Author: Sakthilakshmi M

Top 20 iOS 14 features which you cannot ignore

They say patience is a virtue, and the ones who are patient do get rewarded. It stands to be true for many of the iOS aficionados, if not for all. The latest iOS 14 release has unveiled many features that stand out and command attention. Here is a list of the top 20 iOS 14 features that can enhance your mobile experience.

  1. App Clips – The feature allows the user to use micro parts of the app, meaning performing a small task under 10MB without downloading the complete app. An example is purchasing coffee from a coffee shop (Without downloading the entire app) by signing in with Apple/Apple Pay (So, there is no need to create a new account) and get the rewards into the account. The user can download the app if the performance meets the user’s expectations in App Clip.
  2. Picture-in-picture – From this version of iOS 14, all iPhones have picture-in-picture support as part of multitasking. Previously this feature was available only on iPad, not on iPhone.
  3. App Library – Customize the home screen by organizing the folders by categories like Sports, Health & Fitness, Business, Travel, etc., to maintain apps in a single home screen instead of using multiple home screens with swipe gesture navigation.
  4. Widgets Enhancement – A new widget like “Today View” has many more information accommodation facilities and draggable onto the home screen with different sizes as per user’s preferences. A “Smart Stack Widget” is used to organize and swipe through the recent and liked widget.
  5. Siri Interface – Siri interface will appear like a blob at the bottom of the screen instead of occupying the whole screen for Siri functionality and shows the results as rich notifications at the top of the screen.
  6. Message Stack – User can pin nine message chats as favorites, and those pinned conversations will appear in the “Message Stack,” which is relatively easier for fast access to messages.
  7. FaceTime has performance increments, and Memoji has updated with different icons, Augmented Reality and Machine Learning has new efficient tools for better performance.
  8. Keyboard Tweaks – Emoji picker has a search bar to pick out a specific emoji faster.
  9. Camera Improvements
    • Quick Take Video feature is there in all iPhones by the press and holds the shutter button under photo mode to switch into video mode
    • Camera App can change video resolution, frame rate directly instead of using Settings
    • Picture quality and its performance has been enhanced
      Guidance Indicator will show the status of camera shot
  10. Maps Improvements – Maps has new features as well
    • The “Cycling Directions” feature has been added in Maps for the areas such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Shanghai, and Beijing. Later on, the feature will expand to other areas in upcoming versions
    • “EV Routes” feature has been added to denote the “Electric Vehicle Charging Stops” for charging “Electric Vehicles” along the traveling route, initially supported car companies are Ford and BMW
    • “License Plate Access” feature will show whether that particular vehicle has the privilege to travel for that specific route or not
  11. Default Email and Browsers Customization – User can set their preferred third-party email and browsers as their default email and browser
  12. Translate App – Apple supports the default “Translate App” in landscape mode by splitting the screen in a 50:50 ratio. Hold on the microphone button listens to input the word/sentence to translate in the left pane. Once the microphone button is released immediately, the translated output will get displayed on the right pane. Users can select languages for translation. Currently, it supports only 11 languages.
  13. Privacy Enhancements – iOS 14 majorly concentrated on “Privacy Policy” for data security as follows
    • Permission added to access approximate location instead of sharing the exact location
    • Permission added to access only specific photo instead of providing access to the entire gallery
    • If the Microphone is running, then the status will be indicated on the status bar with a little amber dot
    • If the Camera is running, then the status will be displayed on the status bar with a little green dot, which is easy to track the Background process of an app for security purposes
    • Mandatory addition of “Privacy Policy” in App Store pages to publish the app to show the data collection on the app from the users, which maintains data security
  14. Apple Arcade – Provides quick access to recently played games, and “Game Center Friends Preferred Games” will be stacked here for gaming.
  15. CarPlay – Provides new EV Routing in Maps, Parking, and Food Ordering apps under categories, new development tools have been introduced to integrate audio, text messages, and VoIP apps.
  16. CarKeys – Initiated better-digitized car keys via iPhones with Tesla Manufacturers.
  17. Safari Enhancements
    • Safari can access Privacy Reports of websites
    • Monitors “Saved Passwords” to prevent security breaches
    • Translate the entire webpage by using Apple default Translate App
  18. UIWebView – Deprecated and suggested to use WKWebView. UIWebView usage in the app will block the app publish from December 2020.
  19. Daylight Saving Time Issue – Under iPhone Settings in iOS14, the Automatic time setting has an improper time and timezone. So, suggested setting the time and timezone manually under Settings. Then either restarts the phone (or) Turn ON and Turn OFF Airplane Mode, saving user time to restart the phone. Now, the DST time and timezone issues are fixed.
  20. A new cell registration technique has been introduced where a new configuration API will encapsulate the cell’s contents and background view properties. It works based on “States” to set and update data into the cell. So, the user doesn’t have to use “Cell Identifiers” to register the cell in UICollectionView.

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Keychain – An effective way of securing sensitive information on iOS mobile apps

Mobile devices are a significant propellant for modern-day digital technology. Mobile devices are compact and the quickest mode to establish instant communication, eclipsing long distances. The underlying element that enables this exchange between individuals using their mobile devices is data. It is data exchanged between two or more devices that make communication or any other activity possible.

The digital mobile technology baseline is a vast data collection, stored either locally or remotely, sharing numerous information fields for multiple purposes. Flexible Image Transport System or FITS is a digital file format useful for storing, transmission, and processing data that in common parlance refers to information or data related to people such as photos, audio, video, text formats, travel itineraries, or shopping details. Private data can never be seen in a silo. It has to coexist with privacy policies that ensure optimal data security.

Mobile devices are inevitable in modern life, and securing mobile data is a critical concern in a digitally-driven world for quite. While there is increasing awareness among individuals to safeguard their data, cybercriminals are always on the lookout for loopholes. There are umpteen safeguards in place to thwart cybercrime, but the slightest of negligence can be an invitation to trouble such as phishing or data theft.

This post is a DIY for iOS developers to enable Keychain wrapper to secure small chunks of data on applications and secure services.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of setting up a keychain wrapper for your iOS app, here’s what Apple has to say about the keychain wrapper API.

‘The keychain services API helps you solve this problem by giving your app a mechanism to store small bits of user data in an encrypted database called a keychain. When you securely remember the password for them, you free the user to choose a complicated one.

Keychain – An effective way of securing sensitive information on iOS mobile apps

Keychain wrapper can be considered to be one of the most secure technologies to store sensitive data, such as passwords, authentication tokens, or session data. Its security stems from the automatic encryption of data that is enabled before the file is stored in the system without the need of building encryption algorithms.

Following are the details on how to use keychain wrapper in mobile application development.

Install SwiftKeychainWrapper framework either by cocoapods or carthage. Sample code for few of the common usages are as follows

Add data value to keychain:
let saveThe Data: Bool = KeychainWrapper.standard.set(“Some String”, forKey: “myKey”)
Retrieve data value from keychain:
let retrieveTheData: String? = KeychainWrapper.standard.string(forKey: “myKey”)
Removedata value from keychain:
let removeTheData: Bool = KeychainWrapper.standard.removeObject(forKey: “myKey”)

Developers can do the following in Keychain Wrapper:

“Service Name” – used to customize bundle identifier value. By default, app Bundle ID is used to store the data in keychain
Data can be shared between applications using keychain by “Access Group”
By default, all items saved to keychain can only be accessed when the device is unlocked. To change this accessibility, an optional withAccessibility param can be set on all requests to select the accessibility level desired
To access the data in keychain in all the different devices used by the users, we can synchronize the data in iCloud
Unlike “User Defaults” – Data stored in Keychain will not get deleted while app cleared from cache (or) uninstalled from the device

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