- [Jeff] In this video,
I take a look at what I believe are the top iOS 14 features.
But before that a brief word from our sponsor.
9to5Mac on YouTube is sponsored by Zugu Case,
maker of Amazon's highest rated iPad case.
The new Alpha Case for 11 inch second generation iPad Pro
features remarkable durability while still being thin.
Because it comes with a robust bumper,
it can protect your iPad from five foot drops,
even on the concrete.
And don't forget the innovative adjustable magnetic stand
with eight, yes, eight built in viewing angles.
It features a solid microfiber interior
to protect your iPad,
wireless Apple Pencil charging capability,
and a built in Apple Pencil pocket.
The Alpha comes with a free one year warranty,
sleep-wake functionality.
It's perfect for travelers, business people,
students and anyone looking for a durable, dynamic,
and sleek iPad case with luxury car vibes.
Click the link in the description
to get your Zugu Alpha Case today.
Okay, so the compact call interface
is the first of my favorite features in iOS 14.
It is such a nice thing to have after years
and years of being subjected to this right here.
See that, how it just interrupts your flow.
It just like you have no choice.
If you're doing something and a call comes in,
whether it be FaceTime, VoIP, or just a regular phone call,
it's going to completely take over your screen
and interrupt your flow.
So iOS 14 finally addresses this issue
and it is definitely one of the top features
in this new release.
So all you need to do, actually, it's enabled by default.
I actually disabled it so I could show you guys,
but if you go into the settings for FaceTime or for Phone,
you'll see where it has incoming calls,
and you can set that to either full screen or banner,
which is the new default.
So you don't even have to go in here
because it's set up like this to begin with in iOS 14.
So you're browsin' along, you're doin' your thing
and an incoming call comes in and look,
it doesn't take focus away from what you're currently doing.
You can just ignore the phone call if you want to.
That, wouldn't be nice, but you can, if you'd like to.
And the nice thing is
you could still obviously answer that call.
You can tap on it to open up the full interface
if you wanna do that.
It's just such a nice feature to have.
What do you think?
Where do you rank the compact call interface in iOS 14?
Let me know down below.
Okay, so let's talk about my next favorite feature
and that is of course picture in picture.
No big surprise there if you've been following me
since iOS 14's release.
This is the feature that brings iPad,
what's up, Marquez.
This is the feature that brings iPadOS
picture in picture like functionality to the small screen.
And it is glorious. It's just such a nice feature to have.
I know other devices have done this before,
but we finally get it on the iPhone finally.
So there you go.
All you do is swipe up when in a full screen video
that is of course assuming the application
supports picture in picture.
So as you can see, you can tap to resize to small,
medium, and large.
You can swipe to the side to kind of hide it on the edge
and it'll still play the audio.
So you could still hear the audio.
So if you're doin' something
you don't want any sort of PIP interface on screen,
just slide it over and as you can see,
you can quickly flick it over
to one of the four corners of your iPhone.
And the great thing is you can use applications,
you can browse the web,
you can do other things while picture in picture
is working here
and that's what makes this so nice, multitasking.
So you can also do this with FaceTime videos as well.
So you can carry on a conversation
and be reading something or doing anything else,
talking to your friends via iMessage,
subscribing to 9to5Mac on YouTube.
All those things that you love to do,
you can do them at the same time while watching your video.
Okay, so there is one setting
related to you picture in picture,
we'll find that over in the Settings app.
So if you go to General,
you'll see picture in picture.
Just open that up and you'll see a toggle,
one single switch there
for start picture in picture automatically.
So that occurs when you swipe up,
like I showed you earlier,
otherwise you can enable picture in picture manually.
Now, of course it should be no surprise
that widgets make the cut
for one of the best iOS 14 features
because now when iOS 14, as you've no doubt seen,
you can place widgets on the home screen,
right beside your applications and, as you can see,
as you move a widget, the apps sort of dance out of the way.
I don't know what type of dance this is,
but it's a dance according to Craig Federighi.
Now I joke about this,
but this is a huge deal for the iPhone.
I mean the iPhone home screen has been the same more or less
since its inception back in 2007,
but now more than just app icons
reside on the home screen in iOS 14.
Big deal.
Now you can also swipe over to access your widget center,
which is a page dedicated exclusively for widgets
and that's cool and all, that's actually really handy,
but what we're really interested in here
are widgets on the home screen.
So if you go into edit mode by just tapping
and holding on the home screen
and then tap the plus button in the upper left hand corner,
that will show you all the available
iOS 14 compatible widgets.
So you have some nice previews at the top,
but then you have your list of every widget.
So SmartStack, Batteries, Calendar,
Clock, Files, et cetera, et cetera.
Quite a few different widget options in here
and they vary as far as size
and type inside those various sections.
So at the top you have some suggested widgets
and you can drag and drop those directly
or tap on them to expand
and view all the associated widgets for that type.
So here you have a small, you have a medium,
and you have a large widget for Recently Played Music.
So if I want to get these to the home screen,
I have a couple of options.
I can either tap and drag like this
and, as you can see, the app icons dance out of the way,
or I can just tap Add Widget
and add it directly to the home screen.
So here is the News app.
You can see you have two different types,
you have small, medium, large topic
and small, medium and large today.
So you can choose the News widget
that interests you the most.
So I'll just drag that one and drop it just like that.
So I have three widgets on that one screen,
and of course I can simply drag the widget
over to the other page
so I can have widgets on multiple pages if I wanna do that.
It's super simple, super easy.
Now I will say that widgets aren't that advanced.
I mean, all you basically can do
is tap on them to launch whatever action.
You can't like interact with buttons
and things like that within these widgets.
They are pretty simple in execution.
They are mainly informational
and of course you can tap
that to expand into the application
to get more information if you wish to do so.
Now the app library is definitely a top feature.
In fact, it's basically five features in one.
So if you swipe all the way over to the right,
you'll see the main quote unquote app library,
and this contains all of the applications on your iPhone
sorted categorically by iOS.
So in other words, you can't go in here
and rearrange the app library based on your preferences.
No, it's automatically arranged by iOS.
So you can see the various categories, Entertainment,
Health, and Fitness, and as you can see launch apps directly
from the app library.
Now, if you tap on one of the little smaller icon groups
that will open up that entire folder
and you can launch apps from there,
but if you wanna launch one of the big apps,
you just simply tap on the app icon,
and that will launch that directly.
So as you can see,
all the various different types of categories there
and it's all auto-arranged.
Now the second part of the app library is probably
to me the most important part
and that is the ability to remove applications
from your home screen without actually deleting the app.
So if you long press on an app icon
to bring up the context menu,
you can remove the app,
but notice you have a couple of options here.
You have the option to do like you've pretty much
always been able to do on iOS
and that is delete
and that will actually uninstall the application,
but there's a new option, Remove from Home Screen.
So when you do that, the app goes away from the home screen,
but guess what?
It actually still exists on your iPhone.
If you swipe over to the app library,
let's see what category will Slack be in.
Probably like Productivity or perhaps, yeah, Productivity.
Let's try that. There we go.
So you can see Slack is still installed on my iPhone
even though it isn't displayed on the home screen.
So that's really cool.
Now the third part of the app library
is the ability to hide or show home screen pages.
So again, going back to the whole thing about customizing
the look of your home screen.
So you go into edit mode
and then you see those page dots down below,
you simply tap on those page dots like this
and that brings up the ability to edit pages.
And what this allows you to do is to show
or hide a home screen page.
So if I just tap that, it will hide that third page,
tap done, exit jiggle mode
and notice I only have two home screen pages
represented by the two page dots.
And we'll talk about that message here in just a second.
So you could see, I only have two home screen pages now
and the apps that were on that third page
can still be found, but only in the app library.
Right?
So now I'll go back in, reenable that third page
and then I'll tap done, exit jiggle mode,
and show you that third page is back just like that.
So such a cool new feature in iOS 14.
Now here's something to keep in mind.
If you go to Settings,
you'll find a new home screen section,
and this allows you to decide what happens
when you download apps from the App Store.
So right now, if you download an app,
it will add that app to the home screen,
or you can choose to have that app
added to the app library only
and skip the home screen altogether.
So depending on your preference, you can set that up.
That's really cool.
All right, so the fourth pillar, if you will,
of the app library is the ability to just simply go in
and search for your favorite applications, just like that.
And the fifth item is the ability to view a list
of all the installed applications
in alphabetical order no less on your iPhone.
And you can even use a long press on these applications
to invoke quick action shortcuts.
You can even tap and drag to the home screen
if you wish to do that.
Let me show you how that works.
But the point is in iOS 14,
the app library really changes the game
and it is definitely worthy
of being included on this list
as one of the best features to come to iOS 14.
What do you guys think about the app library?
Let me know down below in the comments.
And here is one that is unsurprisingly
very high on my list 4K YouTube support
finally comes to the iPhone.
So if you venture into the experimental Safari settings,
you'll find a toggle to enable VP9 decoding.
And that's important because 4K YouTube videos
are encoded with the VP9 codec.
So you'll find that even now,
when you open up the YouTube app,
you can select 2160P for the resolution.
Now, I know the iPhone display is not a 4K display.
However, it is a higher resolution than 1080P.
So that bump in resolution is going to make a difference
on your iPhone, on your iPad, et cetera, but not just that,
it's also the bit rate,
so you get a higher bit rate with 4K videos
and that's gonna make the videos look better as well.
So needless to say,
4K video on YouTube is a welcome addition.
Another huge feature for iOS 14
is the ability to change the default email
and browser applications.
So you could use for instance,
Gmail in Chrome instead of the Mail app in Safari.
Now, unfortunately this isn't working just yet,
but 9to5Mac's Filipe Esposito
was able to take a closer look at this feature
and basically there will be a new default application option
in the settings for choosing your favorite app to use.
Now on the surface,
emojis search may not seem like a big deal,
but have you ever tried to search for an emoji character
and you just couldn't find what you were looking for?
Like I'm searching for pizza.
I can't remember exactly where pizza was,
but you can now search just like this.
Let me show you.
I'm going to just type in or use quick type to put in pizza.
Bam, just like that.
And I know this isn't a shiny new feature like widgets
or the app library even,
but this is a huge time saver
for those of you who use emoji a lot.
What do you guys think?
Let me know down below in the comments.
And plus one for privacy.
There is a new approximate location option in iOS 14
and it is awesome.
Again, not a shiny feature, not one that really stands out,
but super useful.
So under privacy location in the Settings app
for your individual apps,
you'll see a precise locations switch.
Now, if you enable this,
it will work like iOS has always worked with your location.
It will give that application
your precise location based on GPS.
And that's obviously something you want to enable
if you're using something like a navigation app
or Google maps, for instance,
but if you're giving you a location to a website
or even a weather app,
a lotta times a precise location isn't necessary.
You can just enable the approximate location,
but if the application works better
using a precise location,
you can easily enable that as well.
So it's just nice to have the option
not to be tracked directly where you are
and just give an approximate location.
For instance, I think this is perfect for websites
that just want to know like what city you're in.
You don't have to give them
your exact street address or whatever.
You can just tell them where you are
in an approximate sense.
And that is super nice for privacy in iOS 14.
Now, I hesitated to place the updated Siri interface
on the list, but I thought, yeah, I'll go ahead
and do it because I do think it is really cool.
Previously in iOS,
Siri would basically blackout the entire screen.
Here on iOS 14, it sort of blurs out the background,
but now you have the option to keep the background displayed
along with your Siri requests.
So it doesn't take the context away.
So for instance, you're looking at Instagram
and you wanna ask Siri a question, you could do so.
It doesn't whisk you away from Instagram.
It just super imposes Siri on top.
Now the downside is that you can't interface
with your phone without dismissing Siri.
So just keep that in mind.
And then last but not least tons of Music app updates.
So one of my favorite features is the fact
that now on the Now Playing view,
you get your album artwork
and you'll get a color match background,
which looks amazing.
So you no longer have to open up the live lyrics
or the time track lyrics to view that background.
It looks really good.
Now another cool feature is the fact
that the Music app will remember where you left off
even if you force close the Music app,
it'll remember the song you were playing
and also the location of the playhead.
You also notice subtle haptic feedback
when interacting with the transport controls
and there's a new auto play feature,
which will continue playing music
when it gets to the end of your queue.
So you see that's the end of my queue there,
but simply tap the infinity icon
and similar music will continue playing.
So it'll, auto-populate all that music
and it'll continue to play.
And of course you can go in and curate this as well.
So I can rearrange it or I can outright remove songs
that I don't want to appear or play.
So that's nice.
So ladies and gentlemen,
that is a look at my top iOS 14 features.
What do you guys think?
Let me know down below in the comment section.
Also thumbs up this video if you appreciated it.
That helps other people find it as well.
And also subscribe for more videos like this.
This is Jeff with 9to5Mac and extra special thanks
to Zugu case for sponsoring 9to5Mac.
Zugu makes the Alpha Case
specifically designed for the 2020 11 inch iPad Pro.
It has, get this, eight built in magnetic viewing angles.
I just love that.
Of course, the Alpha case features Apple Pencil storage
and supports Apple Pencil wireless charging.
Click the link in the description
to get your Zugu Alpha Case today.
Special thanks to Zugu for sponsoring 9to5Mac on YouTube.
(gentle music)