Apple releases macOS Catalina 10.15.1 and watchOS 6.1

Apple yesterday released software updates for macOS and watchOS—10.15.1 and 6.1, respectively. Apple's habit of late has been to release most of its operating system updates for each platform all on the same day. But in this instance, though, macOS and watchOS came a single day after iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS updates.

The macOS update mainly adds features we already saw yesterday in iOS and iPadOS 13.2. That includes support for AirPods Pro, the ability to opt in or out of sharing Siri recordings with Apple, new emoji, and new HomeKit feature support. There are also a number of macOS-specific bug fixes and the restoration of some lost Photos features.

Here are Apple's update notes for macOS Catalina 10.15.1:

The macOS Catalina 10.15.1 update includes updated and additional emoji, support for AirPods Pro, HomeKit Secure Video, HomeKit enabled routers, and new Siri privacy settings, as well as bug fixes and improvements.

Emoji

• Over 70 new or updated emoji, including animals, food, activities, new accessibility emoji, gender-neutral emoji, and skin tones selection for couple emoji

AirPods

• Introduces support for AirPods Pro

Home app

• HomeKit Secure Video enables you to privately capture, store, and view encrypted video from your security cameras and features people, animal, and vehicle detection
• HomeKit-enabled routers let you control how your HomeKit accessories communicate over the Internet or in your home
• Adds support for AirPlay 2-enabled speakers in scenes and automations

Siri

• Privacy settings to control whether or not to help improve Siri and Dictation by allowing Apple to store audio of your Siri and Dictation interactions
• Option to delete your Siri and Dictation history from Siri Settings

This update also includes the following bug fixes and improvements:

• Restores the ability to view file names in the All Photos view in Photos
• Restores the ability to filter by favorites, photos, videos, edited, and keywords in Days view in Photos
• Fixes an issue where Messages would only send a single notification when the option to repeat alerts was enabled
• Resolves an issue that caused Contacts to launch to the previously opened contact instead of the contact list
• Adds a two-finger swipe gesture for back navigation in Apple News
• Resolves issues that may occur in the Music app when displaying playlists inside folders and newly added songs in the Songs list
• Improves reliability of migrating iTunes library databases into the Music, Podcasts, and TV apps
• Fixes an issue where downloaded titles were not visible in the Downloads folder in the TV app

watchOS 6.1 is a very small update; its main purpose appears to be AirPods Pro support; users can now manage their active-noise-cancelation settings via the Watch for the new earphones. Additionally, Apple has brought watchOS 6 to the series 1 and series 2 Apple Watch devices as previously promised. (They were not supported by the first release of watchOS 6.)

Here are Apple's brief watchOS 6.1 update notes:

watchOS 6.1 introduces support for ‌AirPods Pro‌ and includes improvements and bug fixes. This update also brings ‌watchOS 6‌ to ‌Apple Watch‌ Series 1 and Series 2.

Additionally, Apple released a security update labeled watchOS 5.3.3 for Apple Watches not running watchOS 6. This is necessary even though watchOS 6 supports all Watch models now because watchOS 6 only works with iPhones that can run iOS 13, but some users are on older handsets.

Both updates should be available to all users today.