iOS 14.7 Adds MagSafe Battery Pack Support, Apple Card Family Limits, and Even New HomePod Features

Alongside a watchOS 7.6 update that brings the ECG app to a huge list of 30 additional countries, Apple has also pushed out the public release of iOS 14.7, adding support for its new MagSafe Battery Pack alongside a few other small but interesting new features.

Since Apple’s new MagSafe Battery Pack is now landing in stores and requires iOS 14.7, this is one of the few occasions when it’s been fairly easy to peg the release date for this latest iOS update. While the MagSafe Battery Pack should work fine to charge any iPhone 12 model even if it’s running an older version of iOS 14, you’ll need iOS 14.7 if you want to see the battery pack’s status appear in the Batteries widget.

It also likely adds other power management features relevant to the MagSafe Battery Pack. That’s not all that iOS 14.7 includes, however, as Apple has also snuck in a few other useful new features and bug fixes.

Apple Card users who are taking advantage of Apple’s recently added Apple Card Family features will now be able to more easily manage and combine credit limits right within the Wallet app. Apple also notes that it’s now possible to share a single “co-owned” account with an existing Apple Card user.

You’ll likely need the corresponding HomePod Software 14.7 update to enable this, but with iOS 14.7 you’ll now be able to jump into the Home app and create and manage timers on each of your HomePod speakers — something that was previously only possible via Siri voice commands.

Fans of Apple’s Weather app outside the US will now be able to see air quality information in both Weather and Maps in Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, South Korea, and Spain.

Apple has also made at least one small tweak to its Podcasts app, which got a slightly controversial redesign earlier this year. According to the release notes, users will now be able to choose to see all shows, or only those shows that they’re following in their Podcasts library.

iOS 14.7 also fixes a few bugs, returning the Share Playlist menu option to Apple Music, and improving the stability of Dolby Atmos and Apple Music lossless audio playback.

The release notes also add that battery service messages should now show up properly on iPhone 11 models, and resolves a problem with braille displays in Apple Mail.

It’s too early to tell whether Apple’s HomePod Software 14.7 update will fix the overheating problems that some have been experiencing. Since this problem seems to occur most frequently when using a set of original full-size HomePods with an Apple TV in Home Theatre Audio mode, this could also be a function of the tvOS 14.7 update that was released this week.

This problem has occurred more frequently in Apple’s tvOS 15 and HomePod Software 15 betas, although based on our experience, the latest beta of tvOS 15 seems to address the issue that we had in both tvOS 14.6 and the first tvOS 15 beta. With beta software being the way it is, your mileage may vary, of course.

Oddly enough, this week’s iOS 14.7 release was not accompanied by a corresponding release of iPadOS 14.7. It’s unclear right now when we can expect to see that, but it’s not surprising that Apple may have prioritized the release of iOS 14.7 to ensure that users were ready for its new MagSafe Battery Pack.