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

[AndiG]

The alarm clock wheel UI can be considered to be a "nice try" - but IMHO it still fails completely. Please bring back the original version - so nice and intuitive.

 

[DeepIn2U]

I don't see that happening, since what you're suggesting is considered to be an "old fashioned" way of thinking of photo organisation, and I myself have come around to the digital way of thinking of it.

The "All photos" view is not an album, it's a compilation of all your photos, it's not meant to be manually organised, but can be searched and filtered by time, location and even person.

While you can set up albums, they are simply manual compilations of your photos, kinda like a playlist of music. You don't generally put every song in your music library in playlists, and it's the same for photos.

Most photos now have location and time/date information, and mix that with being able to manually name faces means you can always find photos of events, places and people without having to manually create albums anymore. Once you identify people once, the photos app can find other photos of that person using AI. You can search for dogs or cats just by typing those words.

In iOS 14 you can also add captions to photos which you could search, so you could label an event (like "Jims wedding") and you could do a search which would show you all those photos.

I have to admit it took me time to adjust to this different way of thinking, but I like the fact that I don't need to spend a lot of time organising my photos when I don't really need to.

unfortunately not all users of cameras and screenshots ok iOS are the same.

personally I take screenshots more than I use the camera - been that way since I’ve used the SonyEricsson K750!!

“searched and filtered by time, location and even person.” - by person is a manual setting done by the user per person per face pic initially before sorting begins.

this doesn’t work for my son who’s face honestly, as much as his hair, keeps drastically changing I’ve the last 21 yrs. as a baby and toddler he looked so much like me until 6yrs old. At 7 to 10 I’d swear someone swapped him at a hospital visit during emergency (! No I’m not kidding). From 11-16 again he looked similar to me yet also to his 3 uncles on his mothers side. Since 17-21 he looks nothing like any member of my family except His finger nails (hilarious I know), which are VERY unique that only my sister has in our entire family of over 200yrs!!

iOS Photo Album and neural engine on iOS and iPhone 8/X cannot accurately identify my son after 14yrs old.

so I wish to manually create my own albums - people moments and places (mixed yet emotionally relevant) but I do not wish to have duplicates or alias in the main photo gallery. I’d like to purge many pics in there - scrolling is a HUGE pain, especially if I need to look at tiny thumbnails to attach a picture to: forums, emails, upload to 3rd party or 1st part cloud servers, etc

 

[whatgift]

unfortunately not all users of cameras and screenshots ok iOS are the same.

personally I take screenshots more than I use the camera - been that way since I’ve used the SonyEricsson K750!!

“searched and filtered by time, location and even person.” - by person is a manual setting done by the user per person per face pic initially before sorting begins.

this doesn’t work for my son who’s face honestly, as much as his hair, keeps drastically changing I’ve the last 21 yrs. as a baby and toddler he looked so much like me until 6yrs old. At 7 to 10 I’d swear someone swapped him at a hospital visit during emergency (! No I’m not kidding). From 11-16 again he looked similar to me yet also to his 3 uncles on his mothers side. Since 17-21 he looks nothing like any member of my family except His finger nails (hilarious I know), which are VERY unique that only my sister has in our entire family of over 200yrs!!

iOS Photo Album and neural engine on iOS and iPhone 8/X cannot accurately identify my son after 14yrs old.

so I wish to manually create my own albums - people moments and places (mixed yet emotionally relevant) but I do not wish to have duplicates or alias in the main photo gallery. I’d like to purge many pics in there - scrolling is a HUGE pain, especially if I need to look at tiny thumbnails to attach a picture to: forums, emails, upload to 3rd party or 1st part cloud servers, etc

All fair points, and iOS is not really well equipped to add metadata to photos, which would probably help a lot with your organisation.

I’ve actually gone and manually added data to my old scanned photos on a computer, which makes the process a lot easier and now I search for them without a lot of issues.

I think Google photos is better at identifying people really, and it uses the same organisational techniques as Apple Photos, which is why I don’t see that functionality changing. I backup all my photos on Google photos as well.

BTW I also owned a Sony Ericsson k750 😛

 

[RickDEGH]

I am using iOS 14 public beta 4 on my 11 Pro Max.

Mirroring to my TV using Apple TV is choppy and laggy in this beta 4 version.

The clock widget displaying 4 different locations is always showing the wrong time.

When will News+ fill the entire screen when I mirror to my TV? Only videos in magazine articles play full-screen.

In Photos app in editing mode there is still no way to reduce a picture's file size. It could be one of the circles. For example, move the slider and it shows MB reduction and a preview window showing the degradation as the file is reduced.

Also, in Photos, when I swipe-up on a picture it should show me all information about a picture (size, location, etc.) and I should be able to reduce file size and change the file name right there.

iOS 14 doesn't have an alarm option when 100% is reached. Siri could say "your phone is charged to 100%".

Take all of this and report to Apple one by one - I’m sure it would help all of us.

 

[unfunfionn]

We really need some way to customise sources in the News widget in countries that don't support the News app itself. In Germany, it's showing Bild (a right wind tabloid) constantly, and their pages don't even load if you have a content blocker active in Safari. Even for non-ideological reasons, it should be possible to exclude a source that's not viewable.

 

[miq]

Hmmm.

I really wish Apple would overhaul the Photos Album.

to me an Album of Pictures, in the classic sense is a separate collection of photos - not an alias of place holders of pics all in the root album. Growing up pictures of the family where in 1 album, pictures of my sister in another mine in another and early pics of each my parents in their own. All pictures of us together in one BIG album. Sure some pics where shared or duplicated in others but in of themselves separate.

the problem with Apples Albums is I place a pic there, butwhen I delete in the main gallery it’s deleted from the album grrrr

Yup, spot on.

It simply baffles me that Apple just lump every image into the one folder. photos, screenshots, pictures saved from the internet etc. There is just no logic to it.

 

[Fmello]

I wish Apple would let you set more than one timer. A smarter Siri would be nice too. Being able to say a multi-part request would be useful. For example:

"Hey Siri, create a new appointment called "Dentist appointment". Set it for this Friday at 11am and set two reminders...one for the day before and another for two hours before."

 

[SpaceGrayAlways]

New to iOS 14, but not this beta.

Hey @jclo, I see it was added to the original post, but there was a slight tweak as mentioned. Here it is side by side with the prior beta.

 

[NetMage]

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

You can use third party keyboards like SwiftKey that have this feature.

 

[colinwil]

The alarm clock wheel UI can be considered to be a "nice try" - but IMHO it still fails completely. Please bring back the original version - so nice and intuitive.

Yes - I agree. It's got a bunch of problems - which make it even worse than in previous betas - let alone the old scroll wheels...

1. It's not discoverable. There's nothing to indicate you can scroll the numbers unless you try.

2. The way you can select the "hours, the minutes, or both together" isn't intuitive. When you've got 'Both together' selected, how do you know what's going to scroll?? If they're going to do it this way it would be better to have the hours and minutes as two separate (maybe scrollable) input fields.

3. It's much too small. So if you've got remotely adult-sized fingers, you're likely going to scroll the hours rather than the minutes or vice versa. Or you slide the whole panel underneath by mistake instead of scrolling.

4. And why is the edit panel 'slidable' anyway? It's got Save & Cancel buttons - so there's no reason for it to slide to cancel.

5. Because the entire scrollability is within the tiny control you can't see that you're 'getting close' like you could with the old scroll wheels.

 

[spinedoc77]

Totally agree with you. The downvotes on this community are due to the Fanboy mindset that Apple can't do no wrong.
From a technical and functionality perspective the new Widgets are a huge downgrade from the previous framework.
I don't think people understand the limitations because their mind goes "Ohh look pretty, it's on ma home screen" and their brain stops there.

Look at the Up Next widget in iOS 13.
I shows me in a compact UI no larger than 2 cm's, my next alarm, my next reminder and my next calendar appointment.
On iOS 14, the Up next widget shows me nothing but my calendar appointment. I now need to use 3 different widgets which takes up 3 widgets screen realestate instead of 1.

The other thing people don't seem to understand is that you can no longer interactive with a widget.
So for example, I can't mark reminders as complete. Instead it loads up the app in order for me to mark an item.
A developer can't make a calculator widget like PCalc's using this new widget framework as they just display data.

The facts are in and it sucks. I hope they improve these over the next couple of years.
I mean, Apple seem rushed for time, they couldn't even bring the home screen layout to iPad.

Yes well said, I just don't understand really liking the over simplification, the widgets just look pretty but functionally are pretty vapid. Do you want to see a real widget, here is one of my favorites and it's on iOS:

It only looks busy because of the background, but in dark mode with a dark background it looks incredible, I'd post up mine but it has a lot of personal/professional stuff on it. I can see my monthly stuff all at a single glance, it's actually interactive and I can begin to setup an appointment right from the widget. You can flip through all the months inside the widget and best of all when you roll it up you get one week instead of the month in a much more compact space. With the Apple calendar widget in iOS14 you just get a bunch of dots denoting monthly dates and a small partial list of today's events, but the monthly dots are useless because you have no idea what is on each date. Granted this is more of a gripe with a 3rd party widget vs Apple widgets and not necessarily of anything they did in iOS14, but I would have hoped that iOS14 would have advanced things not retarded them.

 

[biffuz]

Is the News widget finally customizable without needing to be subscribed to Apple News? Especially since Apple News isn't available here. I bet there's people who likes to see sport scores, gossips, horoscope, populist fake news, the same story repeated four times, but to me that widget is completely useless.

 

[PooreBoy54]

i am having that same issue with my power beats 3. When I get a call and i am listening to them I have to change my audio to speaker and then back to the power beats and i can hear them. I am on Verizon so not just an ATT issue.

I was having this problem, until I discovered a setting I’d never used.
Under Settings>Phone there’s an option to ‘Silence unknown callers’.
Make sure this is set to Off. Otherwise any caller that isn’t listed in your Contacts will be silenced and the only notification you’ll get is a missed call notification.

 

[TonyC28]

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.

The option to use the wheel or type it??? I think a certain tall handsome MR member suggested that

 

[iGeneo]

New CarPlay view with bottom dock.
View attachment 945272

I’m going to have to say that’s only for the smaller screens, my BMW is just as it was before

 

[1rottenapple]

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.

Working from home and accepting calls, this bug was hugely annoying. I had to keep calling people back. Made AirPods useless.

 

[1rottenapple]

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 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.

I agree I still have io13 widgets that allows you to interact with the app on the widgets itself. Like my nest thermostat widget. Let’s you easily change the temps or the Tesla app. Let’s me unlock, turn on climate, and open the front trunk. And my calc widget app. All of these will disappear when the apps get update to iOS 14. Or my wiz lighting app. lets me turn off the lights on the widgets. This is a pretty annoying change.

 

[Phantom-fa]

Anyone know if they have fixed the problem in Calendar where you can't use 24 hour time when creating an appointment even though everything on system is set to 24 hour time. Once it is created it shows as 24 hour time but only has am/pm option for creation. This is specific to iOS, not a problem with iPadOS, or with Big Sur.

UPDATE: Have just checked in beta 5 and problem is still the same - only when inputting/editing times and only on iOS, not on iPadOS or Big Sur. Shows 24 hour format everywhere else in Calendar except for this.

 

[jozeppy26]

Bummer they can’t enable spatial audio for the Powerbeats Pro. I almost only use them while working out (which is why I didn’t buy the AirPods or AirPods Pro) and I also prefer the sound profile of beats when played at lower volumes but it’s a bit disappointing that Apple doesn’t provide any premium feature updates to their other sister pair of $250 smart earbuds.

 

[miq]

Bummer they can’t enable spatial audio for the Powerbeats Pro. I almost only use them while working out (which is why I didn’t buy the AirPods or AirPods Pro) and I also prefer the sound profile of beats when played at lower volumes but it’s a bit disappointing that Apple doesn’t provide any premium feature updates to their other sister pair of $250 smart earbuds.

They *can*, they just *won't*.

 

[tosbsas]

anyone able to explain what the Intelligent order setting means in widgets?

 

[mojaverat]

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.

I did as well. With Verizon. On the other end of the call, it kept ringing. It seems to be fixed with the update.

 

[MikeyMike216]

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.

Yes, these both are much needed features!

 

[Bkallen]

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.

1-I'll take pinned emojis first. 🤪
2-Yes! Hide them nudes.

Sending apple.com/feedback/ now