Get the most out of iOS 14 with this handy selection of tips and tricks.
It’s been over half a year since iOS 14 launched. September 2020 saw the launch of both the iPhone 12 range and Apple’s new operating system chock-full of new tricks. Since then, Apple has been busy fixing iOS 14 glitches and adding even more new features. You may need a refresher course on how to use some of the original iOS 14 features like widgets, picture-in-picture or the App Library. Or maybe you’re more curious about the new iOS 14.5 features like the new Siri voices or the option to block apps from tracking you. Whatever your reasons, we’re here with iOS 14 tips and tricks to help you get the most from your iPhone. iPhone widgets technically existed in the past, but iOS 14 moved them from the ‘Today’ view on your leftmost home screen to your phone’s main home screens, where they can live alongside your apps. To add an iPhone widget, tap and hold any unoccupied space on your home screen. Your apps will start to wiggle and a ‘+’ icon will appear in the top-left corner. You’ll see a list of all available widgets for the apps you currently have downloaded. Choose an app, and you’ll see different widget sizes; the larger the widget, the more information you can see without opening the app, but the more room it’ll take up on the home screen. Our first tip is to try adding the Smart Stack widget. It lets you swipe up and down between widget screens for different apps like Weather, Calendar, News, Gmail and Music. You can quickly get reminders or process information, and it takes up a fraction of the space these widgets would separately. If you’re someone who painstakingly organizes their apps, swipe right to an empty home screen before adding a widget. Otherwise, Apple will auto-insert it and overflow your app icons onto another page to make room, causing a cascade effect. You know what specific widgets apply to your daily life, but here are a few specific recommendations. The wider Batteries widget is excellent for people with synced accessories like the Apple Watch 6 or AirPods, because it shows their battery levels too. If you use Apple Shortcuts, you can trigger your favorites here without having to use Siri or the app. And we love how Photos and Google Photos show automatic slideshows of old photos. Trying to figure out how to find the iPhone App Library? Simply swipe right-to-left through your Home screens. Eventually, you’ll find a series of auto-generated folders with categories like ‘Recently Added’ and ‘Utilities’ to choose from. You can tap a larger icon to directly enter that app, or tap a smaller collection of icons to make every app in that category visible. Tap on the ‘App Library’ search bar to see an A-to-Z list of every installed app. From here, or from the main view, tap and drag any app icon and you’ll be taken to your rightmost home screen, where you can drop the app so it’s easier to find outside of the Library. Now that you have the App Library, you don’t need to have every app visible on your home screen. It’s likely that you have whole screens full of apps you rarely need to see or use, taking up space you can use for widgets. If you want to condense your app collection and clean up your home screens without removing them one by one, we suggest hiding these cluttered screens to save time. Long press your home screen to enter ‘jiggle mode’, then tap the dots directly above the dock that show how many screens there are. Toggle off the superfluous screens by tapping their checkmarks, then hit ‘Done’ to go back to Home. Apple’s Translate app is a handy new addition that offers on-device (aka offline) translation for eleven different languages. It’s useful for travelers who put their iPhones in Airplane Mode or disable cellular data to avoid roaming charges. Before you travel, you can download the language you’ll need over Wi-Fi: Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin (Simplified), Portugese, Russian or Spanish. Then, once you need to communicate with someone, open the app, tap the Microphone button, and have them speak. The app will detect which language they’re speaking and transcribe the translation for you. You can then do the same to respond to the other person. You can also manually type words into the app to see the written translation. Outside of this app, Apple has also added translation features to Safari, though they’re still in beta and limited to the same languages.
