By: Charlotte Foulger — Correspondent
Apple recently released the new iOS update, and it has many interesting and fun features that are helpful to many.
First, there are new widgets with different ways to organize them. Sophomore Jake Brown says his new favorite feature in iOS 14 is widgets. “They make it easier to see quick updates in apps like weather and also check quickly what’s on my calendar,” he said. There is also the App Library which automatically organizes your apps, based on usage with a search bar and a way to hide your home screen pages. Brown says that he felt that the App Library and widgets were the most useful features, with widgets being what he uses the most.
Calls and Siri are now a small banner at the bottom of the screen, so users can keep other apps open at the same time, which makes multitasking easier. Sophomore Eva Bihler says her favorite new feature was, “The one where you can be FaceTiming someone while looking at another app.”
In messages, users can now pin up to nine conversations or direct a message to a specific person by typing their name. And if you’re getting too many messages, you can customize a group so you’ll only get messages when you’re mentioned, and you can use inline replies to reply to specific messages only.
You can also find things easier now! Search has also been updated to make it even easier to find things you are looking for and Safari is faster and safer now with password monitoring and a website privacy report that shows you what sites are being blocked by Safari.
A fun feature with the new update is autoplay in Apple music which plays songs it thinks you’ll love when your songs finish. There’s also a new home tab that helps find music you’ll love. And there are many new looks you can add to your Emoji, as well as three new Emoji stickers you can send to your friends!
The translate app can translate your conversations into another language and you can play this while you’re having a conversation with someone who speaks another language. Also, the keyboard now has a place where you can search emojis based on a keyword. Bihler enjoys searching emojis the most and also thinks this feature is the most useful to her.
