iOS 13.6 Brings Car Key, Apple News Audio, and Other Improvements

Apple released updates to its operating systems today, including iOS and iPadOS 13.6. Here are the features it gives customers.

iOS 13.6 Features

You can install the new update by going to Settings > General > Software Update.

One major feature is audio news introduced to Apple News and Podcasts. Subscribers to Apple News+ can listen to recordings from professional voice actors reading big news from big publishers like Wired and Fast Company. There is also a separate podcast called Apple News Today, which briefs listeners on the top news of the day, Monday through Friday.

The other major feature is digital car keys. Apple briefly discussed this in the WWDC 2020 keynote. Customers who have compatible cars can store a digital version of their car key within the Wallet app. You can share keys with others through iMessage, and control the level and length of access that people get, and lots more.

The update includes plenty of minor features, improvements, and bug fixes which you can read about in the release notes:

iOS 13.6 adds support for digital car keys, introduces audio stories in ‌Apple News‌+, and contains a new symptoms category in the Health app. This release also includes bug fixes and improvements.

Digital car keys
- Unlock, lock, and start your compatible car with your ‌iPhone‌
- Securely remove digital keys from a lost device via iCloud
- Share digital keys easily with iMessage
- Driver-specific profiles so you can configure shared keys for full-access or restricted driving
- Power reserve lets you unlock and start your car for up to five hours after ‌iPhone‌ runs out of battery

‌Apple News‌
- Audio stories are professionally narrated versions of some of the best reads from ‌Apple News‌+, selected and produced by the ‌Apple News‌ editors as part of your ‌Apple News‌+ subscription
- ‌Apple News‌ Today is a new, free audio briefing on the day's top stories from the ‌Apple News‌ editors, also available in the Podcasts app
- A new Audio tab makes it easy to find ‌Apple News‌ Today and Apple

News+ audio stories
- CarPlay allows you to listen to ‌Apple News‌ Today and ‌Apple News‌+ audio stories while on the road
- Local news in your Today feed provides extensive coverage of San Francisco, the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Houston, and New York City
- More stories available from local news providers with a subscription to ‌Apple News‌+
- Your daily newsletter from ‌Apple News‌ can now be personalized with stories that reflect your interests

Health
- New category for symptoms in the Health app, including symptoms logged from Cycle Tracking and ECG
- Ability to log new symptoms, like fever, chills, sore throat or coughing, and share them with third-party apps

This update also includes bug fixes and other improvements.
- Adds a new setting to choose if updates automatically download to your device when on Wi-Fi
- Addresses an issue that could cause apps to become unresponsive when syncing data from iCloud Drive
- Fixes an issue that could cause data roaming to appear to be disabled on eSIM even though it remained active
- Fixes an issue thats causes some phone calls from Saskatchewan to appear as originating from the United States
- Addresses an issue that could interrupt audio when making phone calls over Wi-Fi Calling
- Fixes an issues that prevented some ‌iPhone‌ 6S and iPhone SE devices from registering for Wi-Fi Calling
- Resolves an issue that could cause the software keyboard to appear unexpectedly when connected to certain third-party hardware keyboards
- Fixes an issue that could cause Japanese hardware keyboards to be incorrectly mapped as a U.S. keyboard
- Addresses stability issues when accessing Control Center when Assistive Touch was enabled
- Provides a mechanism for administrators to specify domains to exclude from traffic carried by always-on VPN connections