iOS 14.7 Public Beta participants get an early jump on the rest of the world with the final Release Candidate now available for download.
What’s Fixed/What’s New
As I predicted last week, iOS 14.7 wouldn’t make it out of July and now we see why! When I did a deep dive into Apple Card Family Sharing, I mentioned that certain features wouldn’t be available until July. Sure enough, iOS 14.7 will enable merging Apple Card accounts with a family member, merging their credit limits.
The iOS 14.7 Release Candidate also includes support for the previously unannounced MagSafe Battery Pack. This, very Apple-looking, battery pack will ship during the last week of July and will provide juice to any MagSafe-enabled iPhone.
Here’s what else is coming in iOS 14.7 that they didn’t put in the official beta release notes:
- You can manage HomePod timers in the Home app
- Air quality information is now available in Weather and Maps for Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, South Korea, and Spain
- You can finally filter your Podcasts library by all shows or just followed shows
- The Share playlist menu option is back in Apple Music
- Dolby Atmos and Apple Music lossless audio playback no longer stops unexpectedly
- The battery service message that disappeared after reboot on some iPhone 11 models is back (sorry)
- Braille displays no longer show invalid information while composing Mail messages
Other than the HomePod timers and the battery service message, the rest of the features in this release were kept under wraps. Pretty sneaky, Apple. It’ll be interesting to see if the next iOS 14 beta (if there is one) will hide any last-gasp features or iPhone 12 hardware tricks.
What’s Next?
Speaking of, iOS 14.7 is almost certainly the last gasp for iOS 14. With the release of iOS 15 happening maybe next month and the Public Beta Program having moved on to iOS 15, Apple could simply keep iOS 14.7 maintained with emergency security releases rather than a whole new iOS version. If we are getting iOS 14.8, I’d expect the beta cycle to start sometime in the next two weeks. If that does happen, it’ll give iOS 14 the distinction of having the most point releases of any other iOS version (it’s currently tied with iOS 13).
I doubt that there are any additional accessories lurking in the wing and the iOS 14 feature set is wrapped at this point, so there’s not much Apple needs to do other than prep iOS 15 for release. I imagine that most of their developing power will be thrown behind the latest and greatest iOS version to ensure the (somewhat buggy) OS is ready for a public launch in August/September.
If you’re OK with jumping into a less stable beta build then you’ve gotten used to with iOS 14, you can delete your old iOS 14 public beta profile on your device, then replace it with an iOS 15 beta profile. Check out my iOS 15 Public Beta guide for more details.
This should be the final iOS 14 public beta piece. From here on out it’s all iOS 15 all the time! But if that changes, I’ll be back with iOS 14.8 coverage.
