iOS

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

When iOS 15 was first introduced in June, Apple outlined a new Digital Legacy feature that’s designed to let you set a person as your Legacy Contact, giving the person access to your Apple ID account and personal information in the event of your death.

And:

The Legacy Contact option can be accessed by opening up the Settings app, tap on your profile picture and then select “Password & Security.” From there, choose “Legacy Contact” from the list and you can select a trusted person to access your account after you pass away.

Been waiting for this. My Mom died last year and, try as we might, we were never able to get Apple to give us access to her phone to get her pictures and notes.

I do appreciate the privacy protection, but if we had the legacy contact feature when she was still alive, we’d definitely have used it. Really happy to have this.

Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:

Once ‌FaceTime‌ screen sharing has started, you can navigate to any app that you want to share with the callers. A sharing icon will remain in the top-left corner of the screen to indicate that ‌FaceTime‌ screen sharing is active, and you can tap it to reveal the ‌FaceTime‌ control panel.

Another delightful nugget coming with iOS 15, especially useful for folks who are tech support for their families.

Zac Hall, 9to5Mac:

Apple has always allowed you to disable Night Mode for low-light shots, but the process isn’t fast. If the iPhone detects that Night Mode should be used, the camera automatically enables it.

Only then can you turn off Night Mode for that shot or shooting session. Fire up the camera after a break, and Night Mode will once again default to on when low light is detected.

And:

Turning this setting on tells your camera to keep Night Mode off if you’ve disabled it for a shot. You can still use Night Mode when you need it by manually engaging it in the Camera app, but you make the decision now instead of the iPhone.

Follow the headline link for the details on the new Night Mode default setting. Good to know that setting exists. More to the point, once you upgrade to iOS 15, worth spending time in the “Preserve Settings” section of the Camera settings to remind yourself what’s there.

Jeff Benjamin, 9to5Mac, put together this video showing all the tiny iOS 15 tweaks that came along with the new beta. If you are specifically interested in the changes that came to Safari, jump to about 6 minutes in.

This new Safari design is going to take some getting used to.

Apple:

iOS 14.5 brings exciting new features to iPhone, including the ability to unlock iPhone with Apple Watch while wearing a face mask, more diverse Siri voices, new privacy controls, skin tone options to better represent couples in emoji, and much more. iOS 14.5 builds on the reimagined iPhone experience introduced in iOS 14, and is available today as a free software update.

Here are the major bullet points in Apple’s article:

• Unlock iPhone with Apple Watch
• Siri Enhancements
• More Privacy Controls
• New Emoji
• Report an Incident in Apple Maps

This is followed by a raft of additional features. Take a look, worth knowing what’s new.

Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:

In iOS 14.5 and later, Apple has added a Waze-like feature to its native Maps app that lets you report accidents, hazards, and speed checks along your route when getting directions. Keep reading to learn how it works.

Given that, for me, the vast majority of the time this comes up I am behind the wheel, the simplest (and safest) way to do this is:

“Hey ‌Siri‌, there’s an [accident/hazard/speed check]” and ‌‌Siri‌‌ will send in a report to ‌Apple Maps.

Note that, at least for the moment, this feature is US and China only.

Gadget Hacks:

Every once in a while, an iOS secret surfaces that makes me wonder, “How am I just learning about this?” I remember the first time I found out how to delete numbers in the Calculator app, and when I discovered you could bulk-move apps around the home screen. Now, there’s another tip to add to the list: a hidden iOS app whose icon you quite literally can’t find unless you know where to look.

In a nutshell, to find the app, go to your iOS Home Screen and pull down to bring up Search. Type in the word “code” and the Code Scanner app will appear. Tap it and you are in the QR-code and App Clip scanner.

Apple called the Code Scanner app by a different name in previous iOS versions. On iOS 13, it was “QR Code Reader,” and on iOS 12, it was “Scan QR Code.” Apple likely moved away from having “QR” in the name since it can also scan App Clip Codes, which can launch miniature versions of apps called “App Clips.”

It’s also in Control Center. One of those hidden things that you might not know.

Makes me wonder what new codes Apple might have up its sleeve, with the rumored AirTags and Apple Glasses. Maybe we’ll learn more at WWDC?

Steven Shen on Twitter:

On iOS, if you turn on “Limit Adult Website” under Screen Time->Content Restrictions, Safari blocks any website URL containing the word “asian”. Seriously, go try it, it’s unbelievable.

This can’t be true, can it? Give it a try yourself:

• Go to Settings > Screen Time
• Tap Content & Privacy Restrictions
• Enable Content & Privacy Restrictions switch
• Tap Content Restrictions
• Scroll down, tap Web Content
• Tap Limit Adult Websites

Now fire up Safari and search for, say, Asian Food. Here’s the screen shot I got. In a nutshell, it says, “You cannot browse this page because it is restricted.”

Start with this tweet from Paul Haddad, maker of Tweetbot:

https://twitter.com/tapbot_paul/status/1354145779494100992

Saw this, went to the App Store, typed in Tweetbot, found nothing but a long list of competing products. No Tweetbot, no Tweetbot 5, no Tweetbot 6.

Searched again right before I wrote this, found hints (the grayed text completion that suggests as you type) for Tweetbot 5, which took me to a competing Twitter client’s page. Tweetbot 6 took me to an “early access” page.

This is certainly confusing. Michael Tsai rolled up a number of clarifying comments on his blog, worth a look if you are a dev interested in this issue, especially if you are exploring the possibility of moving to a subscription model.

On the off chance you didn’t know this, you can delete an app from inside the App Store update page.

In a nutshell:

• Launch the App Store
• Tap your profile pic (upper right corner) to get to the update page
• Scroll down to the UPDATED RECENTLY section
• Swipe left on an app to reveal the Delete button

Not a big deal, but I do find this useful, an easy way to scroll through apps and delete the ones I no longer use. An alternative to hunt-and-peck in jiggle mode.

Use the Photos iOS 14 widget on your iPhone? If so, you want to read the linked post.

Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac, walks through the process of telling the widget not to display a specific photo, and clarifies where the widget sources those photos from. Good stuff.

Traf:

I saw some people sharing screenshots of their iPhones after discovering that iOS 14 now allows you to add custom icons to your home screen using the Siri Shortcuts app. This was the first time you can really customize iOS, and it was catching on.

And:

As soon as I noticed the hype, I put together some icons in my own style, downloaded some widgets, and tried it all out. I thought it looked cool, so I shared a screenshot of it on Twitter. Right away, people started asking about the icons in the screenshot. So I quickly packaged them, uploaded them to Gumroad, and embedded them on a Notion site using Super. All of this took about two hours.

The next day, the tweet had hundreds of retweets, thousands of likes, and over 100k impressions. The day after that, almost a million. The next thing I knew, it was everywhere. My icons got published on notable tech sites like Cult of Mac, iMore, AllThingsTech, and Gridfiti. I think at this time I was around the $6k mark in sales.

Then, MKBHD happened.

Read the post. Love stories like this. Note that Apple did not get a cut of this. All happened outside the ecosystem.

[Via 9to5Mac]

M.G.Siegler:

I now think I was wrong that widgets are the biggest iOS 14 deal. Only because I’m now certain that App Clips are.

This revelation comes after playing a single game. One that’s not even necessarily my cup of tea, mind you. But the experience of playing a demo of the game via an App Clip was so seamless it feels appropriate for once to invoke the term “magical”.

If you’ve not had the chance to try this yourself, here’s how.

But M.G. makes a bigger point here:

Given how well this works, I can see a world in which other developers beyond gaming take advantage of this technology to demo their apps. And, if I squint, I think I can even see a world of “micro-apps” that don’t need full apps to operate. Perhaps these are more ephemeral style apps. Apps where asking for a full download is a lot in this age of app saturation.

The importance of App Clips is underrated, assuming developers embrace it. And, as M.G. says, the implementation brings Apple’s “It just works” ethos to life.

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

With iOS 14, Apple has added a new automatic switching feature to the AirPods and AirPods Pro earbuds. This feature is meant as a convenience; when you start playing content on another Apple device, the AirPods connection automatically switches in unison. However, some people don’t like this behavior and would rather connect to each device manually, just like how it worked in iOS 13 and earlier. Good news! There is a way to get the old behaviour back.

First things first, I’ve found the behavior just a bit buggy. I’ve been listening to content on my Apple TV through my AirPods Pro, then fired up my iPad, which brought up the automatic switch message and showed the AirPods icon on my iPad, as if the switch had happened. But the Apple TV content still played on my AirPods. Odd, but early days still, I’m sure that will get resolved.

As to the linked post, worth reading, especially the last two paragraphs which help clarify some confusing setting wording, specifically the phrase “‘When Last Connected to This iPhone”.

Ryan Christoffel, MacStories:

One of the most exciting trends I’ve seen is the emergence of a new category of apps entirely centered around widgets. While most widgets will come built in to the apps you already know and love, some developers have built brand new apps for the sole purpose of enabling users to create and customize widgets in a hyper-personalized way.

And:

Leading the pack in this regard is Widgetsmith from David Smith, which not only covers one of the widest array of different widget types, but also features a power user-friendly scheduling option that sets it apart. The App Store hosts a growing number of other widget creation tools too, such as Widgeridoo, Widget Wizard, Glimpse, and Health Auto Export.

I’m planning on spending some quality time this week creating my own Widgets, seeing if I can craft a home screen experience that delivers the info I’m looking for.

If rolling your own is not your cup of tea, spend some time looking through Steve Streza’s curated list of widgets he’s encountered, both built in and custom.

If Widgets are new to you, follow the link in the previous paragraph, scroll down and read the section titled How to use Widgets. Great, short explainer.

Preshit Deorukhkar pulled together this detailed iOS 14 Widget explainer. It’s full of pictures, too, so you really get a sense of how all this works.

Great read.

[VIDEO] Follow the headline link to read a roll-up of important and, perhaps, less obvious features brought to you in iOS 14 so far.

Or watch the video embedded in the main Loop post to see them in action. Really well presented.

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Apple in iOS 14 added a new Translate app, which, as the name suggests, is designed to offer translations from one language to another. The Translate app has some useful features that are handy both when learning a new language and when attempting to talk to someone who speaks a different language.

And:

The Translate app can translate to and from Arabic, mainland Chinese, English (US and UK), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

Nice walkthrough. Interesting that this is available on iPhone, but not iPad. For more detail on what’s coming to iOS but not iPadOS, check this Macworld article by Michael Simon.

Great read from Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac. For me, the Camera app is one of the most important apps on my iPhone. Improvements to the camera are important distinguishing features between iPhone generations and between models of the same generation. A big camera improvement can trigger iPhone users to upgrade to a newer model.

This particular iOS 14 change jumped out at me:

With iOS 14, Apple says opening the Camera app and taking the first picture is up to 25% faster, while taking two or more pictures is 90% faster. For iPhones with Portrait Mode, photos are taken up to 15% faster.

These changes are automatically enabled to all devices running iOS 14, so you don’t need to change anything to benefit from these enhancements.

Huge gain in both of these paragraphs. How many pictures have you lost because you were just a hair too slow getting your iPhone out and getting that picture snapped?

And, maybe more importantly, the faster speed is enabled across all models, not just the higher end of the range.

Comprehensive, still growing list of all the changes from iOS 14 beta 1 to beta 2. Solid resource.

Only thing I’d change is to bold the more important features, make the list a bit easier to scan.

And there’s a what came with beta 1 list, too.