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What's New in iOS 14 Beta 5: Bigger Apple News Widget, Alarm Clock Wheel, Hidden Photo Album Changes and More

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Apple today released the fifth developer betas of iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 for testing purposes, updating and refining some of the new features that are included in the new software.

As the beta testing period goes on, changes get smaller and less notable, but we've highlighted the few new features that can be found in iOS 14 beta 5.

- Apple News Widget - The Apple News widget has a new option for a taller widget window that provides more space to display additional news stories. The size of the widget prevents it from being used on the Home Screen.

largernewswidget.jpg

- Widget Privacy - For apps that use location, there's now a popup that asks if you want to allow widgets for those apps to also use your location data. Widgets can use location data for up to 15 minutes when activated, and the Location Services Privacy settings for apps now mention widgets.

widgetprivacymaps.jpg

- Alarm Clock Wheel - When setting an alarm in the Clock app, you can now use a finger to swipe through the clock wheel to set the time rather than having to type it in. It's much smaller than the wheel in iOS 13.6, and there's still an option to type a time.

alarmclockscroller.jpg

- Exposure Notifications - The interface for Exposure Notifications has changed in iOS 14 beta 5. Tapping on "Turn on Exposure Notifications" brings up an option to choose a country, region, or state, and it will let you know if an Exposure Notification app is available for your area. This interface is different from the iOS 13.6 interface and the interface available in iOS 14 beta 4.

exposurenotificationavailability.jpg

- Hidden Photo Albums - There's a new Hidden Album setting in photos that when turned on, causes the Hidden album in Photos to be hidden from the Albums list. The Hidden album remains available in the image picker.

photoshiddenalbum.jpg

- HomeKit Control Center - HomeKit favorites in Control Center now feature smaller tiles and smarter organization that provides access to more shortcuts at a tap.

homekitwidgetorganization.jpg

- Widget Fixes - The Weather widget is fixed and updates at more appropriate intervals, and widgets are now blocked for Screen Time when a parent app is blocked.

- Battery Charge - In the Settings app under Battery, the Last Charge Level section has been tweaked a bit. Rather than displaying the last charge level over to the right of the interface, it's now displayed with the Last Charged wording to make it easier to see at a glance.

batterylastcharged.jpg

- Spatial Audio Video - In the iOS 14 beta 5 code, there's a visualization of how the spatial audio feature for the AirPods Pro works. It's not clear where this video will be shown (perhaps in setup) and though the video is available, spatial audio has not yet been enabled.


Know of any other changes in iOS 14 beta 5 that we didn't list here? Let us know in the comments and we'll add them.

Article Link: What's New in iOS 14 Beta 5: Bigger Apple News Widget, Alarm Clock Wheel, Hidden Photo Album Changes and More
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/18/whats-new-in-ios-14-beta-5/
Last edited:
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Maybe this big News.app widget was designed for bigger iPhone coming in the fall...?
 
Two small but useful features that I have been waiting for from Apple for years:

1- Pinned Number row on top of the keyboard. (Faster since no need to change back and forth between numbers and letters).

2- Private Photo Album secured by Face-ID/Password to hide most sensitive photos. (Currently millions rely on 3rd party apps for a small feature that could be easily built in the default Photos apps by Apple).

Please Like if you agree.
 
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Anyone else having lots of phone call issues after last beta version? Specifically, many inbound calls i accept but can’t hear anything, and have to call them back. And for outbound, I’m having to often call twice... first try never connects. This all occurs while using AirPods. Hopefully this beta addresses it.
 
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I think the padding when folders are open are bigger and PiP bug when you hide them on the left side then put the phone in landscape still there.
 
Man what a huge downgrade for widgets in general, but the News widget has to be the epitome of downgrade. I'm just hoping against hope that we can keep the old widgets page/format for 3rd party widgets.

Edit: Just wanted to double down for those disagreeing, the new widgets SUCK. I'll even tell you why:

1) Primarily because they are dumbed down so much, I get that the entire point of iOS is dumbing things down (oh excuse me, I mean simplifying), but I still prefer the older widgets with more information and functionality to them.
2) The new widgets lost the ability to be rolled up, this was priceless as it saved so much space when widgets were rolled up and still showed some information.
3) The news widget in particular keeps redirecting me either to the top stories (or whatever category I have) or to the front page, the old widget would direct me back to the story I was previously reading. Although part of this may be the utterly crappy way iOS handles refreshing background apps, if I'm away from the News app for a little while it just completely resets and I lose the story I was on.
4) They made the side gutters wider, again losing valuable space on the widget
5) I have more gripes, but they are specific to each widget. For example battery widget doesn't show percentage anymore in compact mode, and compact mode forces 4 icons even if you have less batteries to display.

My desire all these years was for iOS to match what Android widgets used to be like a few years ago, but instead we just get these little dumbed down, overly large snippets of information that you can't really interact with, many of them just stupid in design such as the battery widget with empty slots. At this point I'd be happy if devs didn't jump on board and kept their old widgets alive. OK /rant, continue to disagree, the more the better.
 
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IMPOSSIBLEMAN said:
Two small but useful features that I have been waiting for from Apple for years:

1- Pinned Number row on top of the keyboard. (Faster since no need to change back and forth between numbers and letters).

2- Private Photo Album secured by Face-ID/Password to hide most sensitive photos. (Currently millions rely on 3rd party apps for a small feature that could be easily built in the default Photos apps by Apple).

Please Like if you agree.
Click to expand...

Seems extremely idiotic to not have incorporated a numbers row on the keyboard yet, one of the few things I miss from Android. Can't count how many times I've almost dropped my phone when using one handed and having to reach for the number key.

I'm also on board for a private photo album, but I'd say the concept should apply much more broadly, we need separate user accounts.
 
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I just hope it fixes the camera issues I'm having on my 11 Pro. Every few photos it will continually crash, even after force quitting the camera, and requires a reboot to get working again. I'm also having problems with switching from Safari briefly to another app and back and Safari has to reload the tab. Reminds me of the good ol' days when the iPhone had less than a gig of memory. For me Beta 4 has been the worst so far after starting out pretty solid in Beta 1.

I don't get why Apple is so set on the new time entry field, which is now some weird non-standard picker field which doesn't even follow their own HIG with the small tap targets. This thing needs to be at least twice as big.
 
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IMPOSSIBLEMAN said:
Two small but useful features that I have been waiting for from Apple for years:

1- Pinned Number row on top of the keyboard. (Faster since no need to change back and forth between numbers and letters).

2- Private Photo Album secured by Face-ID/Password to hide most sensitive photos. (Currently millions rely on 3rd party apps for a small feature that could be easily built in the default Photos apps by Apple).

Please Like if you agree.
Click to expand...

Man you don’t actually need an extra row of numbers, you can just press numbers icon on the bottom left of the keyboard and without lifting your finger up, move it to the number you want. Very handful feature
 
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IMPOSSIBLEMAN said:
Two small but useful features that I have been waiting for from Apple for years:

1- Pinned Number row on top of the keyboard. (Faster since no need to change back and forth between numbers and letters).

2- Private Photo Album secured by Face-ID/Password to hide most sensitive photos. (Currently millions rely on 3rd party apps for a small feature that could be easily built in the default Photos apps by Apple).

Please Like if you agree.
Click to expand...
Wait. How do you pin the number row?
 
gavroche said:
Anyone else having lots of phone call issues after last beta version? Specifically, many inbound calls i accept but can’t hear anything, and have to call them back. And for outbound, I’m having to often call twice... first try never connects. This all occurs while using AirPods. Hopefully this beta addresses it.
Click to expand...

Nope, that's just AT&T
 
Looking forward to taking this for test drive, once the install completes. Anyone with a new SE successfully install without the ususual ”attempting recovery” message? It has plagued me almost every beta install.
 
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