iOS 27.2 adds smart lock automations, Apple sells iPhone 18 Pro repair parts, and moreiOS 27.2 adds smart lock automations, Apple sells iPhone 18 Pro repair parts, and more

iOS 27.2 brings two new smart lock automations to the Home app, 9to5Mac reported on 20 October, as it set out what the update changes in six of Apple's iPhone apps. Below that, the day's smaller Apple news: repair parts, iPhone Duo's apps, HomeView's long wait and a party setting for four HomePods.

What iOS 27.2 adds to Home, Podcasts and Games

In Home, Lock After Closing counts down from the moment a door shuts rather than from when it was unlocked, and Door Left Open sends a notification when a door stays open too long. Both work with compatible smart locks, 9to5Mac says, without listing which. Apple Podcasts splits the Up Next row on its Home tab in two: New Episodes from followed shows, and Continue Playing for episodes started but not finished. The Games app's Home tab starts showing games downloaded but never played, and makes achievement progress and leaderboard scores easier to follow.

The other three apps on 9to5Mac's list carry changes we have already reported from the betas: Suggested Actions returning to Messages, TV app profiles and Group FaceTime Dual Capture. 9to5Mac expects the update to reach everyone next week.

Our reading is that Lock After Closing only works if the lock can tell the door is shut, which usually means a door-position sensor, so anyone buying a lock this winter with these automations in mind should check for one first.

Self Service Repair parts for iPhone 18 Pro, Mac mini and Mac Studio

Apple's Self Service Repair Store now sells parts for the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, the Mac Studio with M5 Max or M5 Ultra, and the Mac mini with M6 or M5 Pro, 9to5Mac reported, in the US, Canada and Europe according to MacRumors. The iPhone list runs from the display, back glass and battery to cameras, speakers, the logic board and the Taptic Engine; the Macs get fans, speakers, logic boards and power supplies, plus SSD modules on the Studio. A replacement rear camera costs $249, the same as last year according to 9to5Mac, with a $59.76 credit for sending the old one back. iClarified notes that some repairs need Apple's System Configuration step afterwards to finish.

That credit returns about 24 per cent of the camera's price, so the old part is worth posting back. Our advice on displays is more cautious: iFixit found the iPhone 18 Pro display frame broke on three of the four units it opened, and a first-time repairer is better off leaving a screen to Apple.

What Apple's own apps look like on iPhone Duo

The App Store now carries screenshots of Apple's built-in apps running on iPhone Duo, MacRumors reported the same day, three days before the phone goes on sale. Many show the phone open in landscape, with iPad-style sidebars; Contacts splits into a list and an editing pane, and the Siri app tiles conversations on the left with the open one on the right. The dock turns vertical and navigation bars run down the right edge, open or closed, except when the open phone is held upright, when the navigation bars stay at the bottom. The Home Screen puts Today view widgets on the left and app icons on the right.

These are the pictures Apple will soon ask of everyone else: Duo screenshots become mandatory for App Store submissions in April 2027. The open portrait view, which Apple pitches for typing and Safari, barely appears in them, so it is the layout we would ask to see on a demo unit before paying for the phone.

Why did HomeView take so long?

Apple held HomeView back until Siri AI was ready, two of its executives told The Verge, as 9to5Mac and AppleInsider reported. Kaiann Drance, vice president of product marketing for home, said that with Siri AI it all comes together "in a way that we haven't been able to deliver before". Lilian Rincon, who leads AI product marketing, called the new Siri much more capable and said its conversational style lets anyone in a family use it. 9to5Mac notes that Bloomberg's Mark Gurman first reported a March 2025 target, and ties the product's absence from the EU to the same dependency, since Siri AI is not available there on iOS.

When we reported that HomeView's FCC test reports date back to October 2024, Apple had never given a reason for the wait. Counting from that first test date to the 13 November delivery date makes it two years and a month. For readers in the EU, the explanation means HomeView arrives when Siri AI does there, not when the hardware is ready.

Whole Room Audio on the new Apple TV 4K

The new Apple TV 4K offers a second way to use four HomePods besides surround sound, called Whole Room Audio, MacRumors reported. Apple's Apple TV 4K page, which we read on 21 October, says it "spreads sound evenly across four HomePod speakers" for parties or game day. The settings come from code in tvOS 27.2, read by the code finder pdfu and relayed by MacRumors, so they are evidence rather than anything Apple has published. They show Speaker Mode as a choice between the two, with a rear level adjustable from minus 8 to plus 8 decibels and a Spatialize Stereo switch for surround only. Whole Room Audio has no settings: it plays stereo, giving the left channel to the front-left and rear-right speakers and the right channel to the other diagonal. MacRumors says earlier rumours called it Party Mode.

Apple's surround footnote requires matching front and rear pairs, and its Whole Room Audio line carries no footnote, so Apple has not said whether the same rule applies. The diagonal layout means that wherever someone stands, both channels are nearby, which suits a room where nobody faces the screen. For a set bought mainly for gatherings rather than films, we would start with the cheapest of the four-speaker combinations we priced and add the larger HomePods only if films matter too.

Our take

Three of today's five items are software switching on hardware that is already sold or ordered. The lock automations and Whole Room Audio both depend on the 27.2 updates, so anyone setting up a new Apple TV or smart lock this autumn should install them before deciding the product falls short. Apple's own explanation ties HomeView's wait to Siri AI, which makes the first full reviews after 13 November a test of the assistant as much as of the screen.

The repair news is the quieter change worth noticing. Adding it up, parts for the iPhone 18 Pro went on sale 32 days after the phone itself, which reached stores on 18 September. For a first repair at home, APPDOOK would pick the battery or the camera over the screen, and owners of Apple's newest Pro phone now have that choice within weeks of buying it.

Also today

AppleInsider reports that AirPlay in iPadOS 27 shows the whole iPad screen when a presenter switches apps with several windows open, with or without Stage Manager, so private notes can appear on the external display. It says there is no fix and the change may be intentional.

Telstra said in a support page, since deleted, that RCS messaging for iPhone would arrive with an iOS update in December, MacRumors reports, which it expects to be iOS 27.3.

The first iPhone Duo unboxing video has appeared ahead of Friday's launch, MacRumors reports: the phone ships flat in an otherwise ordinary iPhone box. New online orders from Apple now quote 25 January delivery.

Apple is hiring a 6G Cellular Modem Systems Engineer, MacRumors spotted, at a base salary of $175,000 to $308,500 according to 9to5Mac, which expects first 6G specifications in late 2028 and networks around 2030.

9to5Mac's Ryan Christoffel argues that Apple's recent purchases, MotionVFX, Color.io, Samplab and the Huxe team, point at its Creator Studio suite of pro apps, ahead of Apple's Pro and tell event on 28 October. The link to Creator Studio is 9to5Mac's reading.

Bluesound is rolling out a BluOS update that adds Apple Music to its speakers, stereo components and soundbars, and to BluOS devices from NAD, PSB, DALI, Cyrus and Monitor Audio, AppleInsider reports.

Sony has transferred 419 XR patents to Meta in batches under an agreement signed in December 2025, first reported by ZDNet Korea. AppleInsider reads it as bad news for VR gaming on PlayStation, and says it will become a problem for Apple Vision Pro gamers.

Where's Wanda?, Apple TV's German-language dark comedy, began its second season on 20 October, 9to5Mac reports, with the rest of its eight episodes weekly until 9 December.

iDownloadBlog shows how to add a Calendar event in iOS 27 by typing a sentence such as a name, day and time, which needs Apple Intelligence; in its tests lowercase day names sometimes failed and some times were not recognised.