Apple has released the first beta of iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 to developers. The release comes after the end of the opening keynote of WWDC 2020 where Apple announced the new OSes.
As the name suggests, the first developer beta of iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 are only available for developers who have registered with Apple. Some of the iOS 14 features are pretty important as they will radically help improve the iPhone usage experience. Below is a look at a few of them.
New Home Screen
The addition of widgets on the Home screen is a big one that will make a lot of people excited about the next version of iOS. The Today view has also been completely redesigned with new widgets. The widgets can also be placed on the home screen for improved information density.
Picture-in-Picture
Taking a cue from iPadOS, Apple is finally bringing Picture-in-Picture to iPhone. This means you can play videos in PiP while browsing the web, reading emails, and more. One can also adjust the PiP window size. One can also dock the PiP window to the side which will hide the video but the audio will keep playing.
Messages
The Messages app is getting an improvement as a part of iOS 14 as well. Apple will now let you pin a conversation in the Messages app so it sits right at the top. The Memoji feature is also getting improved and you can customize it as per your profession, age, face masks, and more.
To make group conversations easier, Apple is adding @mentions support in the app. One can also customize the group image.
New Siri UI
Siri is also getting a new design with iPadOS 14. It will not appear as a small animation, and Siri results will appear on top of the screen in a smaller area, just like a notification appears.
More Apple Pencil Features
Since Apple is focusing more and more on the Apple Pencil for the iPad, the company is adding more features for the stylus. Apple Pencil can now be used to enter text using handwriting recognition inside any text field on iPadOS 14. The new feature is called Apple Scribble, and it currently supports Chinese and English. It can be used to convert your handwriting to text and use it wherever you want.
As of now, only registered developers can install the iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 beta on their compatible iPhones and iPads. The good thing is that iOS 14 is compatible with all the iPhones that supported iOS 13. The same is also true for iPadOS 14 as it supports all iPads starting from the iPad mini 4. The public beta for iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 will go live next month.
You can find the steps to install iOS 14 on your iPhone with a developer account here. You can also install iOS 14 on your iPhone using the beta profile method if you don’t have a developer account.
