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Apple has recently launched its new version of its operating system; iOS 14. As with many Apple software iterations, there’s lots of things it can do that the company doesn’t advertise but that will enhance the overall experience of using the iPhone. If you want to take your iPhone experience to the next level, here’s what you need to know to get the most from your smartphone.
One of the major issues with previous versions of iOS was app management, but app management in iOS 14 is better than ever. iOS 14 comes with the App Library, where you can keep better tabs on what you have, as well as organize all the apps on your iPhone.
Having an App Library allows you to remove apps you rarely use from the Home Screen while still being able to access them. On top of that, you get the option to download apps directly to the App Library instead of Home Screen.
Probably one of the most popular new features of iOS 14 is widgets. Widgets basically allows you to access important information from apps right on your home screen and you can now customize the sizes of these widgets somewhat. As one example, you can set up the widget for Apple Health to view your activity rings generated by your Apple Watch. Or you can see weather at a glance.
iOS 14 comes with widgets for various apps such as maps, photos, battery levels, weather, and many more. Currently, there are not many apps with widgets support, but in the coming months, you’ll see this trickle in.
Cybersecurity is one of the major challenges of the modern era, and that’s why Apple has incorporated security recommendations in iOS 14, which will help you pick the right password.
When you select a password, iOS 14 will analyze it and let you know if it’s among a database of passwords leaked online. Similarly, if you pick a weak password, the system will let you know so that you could improve that password.
Sometimes when you’re listening to music, you want the world to stay outside your head. At other times you do need to be attuned to certain sounds, so that’s why iOS 14 now has sound recognition.
When you enable sound recognition, the system continuously monitors the sounds around you, and it will alert you when it detects sounds like a fire alarm, a dog barking, shouting, car horns, doorbells, and other related sounds.
Nowadays, iPhones come with bigger displays, making it difficult for many people to navigate them one-handed. That’s why Apple has launched the “Back Tap” feature in iOS 14, which allows you to open any shortcut with a tap on the iPhone’s back so you don’t have to rely on reaching across the screen for frequent actions.
With Back Tap, (find it in Settings>Accessibility>Touch>Back Tap) you get to pick what can happen when you double tap or triple tap on the back of the phone: you can open the camera and take a photo, mute the phone or take a screenshot.
You can now customize the look of an app’s icon in iOS 14 by replacing the default app icons on your phone with different ones with the Shortcuts app.
You can select any photo of your choice and set it as the app’s icon, or you can change the app icon’s colour or the glyph it uses. Instructions for this rather complex process are here.
iPhones come with bigger displays that allow users to multitask, but there wasn’t a dedicated feature available in previous versions to make it happen. Now, iOS 14 comes with Picture-in-Picture mode, which allows you to do other work while watching your favorite movie or FaceTiming with your loved ones on a small window on the screen. You also get the option to resize the window.
It’s a fact that many of us don’t like the default browser and email client on the iPhone, and it wasn’t possible to set any other browser and email client as default. However, iOS 14 now allows you to set the browser and email client of your choice as your default.
There’s so much you can do with iOS 14 and it’s a much more customizable operating system now. Have you got a favourite aspect of iOS 14 or a trick that you discovered and want to share? Post it in the comments.
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