Apple's online-only WWDC 2021 will kick off on 7 June

Apple has officially announced the this year's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC21) will take place from June 7 to June 11.

The conference will take place as a virtual-only event, with all the announcements, sessions and labs set to be made available online at no cost for developers.

Apple will also hold a WWDC keynote where it will reveal its future plans, and any updates, to its iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS operating systems.

“We love bringing our developers together each year at WWDC to learn about our latest technologies and to connect them with Apple engineers,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations and Enterprise and Education Marketing.

“We are working to make WWDC21 our biggest and best yet, and are excited to offer Apple developers new tools to support them as they create apps that change the way we live, work, and play.”

Attendees can look forward to participating in the keynote and State of the Union stages, online sessions, 1:1 labs offering technical guidance, and new ways for developers to interact with Apple engineers.

There will also be a Swift Student Challenge, where Apple invites students to create an interactive scene in a Swift playground, an app for iPad and Mac that makes learning the Swift programming language “interactive and fun”.

The company also stated that it is donating $1 million to SJ Aspires, an education and equity initiative launched by the City of San José, to help contribute to the local economy even though WWDC21 will be hosted online.

At last year's WWDC, the tech giant unveiled iPadOS and iOS 14, watchOS 7 and a new alliance was announced with Amazon and Google which saw Apple open-source its HomeKit platform.

The company also introduced macOS Big Sur, which was touted as the biggest redesign to its Mac operating system since it introduced macOS 10.

One of the more unique announcements from last year was that it planned to switch to its own processors for future Macs, designed by Apple, which promised new levels of performance and reduced power consumption in comparison to the Intel processors that were used in Apple devices such as MacBooks and iMacs.

Apple’s decision to start designing the processors itself was the first time in its 36-year history it had made this move. The chips also introduced new features to Macs including instant-on functionality and the potential for 4G built-in.