**iOS 14.4 and Beyond: A Look at the Latest Features**

Going forward, one of the biggest improvements in iOS 14.4 is the ability to automatically assign device type when connecting Bluetooth devices. This means that users will no longer have to manually select the type of device they are connecting, such as headphones or speakers. Instead, the device will be automatically recognized and assigned a category. This feature is particularly useful for situations where the device type is not immediately clear, such as with Apple's own AirPods Pro. By being able to automatically assign device types, users can streamline their Bluetooth connections and make it easier to manage their devices.

**Unity Watch Face and Find My Items Tab**

Another exciting new feature in iOS 14.4 is the Unity watch face, which has been added to the Apple Watch with WatchOS 7.3. This new watch face can be found within the Face Gallery on the Apple Watch itself or by searching for it through the Apple Watch app on an iPhone. In addition to this new watch face, a new tab has also been added to the Find My app in iOS 14.4. To access this tab, users must first enable the Developer Panel on their iPhone and then navigate to the Settings app within the Developer Panel. From there, users can toggle on the switch to enable the Find My Items tab.

With the Find My Items tab enabled, users will be able to see a list of nearby devices that are compatible with Find My, including AirTags and other third-party tracking devices from companies like Tile. The process for adding new items is straightforward, and users can simply tap on the "Add Item" button within the Find My app to begin the setup process. Once an item is added, it will appear in the list of nearby devices, allowing users to quickly locate their missing items.

**AirTags: A New Era in Location Tracking**

One of the most highly anticipated features in iOS 14.4 is the upcoming AirTags, which are small Bluetooth tracking devices that can be attached to everyday objects. The AirTags will use Apple's Find My network to track the location of any device that has an AirTag attached to it, providing users with a convenient and easy way to locate their missing items. To enable the AirTags feature in iOS 14.4, users must first have Xcode installed on their Mac and connect their iPhone to their Mac via USB.

Once connected, users can navigate to the Settings app within the Developer Panel and toggle on the switch for the Find My Items tab. This will allow them to see a list of nearby AirTags in the Find My app, which they can use to locate their missing items. The AirTags are expected to be launched soon, but Apple has already provided instructions on how to enable the feature in iOS 14.4.

**Handoff Experience Enhanced**

iOS 14.4 also brings an enhanced Handoff experience for the HomePod Mini, thanks to the addition of U1 Ultra Wideband technology to supported iPhone models. This new feature uses the proximity sensor and accelerometer on supported iPhones to detect when a user is approaching their HomePod Mini and automatically transitions the screen into full-screen view. The process is seamless, with no need to tap on notifications or unlock the phone.

When this happens, users will see a list of options appear at the top of the screen, including the color and name of the HomePod Mini, whether it's playing music, and the ability to transfer songs between iPhone and HomePod Mini. The process is straightforward, with simply tapping on "Transfer from iPhone" to start the playback process. This enhanced Handoff experience provides a convenient way for users to control their music playback without having to leave their phone.

**What Do You Think?**

As we conclude our look at the top features of iOS 14.4, it's worth asking what you think about each of these new features. Whether it's the ability to automatically assign device types or the upcoming AirTags, there are many exciting changes coming to Apple devices in this latest update. Be sure to share your thoughts on social media using the hashtag #iOS144 and let us know which feature you're most excited about.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso the final version of ios 14.4 was released today to the public which is great right because it brings with it a whole new swath of features that we're going to talk about in this video so if you're already running the ios 14.4 release candidate then you're good because they're the same build number so you're actually not going to get an ota update for this final version of 14.4 they're exactly the same there are lots of bug fixes in 14.4 including a fix for image artifacts that could appear in hdr photos now some people have also complained about stuttering that appears when going back to the home screen i haven't experienced that personally but what have you experienced let me know down below in the comment section but now let's talk about what's new in ios 14.4 so first and foremost you get a new perspective zoom parameter when adding a set wallpaper action in the shortcuts app so of course the set wallpaper action came back in ios 14.3 and that's really useful for creating dynamic wallpaper like this let me show you give it a second and you'll see that wallpaper change just like that whenever i charge my iphone and i have a tutorial that shows you how to do this if you're interested in learning how to do it be sure to follow the tutorial linked here but in ios 14.4 there is a new parameter for the set wallpaper action and that parameter is none other than perspective zoom so this allows you to toggle on or off the parallax effect whenever using the set wallpaper action so i can turn that on which will enable the parallax effect whenever i set wallpaper using the random wallpaper shortcut that i created so i just manually enacted that shortcut here you can see it took effect and that parallax wallpaper is now available and you can see the parallax effect a little bit here this wallpaper was set using the set wallpaper action it's a subtle but nonetheless useful new feature in ios 14.4 now ios 14.4 also features notifications for when your camera on your iphone is unable to be verified as a new genuine apple camera in all iphone 12 models it doesn't appear to affect your using the camera but you will get a notification and in ios 14.4 there is support for reading smaller qr codes within the camera app so you know the stock camera app has the ability to read qr codes natively of course you can go in and toggle that functionality within the settings app you'll see a scan qr code switch that you can enable or disable but basically in ios 14.4 the stock camera app will be able to recognize smaller qr codes so whereas the previous version of ios had a tougher time reading those smaller qr codes now that is no longer an issue here on ios 14.4 you can compare them because here on my iphone 12 mini i'm running an older version of ios and you see i have to get a little bit closer before the qr code is recognized a lot closer actually there we go whereas on ios 14.4 i can be further away therefore the qr code is smaller and it's still able to scan that with no issue and if you use exposure notifications and you have an active region at it you'll notice a new feature to automatically notify others when you have a positive covet test so here's that automatically notify others and this allows for public health authorities to ask you for one time access to your random ids and if you are diagnosed with covent 19 this will allow those health authorities to automatically notify others and you won't be identified via the notifications because it's all anonymous so you don't have to worry about that but it's pretty cool because that to me just makes the system work that much better and helping people stay alerted if they may have encountered someone with covet 19. and another new feature that you'll find in ios 14.4 is the ability to set the bluetooth device type now when you go into bluetooth settings you'll see the little i button next to each bluetooth device for instance this right here is my car stereo so if i tap the little i next to it you're going to see the ability to set device type this is a new feature in ios 14.4 and apple explains why they included this feature once you go into that particular parameter within the settings app so you'll notice for device type there are several different types of devices that you can assign to the various bluetooth devices that you are connected to so you have for instance car stereo which in this case is accurate this is a car stereo but you also have headphones you have hearing aid speaker and other and as you see at the bottom specifying the type of device can ensure that your headphone audio level measurements are accurate so if you connect to a device like a bluetooth speaker and it mis-identifies it as a pair of headphones then it's going to mess with the volume levels in a way that just isn't very desirable maybe adjusting the volume to a lower level when you actually want it to be loud because it's a speaker or maybe you have a car stereo that's misrepresented as a pair of headphones as well and it'll you know go in and mess with the volume those are all super annoying scenarios this will help fix that going forward by being able to automatically assign device type unlike apple's own devices like airpods pro for instance where apple knows these are headphones other devices it isn't so smart so this gives the user a little bit of control to assign specific device types to bluetooth connections super handy new feature in 14.4 and this next feature is assuming you have an apple watch with watch os 7.3 which was also just released you get a new watch face which is called the unity watch face you can find that within the face gallery and of course you'll also find that on the apple watch itself and like i said you need to be running watch os 7.3 and in 14.4 you'll find a new tab for find my items within the find my app now in order to see this you have to have xcode downloaded on your mac and you connect your your iphone to your mac and that enables the developer panel within the settings app so here under developer you're going to find a setting to enable the find my items tab within the find my app so let's go ahead and go into the developer panel here under settings and i'll show you where to find that just scroll all the way down here and there you go display items tab and with this switch enabled the items tab will be shown within the find my app and you'll be able to pair find my compatible accessories this presumably will include the upcoming air tags from apple along with other third-party tracking devices from companies like tile so let's go into the find my app and look what you have there right off the bat you see the items tab that helps you keep track of your everyday items via things like air tags which aren't launched yet but presumably will be launched sometime in the near future like i said this will work with third-party compatible devices as well so all you would have to do here is tap on add item and then you'll see an interface for adding accessories or other items that are compatible with find my so i'll do that now and then you see searching items and it tells you to follow the instructions provided by the manufacturer to make your item discoverable with air tags i imagine this would be extremely simple extremely easy to do i personally cannot wait for the air tags it seems like we've been waiting forever will you be buying the air tags when they come out what type of things do you plan on attaching your air tax to let me know down below in the comments section now another cool thing is that if you actually find a lost item you'll be able to use the find my app to see if the owner left a message by connecting to it so that's what you see right here so for instance maybe i leave a message that says call me at this number if you find my item pretty cool and finally we have the updated homepod mini handoff experience that is courtesy of ios 14.4 and this new handoff experience works with any u1 ultra wide band enabled iphone that includes the iphone 11 and iphone 12 so as you move closer to your homepod mini the u1 chips in each device communicate to gain spatial awareness of each other so as you move closer you'll feel more haptic feedback it'll get a lot stronger and eventually that little notification at the top will pop into a full screen view automatically when you get close enough to your homepod mini but in this case i can just tap on the notification there to open up in full screen view which gives you additional options so at the top of this interface you see the color of your homepod the name of the homepod whether it's playing or not you see a transfer button that allows you to transfer to or from your iphone you see the album artwork of the song loaded on your homepod including its source and of course you see transport controls as well so if i tap transfer from iphone that transfers the song that i'm playing on my iphone right over to the homepod mini and it just starts playing on the homepod pretty simple stuff there and here's what happens when you get it really close it automatically pops that screen into view so you don't have to tap on that notification it does it automatically now the cool thing is that you don't even have to unlock your phone you see i have the face id sensor covered the phone is still locked yet i can still interact and control the playback controls on my homepod mini and of course i have playback controls as well right there on the lock screen so ladies and gentlemen that is a look at some of the top features for ios 14.4 what's your favorite new feature let me know down below in the comment section and subscribe for more videos like this this is jeff benjamin with nine to five mac youso the final version of ios 14.4 was released today to the public which is great right because it brings with it a whole new swath of features that we're going to talk about in this video so if you're already running the ios 14.4 release candidate then you're good because they're the same build number so you're actually not going to get an ota update for this final version of 14.4 they're exactly the same there are lots of bug fixes in 14.4 including a fix for image artifacts that could appear in hdr photos now some people have also complained about stuttering that appears when going back to the home screen i haven't experienced that personally but what have you experienced let me know down below in the comment section but now let's talk about what's new in ios 14.4 so first and foremost you get a new perspective zoom parameter when adding a set wallpaper action in the shortcuts app so of course the set wallpaper action came back in ios 14.3 and that's really useful for creating dynamic wallpaper like this let me show you give it a second and you'll see that wallpaper change just like that whenever i charge my iphone and i have a tutorial that shows you how to do this if you're interested in learning how to do it be sure to follow the tutorial linked here but in ios 14.4 there is a new parameter for the set wallpaper action and that parameter is none other than perspective zoom so this allows you to toggle on or off the parallax effect whenever using the set wallpaper action so i can turn that on which will enable the parallax effect whenever i set wallpaper using the random wallpaper shortcut that i created so i just manually enacted that shortcut here you can see it took effect and that parallax wallpaper is now available and you can see the parallax effect a little bit here this wallpaper was set using the set wallpaper action it's a subtle but nonetheless useful new feature in ios 14.4 now ios 14.4 also features notifications for when your camera on your iphone is unable to be verified as a new genuine apple camera in all iphone 12 models it doesn't appear to affect your using the camera but you will get a notification and in ios 14.4 there is support for reading smaller qr codes within the camera app so you know the stock camera app has the ability to read qr codes natively of course you can go in and toggle that functionality within the settings app you'll see a scan qr code switch that you can enable or disable but basically in ios 14.4 the stock camera app will be able to recognize smaller qr codes so whereas the previous version of ios had a tougher time reading those smaller qr codes now that is no longer an issue here on ios 14.4 you can compare them because here on my iphone 12 mini i'm running an older version of ios and you see i have to get a little bit closer before the qr code is recognized a lot closer actually there we go whereas on ios 14.4 i can be further away therefore the qr code is smaller and it's still able to scan that with no issue and if you use exposure notifications and you have an active region at it you'll notice a new feature to automatically notify others when you have a positive covet test so here's that automatically notify others and this allows for public health authorities to ask you for one time access to your random ids and if you are diagnosed with covent 19 this will allow those health authorities to automatically notify others and you won't be identified via the notifications because it's all anonymous so you don't have to worry about that but it's pretty cool because that to me just makes the system work that much better and helping people stay alerted if they may have encountered someone with covet 19. and another new feature that you'll find in ios 14.4 is the ability to set the bluetooth device type now when you go into bluetooth settings you'll see the little i button next to each bluetooth device for instance this right here is my car stereo so if i tap the little i next to it you're going to see the ability to set device type this is a new feature in ios 14.4 and apple explains why they included this feature once you go into that particular parameter within the settings app so you'll notice for device type there are several different types of devices that you can assign to the various bluetooth devices that you are connected to so you have for instance car stereo which in this case is accurate this is a car stereo but you also have headphones you have hearing aid speaker and other and as you see at the bottom specifying the type of device can ensure that your headphone audio level measurements are accurate so if you connect to a device like a bluetooth speaker and it mis-identifies it as a pair of headphones then it's going to mess with the volume levels in a way that just isn't very desirable maybe adjusting the volume to a lower level when you actually want it to be loud because it's a speaker or maybe you have a car stereo that's misrepresented as a pair of headphones as well and it'll you know go in and mess with the volume those are all super annoying scenarios this will help fix that going forward by being able to automatically assign device type unlike apple's own devices like airpods pro for instance where apple knows these are headphones other devices it isn't so smart so this gives the user a little bit of control to assign specific device types to bluetooth connections super handy new feature in 14.4 and this next feature is assuming you have an apple watch with watch os 7.3 which was also just released you get a new watch face which is called the unity watch face you can find that within the face gallery and of course you'll also find that on the apple watch itself and like i said you need to be running watch os 7.3 and in 14.4 you'll find a new tab for find my items within the find my app now in order to see this you have to have xcode downloaded on your mac and you connect your your iphone to your mac and that enables the developer panel within the settings app so here under developer you're going to find a setting to enable the find my items tab within the find my app so let's go ahead and go into the developer panel here under settings and i'll show you where to find that just scroll all the way down here and there you go display items tab and with this switch enabled the items tab will be shown within the find my app and you'll be able to pair find my compatible accessories this presumably will include the upcoming air tags from apple along with other third-party tracking devices from companies like tile so let's go into the find my app and look what you have there right off the bat you see the items tab that helps you keep track of your everyday items via things like air tags which aren't launched yet but presumably will be launched sometime in the near future like i said this will work with third-party compatible devices as well so all you would have to do here is tap on add item and then you'll see an interface for adding accessories or other items that are compatible with find my so i'll do that now and then you see searching items and it tells you to follow the instructions provided by the manufacturer to make your item discoverable with air tags i imagine this would be extremely simple extremely easy to do i personally cannot wait for the air tags it seems like we've been waiting forever will you be buying the air tags when they come out what type of things do you plan on attaching your air tax to let me know down below in the comments section now another cool thing is that if you actually find a lost item you'll be able to use the find my app to see if the owner left a message by connecting to it so that's what you see right here so for instance maybe i leave a message that says call me at this number if you find my item pretty cool and finally we have the updated homepod mini handoff experience that is courtesy of ios 14.4 and this new handoff experience works with any u1 ultra wide band enabled iphone that includes the iphone 11 and iphone 12 so as you move closer to your homepod mini the u1 chips in each device communicate to gain spatial awareness of each other so as you move closer you'll feel more haptic feedback it'll get a lot stronger and eventually that little notification at the top will pop into a full screen view automatically when you get close enough to your homepod mini but in this case i can just tap on the notification there to open up in full screen view which gives you additional options so at the top of this interface you see the color of your homepod the name of the homepod whether it's playing or not you see a transfer button that allows you to transfer to or from your iphone you see the album artwork of the song loaded on your homepod including its source and of course you see transport controls as well so if i tap transfer from iphone that transfers the song that i'm playing on my iphone right over to the homepod mini and it just starts playing on the homepod pretty simple stuff there and here's what happens when you get it really close it automatically pops that screen into view so you don't have to tap on that notification it does it automatically now the cool thing is that you don't even have to unlock your phone you see i have the face id sensor covered the phone is still locked yet i can still interact and control the playback controls on my homepod mini and of course i have playback controls as well right there on the lock screen so ladies and gentlemen that is a look at some of the top features for ios 14.4 what's your favorite new feature let me know down below in the comment section and subscribe for more videos like this this is jeff benjamin with nine to five mac you\n"