News

Apple Wallet Will Be Able To Store COVID-19 Vaccination Cards

The feature will be available in the next iOS update.

Published

5 years ago

September 23, 2021

David Morelo

Apple

Since the recent public release of iOS 15, iPhone users have been able to store COVID-19 immunizations and test results in the Health app and share them with approved third-party apps. We now know that the upcoming iOS 15.1 update, whose beta version has just been released to developers, will add the ability to store COVID-19 vaccination cards in the Apple Wallet app to present to businesses, venues, and more.

The vaccination information will be stored using the SMART Health Card standard, whose goal is to make presenting this kind of information in a verifiable manner to another party as easy as possible.

Apple

“Organizations that issue SMART Health Cards will soon be able to use a new button to let users know that they can securely download and store their vaccination information in the Health app and quickly add and present it from Wallet,” states Apple on its developer website.

Because the standard is open, there’s nothing stopping any health organization from implementing it to produce a digital proof of vaccination whose verification is as easy as scanning a QR code.

Also Read: Samsung Pay Introduces Support For Digital COVID-19 Vaccination Cards

We don’t know when the iOS 15.1 update will be released, but our guess is that it won’t take too long considering that minor updates are usually spaced approximately one month apart.

The SMART Health Card standard is just one of many examples of how the disruption and challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic have promoted innovation. We can now only hope that it won’t take too long before presenting vaccination information in any form will, once again, be reserved only for very rare occasions.

News

At I/O 2026, Sundar Pichai Concedes AI Must Deliver Real Value

Gemini 3.5, a personal agent called Spark, agentic shopping, and Android XR eyewear are all aimed at making AI feel useful, not just impressive.

Published

6 days ago

May 20, 2026

Nour Nasir

at io 2026 sundar pichai concedes ai must deliver real value

Google

Google’s annual I/O developer conference (I/O 2026) has recently become a status update on the same question: can the company turn its AI spending into products people use every day? This year, chief executive Sundar Pichai described Google as being in a phase of hyper progress, while conceding this is the part of the cycle where people want to see real value in the products they use on a day-to-day basis.

The strategy on display was to push agents — AI systems that act on a user’s behalf — into nearly every Google product at once. Search now has an “intelligent search box” that returns generated explainer videos alongside links. Gmail, Docs, YouTube and Maps are gaining their own agent layers, including a Docs Live feature that turns spoken instructions into drafted text with citations.

Two new models, Gemini 3.5 and a cheaper Gemini 3.5 Flash, arrived the same day. Google says 900 million people now use Gemini, and that more than 50 billion images have been generated with it. The pricing tier names are likely to confuse buyers: a new AI Ultra plan launches at $100 a month, while the older Gemini AI Ultra drops from $250 to $200.

The flashier announcements were Gemini Omni, a video generator pitched as a more realistic answer to OpenAI’s discontinued Sora 2, and Gemini Spark, a personal agent that handles recurring tasks across a user’s Google account. A new universal shopping cart lets agents complete purchases across multiple retailers from inside Google itself, placing the company between the merchant and the buyer, and also owning the checkout.

Also Read: DJI Teases Dual-Camera Osmo Pocket 4P For 2026 Launch

Google also confirmed its Android XR eyewear, built with Samsung and frames from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Audio-only glasses ship this autumn; a display-equipped version, which would superimpose live translations into the wearer’s field of view, is still in development. Both sets translate, however only the display version shows you the result.

What Pichai did not resolve is the bargain underneath all this. An agent is only useful to the degree it knows your calendar, your inbox, your shopping history and your physical surroundings. Google has now confirmed that, in time, the same context may carry advertising.