Meeting Report

Safari 14 and iOS 14

We talked about the new features in Safari 14 for macOS and iOS 14 at this meeting held on Friday 2nd October. Members also discussed the new NHS COVID-19 app and had suggestions and recommendations of content and products to check out.

App Development Update

DaveK updated us on progress with his new app in development including how he has incorporated some member suggestions from previous meetings. The Zenopolis website has information about Dave’s current apps.

Safari 14

Safari version 14 is available now for macOS Catalina and Mojave and will be included with Bir Sur. Robert demonstrated some of the new features in this update:

  • Improved Home screen with custom content and background. You can choose between Apple’s supplied backgrounds or your own pictures. A home screen icon can be added to the Safari toobar.
  • Webpage tabs have been improved to show icons, hovering over a tab shows a preview of the page.
  • Webpage videos can be played in a floating picture-in picture window. This is accessed by clicking and holding on the speaker icon in the address box.
  • Intelligent tracking prevention and a Privacy Report has been added. This shows the trackers on each webpage that were blocked. The Privacy Report shows activity by website or tracker over the last 30 days on the current Mac.

This Mac Rumors article includes Apple’s release notes for Safari 14.

iOS 14

We’d previously talked about our initial experiences with iOS 14 so at this meeting Robert highlighted some smaller features members might not have come across:

  • Web videos can now be played in a floating picture in picture window on the iPhone. A useful feature is that you can slide the video to the side of the screen to temporarily hide it while still listening to the audio.
  • It’s now possible to change default the Browser and Mail apps to third party options. This is done in the Settings for the third party app (if it supports the feature).
  • Voice memos has a new “Enhance recording” feature that removes background noise.
  • The Emoji keyboard now has a search field making it easier to find emojis.
  • A new option to automatically reduce loud sounds through connected headphones takes into account the content you’re listening to.
  • The Hearing control in Control Centre can now be used to check headphone audio level in real time.

Denesh pointed out that the Look Around feature (street level photography) is now available in Apple Maps on iOS for some British cities including London and Edinburgh.

NHS COVID-19 App

The new NHS COVID-19 exposure notification app, using Apple’s technology built into iOS, is now available.

Suggestions

During the meeting members had suggestions and recommendations of content and products to check out: