We've all been there. You want to give someone your phone number but you either have to take their phone and enter it somewhere or you have to dictate it to them. It's cumbersome. But Apple's fixing all of that with one new feature.
That new feature was announced as part of the WWDC 2023 event on June 5 and it's set to make it way easier to share phone numbers with other iPhone users. And it'll even work with the Apple Watch, too.
The feature, dubbed NameDrop, will ship as part of iOS 17 and watchOS 10 later this year.
AirDrop for names and numbers
Apple's NameDrop feature is an extension of AirDrop and will work simply by bringing two iPhones, or an iPhone and an Apple Watch, close together.
"AirDrop makes it easy to share a file with a colleague or send photos to a friend in seconds, and with iOS 17, AirDrop gets new ways to share," Apple says via a press release confirming tentpole iOS 17 features. "NameDrop allows users to easily share contact information by simply bringing their iPhones together, or by bringing an iPhone and Apple Watch together."
The feature is just one of many quality-of-life changes coming to the iPhone when iOS 17 arrives, likely in or around September. New additions like interactive widgets and improvements to autocorrect will also be added to the mix.
The iOS 17 update is now available in developer bet with a public beta program likely to come online within weeks. Apple also announced iPadOS 17, macOS 14 Sonoma, tvOS 17, and watchOS 10 with all of those updates also going through their own beta program ahead of a fall release window.
The iOS 17 update will also be what powers Apple's best iPhone yet, the iPhone 15 lineup, when it goes on sale in September — assuming Apple follows its own release cadence of course.
