With Apple’s fall event officially taking place on September 14, 2021, iOS 15 should be out before you know it! With the upgraded Memories feature in the Photos app, you can take your special moments to a whole new level, providing you with dramatic, movie-like scenes that you can share and relive at your fingertips.

We’re covering the upcoming iOS 15 all this week; click here to read more about what to expect!

New look and options to customize your Memories

Memories are more interactive than ever, now being able to play back to the beat of the music. They also play back in full screen, with better framing and cropping. Plus, new title cards can now be animated.

Memory title cards also give Memories a brand-new, fun look. They’re now animated, with new transition styles and contain multiple image collages.

Plus, Memory Mixes let you audition a new vibe. Stay tuned for an article later this week on how Memory Mixes let you apply a new look and feel to your Memories, with a single click.

More music to rock out to, synced with your photos and video

Memories is now fully integrated with Apple Music, meaning you can choose from tens of millions of songs if you’re a subscriber. You’ll also get song suggestions based on expert recommendations, your tastes and the contents of your photos and videos. All of it lives on your device — meaning that no data is sent up to the cloud.

Don’t use Apple Music? You can still preview songs, or take advantage of the newly-added free songs to enhance your Memories.

Trying out the new Memories

As a food photographer, I recently went through and gathered several food images for a client pitch. These ended up on my phone, so I could also post some of them to social media. The great thing here, is that by creating a Memory, I was able to send the potential client a different type of portfolio that highlighted my images.

I had all of these photos in an Album, so it was easy to just tap on the album and create a Memory by clicking the three-dot menu in the upper right corner.

I could then edit the Memory further, switching the music and adding a title card. Or I could try out the Memory Mixes feature, which suggests a song for you, along with a look that’s applied on your images. For this, I didn’t want to change the look … after all, this was meant to be a portfolio piece.

I ended up selecting an instrumental, jazz-like song for this, and had that pair with my photos. When all was said and done with, Memories made it easy to share my photos in a unique and easy way.

Things I wish Apple would add to Memories

While you can choose a key photo, you aren’t able to reorder your images — even if you do so in your album. Every photo will be ordered by date.

I’d also like the ability to customize the title card beyond just the title and subtitle.

Finally, it’d be great to have complete control over cropping. I found that in some cases, it cropped my images better than I could have for the look I was going for. But in other instances — like with my key photo — it didn’t fill the viewport and looked slightly awkward.

All in all though, Memories on iOS 15 is a ton of fun and a joy to use. It let s you easily go back and remember some of your favorite moments — or pieces of work— and share those with your friends or clients.