The centerpiece feature of iOS 17.3 is "Stolen Device Protection," a setting that prevents potential thieves from locking you out using only your PIN. Unless you are in a designated, familiar location, you must use Touch ID or Face ID to change key settings.

If you subscribe to Apple Music, iOS 17.3 also offers Apple Music collaborative playlists. You and your friends can now collect the best mix of songs in one playlist and leave emoji reactions to each song.

Smaller updates in this iOS version include support for AirPlay in hotel room entertainment systems, upgraded crash detection on the iPhone 14 and iPhone 15, and the latest in Apple's Black Unity series of background work, the new Unity Bloom wallpaper for cell phones, has also been added.

Like the original version of iOS 17, iOS 17.3 requires an iPhone XS, iPhone XR or newer to download. iOS 17.3 can be updated manually from the iPhone Settings app (General > Software Update). The update can be done manually, or it can be downloaded and installed automatically when the iPhone is not in use, such as at night.

Now that iOS 17.3 has been released, an early beta release of iOS 17.4 must be coming soon. at this point in iOS 17's lifecycle, we can't expect any major new features, but perhaps Apple will again offer something like Stolen Device Protection something meaningful. However, we hope nothing like iOS 17.3 beta 2 will happen. This update caused a boot loop problem that forced Apple to stop the download after only a few hours.

The next big update to the iPhone software will be iOS 18, which, assuming Apple sticks to its normal release timing, will be seen at WWDC in June.