Apple finally released iOS14 for the public on 16th September 2020. iOS14 brings a lot of new features and changes to iOS. In this article, I will share the first few steps you should follow after installing iOS14 on your iPhone.

New Homescreen Widgets

The first feature I want to discuss with you is the new home screen widgets on iOS14. I know a lot of people are so excited to have widgets on their home screens. These new features totally change the look of your home screen. Because of this, I know many users will add as many widgets as they can on their home screens of their iPhone but what I suggest you go ahead and pick which ones you need. Don’t add a ton of widgets on your home screen. **WHY?**Widgets use battery power, CPU power so it is not good to fill up pages with different widgets on the home screen of your iOS14 device.Go and choose wisely which ones you want to use. There are tons are widgets available on iOS14 and thousands more are coming on iOS14 with the third party apps. So be careful which one you really want to use to save your battery and performance of your iPhone.

New App Library

The second step you need to do after installing iOS14 on your iPhone is to move all of your apps to App Library. If you swipe on your home screen all way to the left you will find a new screen of App Library which includes all the apps installed on your iPhone. They are all very well organized and will display all the most used apps on the top of every folder. There are so many apps on your iPhone you use once in a while so there is no reason to leave that app on the home screen you can easily hide that app by touching and holding on the app icon and you will see a new option “Move to AppLibrary” or you can drag the app all the way to the left until you reach the App Library page and release the app there. All the apps will automatically be categorized in the app library section. It will give you a more clean and nice home screen.

Newly Download App

The third step you need to do after installing iOS14 on your iPhone is to change the setting for newly download apps. You need to select an option that automatically moves your newly installed app to the App library. For that you need need to follow these steps:

1. Go to the Settings app.
2. Go to the Home Screen Settings.
3. On the Newly download Apps section choose “App Library Only”.

Hide Pages

Another new feature that came in iOS14 is to hide pages of the home screen. If you want to hide extra pages of your home screen you have to follow these simple steps:

1. Tap and hold anywhere on the home screen.
2. When you enter jiggle mode, simply tap on the page dots at the bottom of the home screen.
3. Deselect all the pages you don’t want to show on your home screen.

Change Default Apps

Finally, Apple gave this option to its users to change the default apps to any third-party apps. Right now it is only working for the mails app and the safari app. But in the near feature when all the developers will update their apps you can change any default app to a third-party app. For this you have to follow these simple steps:

1. Go to the Settings App.
2. Scroll all the way to the bottom until you see a list of all the installed apps on your iPhone.
3. Click on the app (like safari) and then click on Default Browser App.
4. You will find a new option to change it to Google Chrome as your default browser.
5. Now whenever you want to open a website link on your iPhone, it will automatically open your Chrome browser rather than the Safari browser.

Back Tap

Back in June when Apple released its iOS14 beta for developers. Many developers are blown away after seeing this new feature on iOS14 which is called Back Tap. This feature allows you to tap on the back of your iPhone to perform different tasks like open the camera, open the control center, take a screenshot, invoke shortcuts, and many more. For setting up this back tap feature you have to follow these steps:

1. Go to the Settings App.
2. Go to the Accessibility Setting and then go to Touch settings.
3. Scroll all the to the bottom until you see a new option called Back Tap.
4. You will see two different options for double tap and triple tap.
5. Select the task you want to do with the back tap and you are good to go.

Optimize Battery Charging

This feature is very important for your battery health. If you want to use your iPhone with good battery health you should turn on this option. Also, make sure you use dark mode if you are using devices like iPhone X and above (with OLED displays). For turning on this battery optimization option you need to follow these steps:

1. Go to the Settings App.
2. Go to the Battery Settings.
3. Go to the Battery Health option.
4. Turn on Optimize Battery Charging Option.
5. For Dark mode go to the display and brightness settings and you will find an option to turn on dark mode or you can also set automatic dark mode.

Picture in Picture Mode

Another cool feature in iOS14 is the Picture in Picture mode. Many iPhone users are waiting for this feature for so long and finally, it came on iOS14. but the problem is right now you cannot play Youtube videos on the Picture in Picture mode. There are rumors that Youtube is working on its iOS Youtube app to integrate Picture in Picture mode. Right now you can use this feature using the safari browser. You need to follow these steps:

1. First, you need to go to the iOS settings app.
2. Find Picture in Picture setting and enable it.
3. Open Safari Browser.
4. Open Youtube on the browser.
5. Play the video and now you will find an option at the top of the screen to play video in Picture in Picture.

New Automation Feature

With so many new features in iOS14, one of my favorite features is the automation feature in the Shortcuts app. It will give you different options to automate settings like you can set automatic turn-on of “Low Power Mode” when battery percentage reaches a specific percentage. There are so many other actions you can set with this new automation feature.

These are all the settings you should change after installing iOS14 on your iPhone. If you find this article helpful please feel free to give a clap on the article. If you have any questions or suggestions for me please feel free to share with me in the response section below.