contrast

There’s another Accessibility setting that can affect the new design.

How to check it

1. Go to Settings.

2. Open Accessibility.

3. Tap Display & Text Size.

4. Find Increase Contrast.

5. Turn it off if you want iOS 27 to show Liquid Glass more naturally.

Again, keep it enabled if the additional contrast makes your iPhone easier to use.

4. Turn on Adaptive Power

If you have a compatible iPhone, Adaptive Power can help your battery last longer on days when you’re using your iPhone more heavily than usual.

How to enable it

1. Open Settings.

2. Tap Battery.

3. Open Power Mode.

4. Turn on Adaptive Power.

Adaptive Power can make small adjustments in the background, such as slightly reducing display brightness or limiting some background activity when needed.

My recommendation: Turn it on.

You can still use Low Power Mode separately when you really need to extend your battery life.

Pro tip: Use Adaptive Power Notifications to get notifications on your Lock Screen about battery preformance.

5. Review your charging limit

If you keep your iPhone for several years, it’s worth checking how your battery is being charged.

How to find it

1. Open Settings.

2. Tap Battery.

3. Tap Charging.

4. Check your Charge Limit.

On supported iPhones, you can set a limit for how far the battery normally charges.

If you spend most of your day close to a charger, a lower limit can reduce the amount of time your battery remains at a very high charge level. My recommendation is 90%, which offers an ideal sweet spot between protecting long-term battery health and having enough power to comfortably get through the day.

If you regularly need the longest possible battery life between charges, setting the limit to 100% may still make more sense for you.

6. Review which apps can refresh in the background

Background App Refresh allows apps to fetch new content even when you’re not actively using them.

You probably don’t need it enabled for every app.

How to change it

1. Open Settings.

2. Tap General.

3. Select Background App Refresh.

4. Go through the list of apps.

5. Turn it off for apps that don’t need to constantly update in the background.

I normally leave it enabled for apps where background updates are genuinely useful and disable it for apps I rarely use.

This can also help reduce unnecessary battery usage.

8. Review app tracking permissions

You can also control which apps are allowed to ask permission to track your activity across other companies’ apps and websites.

How to check

1. Open Settings.

2. Go to Privacy & Security.

3. Tap Tracking.

4. Review the apps listed here.

You can disable tracking access individually or turn off Allow Apps to Request to Track completely.

My recommendation: Unless you specifically want to allow tracking for an app, keep this as limited as possible.

9. Set up the new Siri

Siri gets one of its biggest upgrades with iOS 27, so don’t just update your iPhone and forget about it.

Open your Siri settings and check which new features are available on your particular iPhone.

What to check

1. Open Settings on your iPhone.

2. Scroll down and tap Siri.

3. Open Requests and make sure Siri is enabled. Choose “Siri” or “Hey Siri,” “Hey Siri” only, or turn voice activation off.

4. Return to the Siri settings and tap Voice.

5. Listen to the available options and select your preferred Siri voice.

Availability can depend on your iPhone model, language, region, and the version of iOS 27 you’re running.

10. Change how Siri sounds

In iOS 27, you can choose the Siri voice you prefer. On iPhones that support Advanced Siri, you can also adjust Siri’s Pace and Expressivity to make the voice sound faster, slower, calmer or more conversational.

How to find the voice controls

1. Open Settings on your iPhone.

2. Scroll down and tap Siri.

3. Tap Voice.

4. Listen to the available options and select your preferred Siri voice.

5. If your iPhone supports Advanced Siri, adjust the Pace slider to change how quickly Siri speaks.

6. Adjust the Expressivity slider to control how much emotion and variation you hear in Siri’s voice.

The Pace and Expressivity controls require an iPhone that supports Advanced Siri’s more powerful on-device model. These controls may not appear on every iPhone running iOS 27. You can learn more about this feature here.

11. Let Safari organize your tabs

If your Safari tab collection is getting completely out of control, iOS 27 can help.

Safari can automatically organize related tabs by topic.

How to use it

1. Open Safari.

2. Open the Tab overview.

3. Open the tab organization or filtering options.

4. Choose Automatically Create Topics.

5. Safari will group related tabs together by topic.

This is especially useful if you’re one of those people with 50, 100, or even 300 Safari tabs open. ;-) You can learn more about this feature here.

12. Review Your Notification Preferences

Over time, almost every app seems to start sending notifications. Use the iOS 27 update as an opportunity to decide which apps genuinely deserve your attention.

How to manage your notifications

1. Open Settings.

2. Tap Notifications.

3. Go through the apps in the list.

4. Turn off notifications for apps that do not need your attention.

5. For the apps you want to keep, choose whether their alerts can appear on the:

   • Lock Screen

   • Notification Center

   • Banners

6. Decide whether each app is allowed to play a sound or show a badge.

A New Way to Open Notifications in iOS 27

iOS 27 changes the familiar swipe-down gesture when the new Siri is active. Swiping down from the top-center of the screen can now open Siri’s Search or Ask interface.

To open Notification Center, swipe down from the top-left corner, starting near the clock. Think of the left side above the clock as the new place to pull down your notifications.

My rule is simple: if a notification is not useful or time-sensitive, it does not need to interrupt me.

13. Review your Focus modes

Focus is much more useful when you’ve actually configured it instead of relying on the defaults.

How to check it.

1. Open Settings.

2. Tap Focus.

3. Open modes such as Do Not Disturb, Work, Sleep, or Personal.

4. Choose which people can contact you.

5. Choose which apps can send notifications.

6. Add a schedule if you want that Focus to activate automatically.

You can also create your own Focus for things like driving, workouts, recording content, or simply having some uninterrupted time.

14. Make the Camera remember your settings

Have you ever changed a Camera setting, only for your iPhone to reset it the next time you open the Camera app? You can choose which settings the Camera remembers instead of letting it return to the defaults.

How to preserve your Camera setting

1. Open Settings.

2. Scroll down and tap Camera.

3. Tap Preserve Settings.

4. Turn on the settings you want the Camera app to remember.

My recommended settings
I recommend enabling the following options:

• Macro Control: Remembers whether you turned automatic macro switching on or off when taking close-up photos.

• Exposure Adjustment: Preserves your last exposure setting, so the Camera does not automatically return to its default brightness.

• Portrait Zoom: Remembers the zoom level you last used in Portrait mode.

• ProRAW & Resolution Control: Keeps your preferred ProRAW or high-resolution format setting available between Camera sessions. These options are only shown on supported iPhone models.

• Live Photo: Remembers whether you left Live Photo on or off instead of automatically turning it back on.

These settings give you a more consistent Camera experience and reduce the need to reapply your preferences every time you take a photo.

15. Automatically Fix Weak or Compromised Passwords

The Passwords app can already warn you when a saved password is weak, reused or found in a known data leak. In iOS 27, Apple Intelligence can go a step further by fixing eligible passwords for you.

With your permission, the Passwords app and Safari can visit supported websites, create stronger passwords, update the affected accounts and save the new login details automatically.

How to automatically fix your passwords

1. Open the Passwords app.

2. Unlock it with Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode.

3. Tap Security.

4. Find the option to automatically fix weak or compromised passwords.

5. Tap Get Started.

6. Read the explanation and tap Allow.

7. Review the accounts that your iPhone can update.

8. Remove any accounts you do not want to include.

9. Tap Fix Passwords.

Your iPhone will then attempt to sign in to each eligible account, create a stronger password and save it in the Passwords app. You can follow its progress through a Live Activity without keeping the Passwords app open.

My recommendation: Review the list carefully and start with passwords marked as compromised. Those passwords may have appeared in a known data leak and should be changed as soon as possible.

The automatic option only works with supported websites. If an account cannot be fixed automatically, open its security recommendation and tap Change Password to update it manually.

This feature requires Apple Intelligence, and its availability may depend on your iPhone model, language and region. Learn more about this here.

Bonus: Explore the new iOS 27 features

Once you’ve finished checking your settings, don’t stop there.

iOS 27 includes plenty of new features that don’t necessarily require changing a setting first.

A few worth trying:

• Customize the new Liquid Glass appearance. Learn more here.

• Try the new Siri AI experience. Learn more here.

• Use Clean Up, Extend, and Reframe in Photos. Learn more here.

• Rate your photos with 1–5 stars. Learn more here.

• Automatically organize Safari tabs by topic. Learn more here

• Explore the new Home energy features with compatible accessories.

• Customize the sound of supported AirPods with the new Custom EQ. Learn more here.

• Try the new one-tap Paste option. Learn more here.

• Explore the latest Home Screen and Control Center improvements.

I’ll be covering these features individually in my iOS Guides, with easy step-by-step instructions for each one.

Final thoughts

You don’t have to change every setting on this list. The goal is to make your iPhone work better for you.

If you’ve just installed iOS 27, I recommend starting with Liquid Glass, Adaptive Power, privacy permissions, notifications, and Siri. Those five alone can make a noticeable difference to how your iPhone looks and feels every day.

And with iOS 27 introducing even more customization and Apple Intelligence features, it’s worth spending a few minutes exploring the Settings app after updating.

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