iOS 14
i
Developer	Apple
Announced	June 22, 2020 (WWDC, online)
Initial release	September 16, 2020
Final release	14.8.1 (October 26, 2021)
Launch devices	iPhone 12 generation (October 2020)
Preceded by	iOS 13
Succeeded by	iOS 15

iOS 14 is the fourteenth major release of iOS, released on September 16, 2020 — announced at the first online-only WWDC of the pandemic, and shipped with barely a day's notice to developers, a scheduling stunt the iPhone 12 generation's October delay produced. It changed the home screen more than any release since 2007: widgets left their sidebar ghetto and landed on the grid in three sizes, the App Library auto-organized the overflow, and whole pages could be hidden — kicking off a viral home-screen customization wave (and, via Shortcuts icon aliasing, the custom-icon aesthetic economy).

Its second act shipped in the spring: App Tracking Transparency (14.5, April 2021) required user permission for cross-app tracking, at a stroke rewriting mobile advertising economics — Meta alone attributed a ten-billion-dollar revenue hit to it — and making iOS 14 the most industry-shaking privacy release in the platform's history.

Home-screen widgets and App Library; App Clips (sub-10 MB app slices launched from codes and links); compact UI for calls and Siri (ending the full-screen takeover); Picture in Picture on iPhone; default browser and mail app choice; Back Tap accessibility gestures; Translate; cycling and EV routing in Maps; and privacy "nutrition labels" in the App Store. The 14.5 update added ATT, Apple Watch unlocking for masked faces, and AirTag support.

Every iOS 13 device — the iPhone 12 and iPhone 11 generations back through iPhone 6s and the first iPhone SE, plus the seventh-generation iPod touch. The second consecutive zero-drop year.

Widgets and the App Library ended the static-grid era for good — the current customizable home screen builds directly on this release — and App Clips previewed the instant-software model. But ATT is the legacy history will file it under: the single OS switch that forced the advertising industry off individualized cross-app tracking, redrew the fortunes of ad-funded platforms, and established Apple's privacy agenda as a market force with a body count measured in billions of dollars.