iPhone iOS 14.6 Released With Apple Card Family And AirTag Tweaks

Apple has released iOS 14.6, bringing updates to Apple Card along with new AirTag options for iPhone users. Headline feature of the new software is Apple Card Family, which allows Apple's credit card to be shared with up to five people in your Family Sharing group.

Apple announced the option recently, promising it would be an easier way to give younger people access to payment options, as well as for multiple people to build a credit score together. Anyone over 13 years of age in the Family Sharing group can be given access to an Apple Card.

Anybody 18 or over can be a co-owner, with a combined credit limit, visibility of the other users' spending, and a single monthly bill at the end of it all. Both will build credit history based on use, too. Anybody over 13, meanwhile, can be a "participant" on the account, with their use of it visible to co-owners and control over purchase limits. Participants over 18 can opt-in to credit reporting.

As you'd hope, there are options around limits and spending controls, so that people can't go wild with their new (virtual) card. There's also group expense tracking. Existing Apple Card users can merge two Apple Card accounts together, for a higher shared credit limit; they'll keep whichever is the lower APR of the two accounts. Co-owners and participants will get Daily Cash, too, based on their Apple Card spending.

Elsewhere in iOS 14.6, the Podcasts app is adding subscription support – both for channels, and for individual shows.

For AirTag and Find My, there's a new Lost mode option for adding contact details. Instead of showing your phone number when someone finds an AirTag and taps it against their NFC-enabled device, you'll be able to set an email address instead. AirTag will also show the partially-masked phone number of the owner.

As always, there are some bugfixes included in the iOS update too. Unlock with Apple Watch – which allows those wearing a mask to still get access to their iPhone without having to punch in a passcode or PIN, even if Face ID can't see them properly – should now work in situations where it previously stopped after using Lock iPhone on an Apple Watch.

Reminders have been tweaked to fix them showing as blank lines, and Bluetooth device behavior – which sometimes saw audio routed to different devices, or disconnect altogether – during calls has been addressed, too. An issue where iPhones would be sluggish during startup has also been fixed. Finally, Voice Control users will be able to unlock their iPhone for the first time after a restart using voice alone.

iOS 14.6 is available now. If you have your iPhone set to auto-update it'll probably install by itself overnight; alternatively you can trigger that manually by going to Settings > General > Software Update.