- When iOS 14 arrives this fall, it will bring with it some small but meaningful changes to help navigate a cluttered iPhone.
- Apple added a tool called App Library, which allows you to sort through a catalog of your apps rather than having several app pages on your home screen.
- The new iOS will also allow you to pin conversations to the top of the Messages app so you can find them more quickly.
- There’s a new emoji search function as well, which will more easily surface the exact emoji you’re looking for, and the ability to add searchable captions to photos.
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Apple unveiled its latest iPhone software this week, and with it, some useful features that will help navigate even the most crowded of iPhones.
When the iOS 14 software arrives this fall, it will contain major changes to the iPhone’s home screen – including redesigned and movable widgets – along with a new translation app, privacy improvements, and the ability to start your car using just your phone.
But in a time when iPhones can top out at 512 GB of storage, your phone can quickly become filled with hundreds of apps, photos, messages, and more. With the new update, Apple seems to have realized how difficult it’s become to find the thing you need when you need it. Tucked inside the new update are some small but helpful new features that seem to be aimed at making your iPhone easier to use and quicker to navigate.
Here are four small but meaningful new features that should help cut through the clutter.
App Library
The advent of the App Store in 2008 sparked an exponential growth in apps for the iPhone - these days, iPhone users have around 1.85 million apps to choose from, according to Statista estimates from last month. All that choice means our iPhones are more crowded than ever, with individual apps for everything from your local food delivery service to the nearest hospital.
Apple seems to have realized this, adding a new tool to iOS 14 called App Library. The new feature will automatically organize your apps based on type, allowing you to hide pages and pages of apps and reduce clutter on your device. The App Library will also automatically show you apps it thinks you might need.
You'll be able to see your App Library by swiping to the end of your home screen pages. Plus, when you go to search for an app, iOS 14 will sort them in alphabetical order, which will hopefully make the specific app you need easier to find.
Searchable photo and video captions
With more storage has come the ability to hold more photos and videos on our devices - that also means it can be difficult to find the exact image you're searching for. And while the Photos app already had a search function, it's not always foolproof. With iOS 14, however, you'll be able to add captions to your photos and videos, which will be helpful for two reasons: to add context to an image so you no longer wonder, months later, "Why did I take this photo?"; and, more importantly, so the caption will show up when you search for specific keywords. The captions will also sync through iCloud and show up on all your synced devices.
Pinned conversations
Foto: You can pin your chattiest conversations at the top of the Messages app. Source: Apple
In another time-saving move, Apple will now let you pin your most frequently active conversations to the top of the app, allowing you to access them more easily. When someone is typing or you receive a message in one of the pinned conversations, it will appear above the person's bubble, meaning you won't have to scroll down through you messages list to see it.
Emoji search
Each year, the Unicode Consortium approves dozens of new emojis, which typically arrive on iPhones in the fall. But each new batch means our iPhones are getting more and more crowded, and finding the exact symbol you're looking for can be challenging - while emojis are sorted into type, it's not always easy to remember which category each characters falls under. In iOS 14, that problem will be eliminated: Apple is adding emoji search to the iPhone keyboard, so you can type in what you're looking for and the corresponding emoji will pop up.
Apple typically releases its latest iPhone software in the fall, so iOS 14 will likely arrive for the iPhone 6S or newer in September.