Apple announced in its developers conference this year (WWDC 2020) the new release of the iPhone operating system – iOS 14, not iPhoneOS as expected, alongside important updates that included all operating systems for other smart devices offered by the company. As usual, the latest version of iOS offers many revolutionary features to ensure a worthy upgrade from the previous version – iOS 13. Among these new features are Widgets that can be added to the home screen, the App Library, Picture in Picture feature that we highlighted in a previous post, as well as voice recognition feature, and more.
However, from my experience with the new version through the early beta, I can honestly say that while these features may be fun and useful for some, I personally don’t see them as a compelling reason to update to iOS 14 and I don’t think I will use them much after the update. Nevertheless, there are a few very simple features that I am excited to use, which we will discuss in the following lines.
Before the iOS 14 update, apps requesting access to your photo library could either have full access or no access at all. Your decision could either grant them full access to the library or prevent them from seeing your photos altogether. Now, the new iOS 14 update adds a third option to deter malicious apps that want to know everything in your iPhone’s photo library.
When you launch the app and see the message “App Name would like to access your photos,” you will find the new option “Select Photos,” which allows you to choose the photos you want to grant this app access to, instead of full library access or blocking access to the library altogether. While this may seem tedious, it is always best for privacy protection – this way, you won’t be surprised by how an app managed to access all your photos, which could likely be exploited for marketing purposes.
2- Answer calls from a popup window
When phone calls come in, whether you intend to answer them or not, they take over your iPhone screen completely – regardless of what you are doing on the phone at the moment, whether browsing the web, playing a game, or chatting on social media, it doesn’t matter, as iOS system has no exception and will interrupt you immediately.
However, once you update to iOS 14, you will notice a significant difference. Now, incoming phone calls appear in a popup window at the top of the screen [as shown in the image], allowing you to answer or decline without exiting the app. You can also answer the call and activate the speakerphone through the popup window and talk while performing another task with ease.
3- Alert when apps use microphone or camera
For years, users have claimed that social apps like Facebook exploit microphone access permission on smartphones to eavesdrop on conversations covertly for targeted advertising, claiming that they saw an ad for a company or product after talking about it directly. Facebook, of course, has denied this claim multiple times. But if you have doubts, I am happy to inform you that after updating to iOS 14, your iPhone will start warning users as soon as any app activates the microphone or camera in the background, as Apple has added a visual indicator that appears on the status bar every time an app uses the microphone or camera; this means that the indicator is part of the “software” as iPhones do not have an LED light like those in laptops or Android phones.
In any case, this is an easy way to know if there is an app spying on you. We conducted a quick test by spending a short session in the Facebook app after updating to iOS 14 and noticed that the alert indicator only appeared when recording a video. Also, in the WhatsApp app, the indicator only appears when sending a voice message.
4- Alert when saved passwords are leaked or reused
Apple also introduced important enhancements to iCloud Keychain to provide users with information about their passwords and notify them of breaches and reuse. In other words, if any of the saved passwords on the iPhone are involved in a known data breach, which is something that happens a lot these days by the way, the “Security Recommendations” screen (accessible through Settings then Passwords) will direct you to the fact so you can take appropriate actions quickly.
The same applies to repeated or commonly used passwords among your other saved accounts on the phone, providing a direct link that takes you to the password change page on that site. In general, this feature is very useful, not only to alert you to the need to change your password immediately, but also to inform you of other accounts that may be affected if you use the same password in multiple places.
5- Back Button History Feature
Among the small changes, perhaps unnoticed by many but important, is the addition of the “Back Button History List” feature to the Settings app on the iPhone. For me, “Settings” is one of the apps I visit almost daily, either to discover new features in an attempt to maximize the benefits of iOS features or to modify some default options to enhance the iPhone usability experience.
Sometimes, when changing something in the settings, I notice that I have deepened into the pages while navigating from one page to another and then to another…and so on, and when done, I have to press the back button multiple times to return to a previous screen. But in the new iOS 14 version, when you long press the back button, a history appears containing all the pages you navigated through, making it easy to go back to the previous page or return to the main interface of the Settings app with just one click. It’s worth mentioning that the idea of this feature is not new, as many browsers show a list of previous web pages when you long press the back button as well, but it’s still a welcome addition in iOS 14.
Now it’s your turn! Tell us in the comments which iOS 14 feature you liked the most.
