**Apple Music 14.5 Beta 2 Review**

One of the most notable features of Apple Music 14.5 Beta 2 is the introduction of swipe gestures in the music app. If you swipe right, you get the option to play next or to play last. This is a super handy feature that brings two often-used functions into one convenient location. As demonstrated by the author, long swiping automatically plays next, making it easy to seamlessly transition between tracks.

The swipe gesture functionality extends beyond just playing next or last. If a song is already added to your library, you can swipe again to get options to delete or download. In this case, the author opted for downloading the track, and long-swiping allowed him to automatically add it to his library without having to tap again.

Unfortunately, not all features from the previous beta have made it to this version of Apple Music 14.5 Beta 2. Specifically, the ability to present a list of music apps when you ask Siri to play a track is no longer available. In the previous beta, Siri would prompt you to choose an app to play or request your music via Siri, and that selected app would become the default application for subsequent requests. This functionality has been rolled back in this latest beta.

However, other features have been added or improved upon. Record label groupings are now available within Apple Music, making it easier to browse releases from specific labels. Additionally, Apple Music 14.5 Beta 2 can boot up in horizontal landscape mode with the properly oriented Apple logo, eliminating the need for a Magic Keyboard connection.

**Apple's Efforts to Improve Accessibility**

One notable improvement is the implementation of hardware microphone disconnects via software for certain iPad models. This feature prevents microphone audio data from being made available to any software, even with root or kernel privileges, when connected to an MFI-compliant case like the Magic Keyboard.

**New Emoji Characters**

Apple Music 14.5 Beta 2 also brings a new wave of emoji characters, including some customization options for skin tones in certain pairs of emojis. Long-pressing on the couple allows you to select the skin tone for each member, effectively adding an additional emoji combination to your repertoire. While there are only a few standalone emoji additions, this feature is a welcome addition to Apple's ever-growing emoji library.

**Conclusion**

Apple Music 14.5 Beta 2 offers a range of exciting new features and improvements that will surely delight music lovers. From the intuitive swipe gestures in the music app to the added customization options for emojis, there's something for everyone in this latest update. What are your thoughts on Apple Music 14.5 Beta 2? Do you have a favorite new feature or would you like to see more changes in future updates? Share your feedback and experiences with us in the comments below!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso apple has been on a roll with their latest betas uh we get new emoji over 200 new emoji although there is a sort of a asterisk involved with that but not just new emoji we also get much welcomed and brand new music app functionality we're going to talk about that and you can now boot your ipad in landscape mode and get a landscape boot up process even without connecting to an external keyboard and there's some brand new shortcut actions as well check it out so this is beta 2 for ios 14.5 and the last beta had tons of new features and this beta is really chock full features as well we're going to look here into the settings app go into the software update section you're going to notice this is the original beta 1 and comparatively beta 2 isn't looking as nice it doesn't have that nice little green check mark on the software updates to let you know you're at the latest version now of course beta 1 brought the ability to unlock with apple watch while sporting a mask right you can still do the same thing here on beta 2 but you get an updated ui slightly updated ui for your apple watch here's what it looks like from beta 2. compare that to beta 1 beta 2 is looking a little bit better so in beta 2 apple definitely showed the shortcuts apps some love you get several new actions to choose from and i'll briefly show you those right now so first up is the take screenshot action so it does exactly what it says it does it allows you to take a screenshot using shortcuts which is really cool you probably think about all sorts of really interesting things you could do with this what i did i just made it so it takes a screenshot uploads that screenshot to image hosting platform and then copies the url the public url to the clipboard so i just ran it you saw it gave me a url paste that url in safari and there's our shortcut super simple super easy i'm sure you could probably think of some better things to do with it than that that was actually kind of lame so anyway let's talk about the next one this is the orientation lock action so again does what it says it does allows you to either turn it on or off or toggle it on if it's off and off if it's on all right so let's go ahead and test this out so you see the orientation lock so that allows you to lock your device in the portrait mode so it won't auto rotate so when i execute the shortcut you can see it turns it on and when i execute it again you see it toggles it back off what ways could you see to use that let me know down below in the comments and then finally we have set voice in data mode action so we can go in there and set the connectivity for our cellular to lte or 5g or 5g on and you can choose between your primary and secondary sim if you have a dual sim setup alright let's talk about music because the music app gets shown a lot of love in 14.5 beta 2 and that last beta remember you get the exact release date but there's a whole host of other new things here in beta 2. so you're going to find much more fluid popovers no longer do you have that little sheet that comes up from the bottom of the screen for a lot of these options now you get these quick and fluid pop overs that respond pretty much instantly uh i definitely prefer this to the sheets that pop up from the bottom of the screen it's just much faster the animations are quicker and just easier to use in my opinion so here is the previous beta and i'm going to just simply add a few songs to my library and download and this just helps you to get a sense of the differences they are very subtle but they are differences nonetheless between these two betas so notice the sheet that you get from the bottom of the screen when i tap this button see that sheet and the animation takes a little while to appear on screen so let's talk about some of the other features you get a more conspicuous remove button so you don't accidentally remove a song from your library so you tap remove there it just kind of blends in with all the other options but here when you either delete or remove from your library it's red and it stands out there's also a new add slash download glyph in the upper right hand corner so when i add a album to my library you see the little differences between beta 1 and beta2 and there's a new downloaded track indicator as well the little glyph next to the downloaded track which is really nice actually because when you download music on prior versions you really have no indication that you have those music tracks downloaded and you also find a play button in the pop over which works just like the play button on the main album page and you'll also find a show album button when tapping one of the ellipses buttons next to one of the tracks which is nice allows you to quickly warp to that album and of course it'll highlight the track that you selected from that album but here's what's really cool about 14.5 beta 2 you get these swipe gestures so if you swipe right you get the option to play next or to play last look at that and this is super handy because these are two often used functions and now they are right there at your fingertips swipe right next to the track that you want to play next or play last and notice a long swipe will play next so that is really cool let me show you again long swipe automatically plays next play next just like that so play next is obviously used more than play last all right but there's also a left swipe so if you left swipe you can add to your library so you just swipe tap the little plus button to add to our library or you can simply long swipe to automatically add to the library so you don't have to tap again so that's really cool now if a song is already added to your library you swipe again you get options to delete or to download so i just download it you see the little new glyph indicator or if you long swipe that will automatically download and then if i swipe again i can delete or i can long swipe to delete a downloaded track just like that now one of the great things about the previous beta is that when you asked siri to play a track it would actually present to you all the various music apps you had and give you an option of choosing one of those music apps to play or to request your music via siri and this would basically make that app the default application so when you would go ahead and request other songs it would automatically route to that particular application without having to specify the name of the app that was really cool and something we've been waiting on for a long time to appear basically it's a de facto default music playback experience but unfortunately i find that i don't have that ability in this second beta maybe it's just my device what have you guys found let me know down below in the comment section but notice when i request a song okay no pop up asking me what app i want to use and even when i request a song to play back via spotify that will of course work i'm gonna give it access to my data here so that does work but if i request again follow up that request it will revert back to just standard music app so the functionality present in the previous beta even though it was half baked was appreciated but that seems to have been rolled back and although not specific to this beta you'll find record label groupings within apple music as well wild nothing's nocturne is actually one of my favorite albums from a few years back but at the bottom you see the link to the record label and that will show all the releases associated with that label and presumably the ability to view you know all record labels will come down the pipeline eventually and in the last beta you could boot up with a landscape apple logo if you had your device connected to like a magic keyboard but in beta 2 you can boot up in horizontal landscape mode with the properly oriented apple logo without connecting to a magic keyboard like you had to do in the previous beta the apple logo will orient itself properly based on how the devices is positioned when you turn it on so if i'm turning your own in portrait mode you'll see the proper orientation for the apple logo just like that starting in 2020 ipad models featured hardware microphone disconnects similar to macs so this would prevent microphone audio data from being made available to any software even with root or kernel privileges when connected to an mfi compliant case like the magic keyboard for instance while in 14.5 beta 2 that functionality has been implemented via software for certain ipad models and of course we couldn't complete this video without talking about the 200 plus new emoji characters which is really sort of misleading because there are only a few new emoji characters but the majority come from the ability to basically customize skin tones for a couple pairings so when you long press on the couple you'll be able to select the skin tone for each member and all those combinations count as an additional emoji but there are still a few standalone emoji as well like the face exhaling emoji and there's also the face in the clouds emoji and there's also spiral eyes which reminds me of one of my favorite movies shout out fantastic mr fox and there are additional ones as well like the heart on fire and there's also the mending heart and there are others as well be sure to check out emojipedia.com for more details so ladies and gentlemen what are your thoughts on 14.5 beta 2 what's your favorite new feature i know what mine is that swipe to up next functionality in the music app thumbs up if you appreciate this video and subscribe for more videos like this this is jeff with 9 to 5 mac youso apple has been on a roll with their latest betas uh we get new emoji over 200 new emoji although there is a sort of a asterisk involved with that but not just new emoji we also get much welcomed and brand new music app functionality we're going to talk about that and you can now boot your ipad in landscape mode and get a landscape boot up process even without connecting to an external keyboard and there's some brand new shortcut actions as well check it out so this is beta 2 for ios 14.5 and the last beta had tons of new features and this beta is really chock full features as well we're going to look here into the settings app go into the software update section you're going to notice this is the original beta 1 and comparatively beta 2 isn't looking as nice it doesn't have that nice little green check mark on the software updates to let you know you're at the latest version now of course beta 1 brought the ability to unlock with apple watch while sporting a mask right you can still do the same thing here on beta 2 but you get an updated ui slightly updated ui for your apple watch here's what it looks like from beta 2. compare that to beta 1 beta 2 is looking a little bit better so in beta 2 apple definitely showed the shortcuts apps some love you get several new actions to choose from and i'll briefly show you those right now so first up is the take screenshot action so it does exactly what it says it does it allows you to take a screenshot using shortcuts which is really cool you probably think about all sorts of really interesting things you could do with this what i did i just made it so it takes a screenshot uploads that screenshot to image hosting platform and then copies the url the public url to the clipboard so i just ran it you saw it gave me a url paste that url in safari and there's our shortcut super simple super easy i'm sure you could probably think of some better things to do with it than that that was actually kind of lame so anyway let's talk about the next one this is the orientation lock action so again does what it says it does allows you to either turn it on or off or toggle it on if it's off and off if it's on all right so let's go ahead and test this out so you see the orientation lock so that allows you to lock your device in the portrait mode so it won't auto rotate so when i execute the shortcut you can see it turns it on and when i execute it again you see it toggles it back off what ways could you see to use that let me know down below in the comments and then finally we have set voice in data mode action so we can go in there and set the connectivity for our cellular to lte or 5g or 5g on and you can choose between your primary and secondary sim if you have a dual sim setup alright let's talk about music because the music app gets shown a lot of love in 14.5 beta 2 and that last beta remember you get the exact release date but there's a whole host of other new things here in beta 2. so you're going to find much more fluid popovers no longer do you have that little sheet that comes up from the bottom of the screen for a lot of these options now you get these quick and fluid pop overs that respond pretty much instantly uh i definitely prefer this to the sheets that pop up from the bottom of the screen it's just much faster the animations are quicker and just easier to use in my opinion so here is the previous beta and i'm going to just simply add a few songs to my library and download and this just helps you to get a sense of the differences they are very subtle but they are differences nonetheless between these two betas so notice the sheet that you get from the bottom of the screen when i tap this button see that sheet and the animation takes a little while to appear on screen so let's talk about some of the other features you get a more conspicuous remove button so you don't accidentally remove a song from your library so you tap remove there it just kind of blends in with all the other options but here when you either delete or remove from your library it's red and it stands out there's also a new add slash download glyph in the upper right hand corner so when i add a album to my library you see the little differences between beta 1 and beta2 and there's a new downloaded track indicator as well the little glyph next to the downloaded track which is really nice actually because when you download music on prior versions you really have no indication that you have those music tracks downloaded and you also find a play button in the pop over which works just like the play button on the main album page and you'll also find a show album button when tapping one of the ellipses buttons next to one of the tracks which is nice allows you to quickly warp to that album and of course it'll highlight the track that you selected from that album but here's what's really cool about 14.5 beta 2 you get these swipe gestures so if you swipe right you get the option to play next or to play last look at that and this is super handy because these are two often used functions and now they are right there at your fingertips swipe right next to the track that you want to play next or play last and notice a long swipe will play next so that is really cool let me show you again long swipe automatically plays next play next just like that so play next is obviously used more than play last all right but there's also a left swipe so if you left swipe you can add to your library so you just swipe tap the little plus button to add to our library or you can simply long swipe to automatically add to the library so you don't have to tap again so that's really cool now if a song is already added to your library you swipe again you get options to delete or to download so i just download it you see the little new glyph indicator or if you long swipe that will automatically download and then if i swipe again i can delete or i can long swipe to delete a downloaded track just like that now one of the great things about the previous beta is that when you asked siri to play a track it would actually present to you all the various music apps you had and give you an option of choosing one of those music apps to play or to request your music via siri and this would basically make that app the default application so when you would go ahead and request other songs it would automatically route to that particular application without having to specify the name of the app that was really cool and something we've been waiting on for a long time to appear basically it's a de facto default music playback experience but unfortunately i find that i don't have that ability in this second beta maybe it's just my device what have you guys found let me know down below in the comment section but notice when i request a song okay no pop up asking me what app i want to use and even when i request a song to play back via spotify that will of course work i'm gonna give it access to my data here so that does work but if i request again follow up that request it will revert back to just standard music app so the functionality present in the previous beta even though it was half baked was appreciated but that seems to have been rolled back and although not specific to this beta you'll find record label groupings within apple music as well wild nothing's nocturne is actually one of my favorite albums from a few years back but at the bottom you see the link to the record label and that will show all the releases associated with that label and presumably the ability to view you know all record labels will come down the pipeline eventually and in the last beta you could boot up with a landscape apple logo if you had your device connected to like a magic keyboard but in beta 2 you can boot up in horizontal landscape mode with the properly oriented apple logo without connecting to a magic keyboard like you had to do in the previous beta the apple logo will orient itself properly based on how the devices is positioned when you turn it on so if i'm turning your own in portrait mode you'll see the proper orientation for the apple logo just like that starting in 2020 ipad models featured hardware microphone disconnects similar to macs so this would prevent microphone audio data from being made available to any software even with root or kernel privileges when connected to an mfi compliant case like the magic keyboard for instance while in 14.5 beta 2 that functionality has been implemented via software for certain ipad models and of course we couldn't complete this video without talking about the 200 plus new emoji characters which is really sort of misleading because there are only a few new emoji characters but the majority come from the ability to basically customize skin tones for a couple pairings so when you long press on the couple you'll be able to select the skin tone for each member and all those combinations count as an additional emoji but there are still a few standalone emoji as well like the face exhaling emoji and there's also the face in the clouds emoji and there's also spiral eyes which reminds me of one of my favorite movies shout out fantastic mr fox and there are additional ones as well like the heart on fire and there's also the mending heart and there are others as well be sure to check out emojipedia.com for more details so ladies and gentlemen what are your thoughts on 14.5 beta 2 what's your favorite new feature i know what mine is that swipe to up next functionality in the music app thumbs up if you appreciate this video and subscribe for more videos like this this is jeff with 9 to 5 mac you\n"