Mike Peterson
Apple's new iOS 14 update appears to have a bug that wipes customized default browser and mail settings when a device is reset or restarted.
The iOS 14 update was released on Wednesday. One of its most noteworthy features is the ability to set third-party mail and browser apps as a default alternative to Apple's Mail and Safari.
A day after iOS 14 became available, users started to notice that restarts or resets were wiping their default browser and mail settings. For example, clicking a link after a restart will open that webpage in Safari, even if you set Google Chrome as the default.
It appears, at this point, that the only fix is to manually change the default app settings after a restart, or avoiding a reset in the first place.
The rollout of iOS 14 hasn't gone as smoothly as past releases, since Apple gave developers less than a day to prepare their apps for the update. It isn't clear what's causing the restart bug, however.
As of this writing, many popular browser and mail apps have added support for the default setting. That includes Microsoft Edge and Microsoft Outlook, Google Chrome, DuckDuckGo and the Basecamp-created Hey app.
Earlier on Thursday, Cisco warned users that a new privacy feature in iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 could interfere with mobile device management (MDM) and bring your own device (BYOD) platforms.
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32 Comments
I found another bug today. While watching a YouTube video on my Xs Max running iOS 14 and listening on my AirPods Pro, all of the sudden the song from the Headphone Accommodation settings started playing all by itself. It took me a while to figure out where the music was coming from. It stopped when I closed the Settings app. :)
Yea, a good friend of mine is having MAAAAJOOR problems with iOS 14 and she has a new iPhone 11. She advised me to hold off on updating. I was already going to. I usually upgrade on day 1, but something told me to hold off on this one. My auto update setting is always off anyway. I like to have control of when to upgrade my devices.
Zero problems so far that would cause me any issues. Multiple iPads and iPhones.
Two phones, 2 iPads- all is well after 18 hours!
I haven't encountered any issues so far with iPhone Xs Max and iPhone 11 but I have no doubt that there are bugs lurking in there. All software has bugs. I fully expect a 14.01 within a couple of weeks at the most. This is the new normal for software. If you want to park on one version for an extended period of time you're going to have to take active measures to enforce this policy yourself. Otherwise, the changes will just keep coming.
At some point I expect that Apple will do something similar to what's done with Windows 10 and some flavors of Linux and have at least two release streams differentiated by the degree of volatility the user is willing to accept. If you keep your Apple device loaded with a beta profile you're effectively staying on the high volatility path. Without the beta profile you're still going to see a steady stream of updates, but the potential for breakage will be much lower.