Apple has finally released the much-awaited iOS 13.5 update with special resources for helping iPhone users in the COVID-19 pandemic situation. The iOS 13.5 update brings two special features to tackle COVID-19, one is the ability to bypass Face ID when using a Face Mask, and the other giving developers an API for building COVID-19 Exposure Notification Apps.
COVID-19 Exposure Logging and Notifications is the biggest highlight of iOS 13.5 update. It enables an iPhone to share and receive random IDs with other devices using Bluetooth. These random IDs are collected and stored in an exposure log on the device, which a COVID-19 Exposure app could use to tell if you’ve been exposed to Coronavirus.
To enable COVID-19 Exposure Logging on your iPhone, first, open the Settings app on your iPhone.
Scroll down a bit on the iPhone Settings screen, and select the ‘Privacy’ option when you see it.
From the iPhone Privacy settings screen, select the ‘Health’ option.
Then, finally tap on the ‘COVID-19 Exposure Logging’ option at the top of the screen.
If the feature is available in your country/region, you’ll see an option to enable the ‘Exposure Logging’ toggle switch. Turn it on so that COVID-19 Exposure Notification Apps could use this data to notify you if you’ve been exposed to a COVID-19 infected area.
If the feature isn’t available in your region yet, you won’t be enable it on your iPhone. Instead, you’ll see a ‘Not available in your region’ text on the screen in place of the toggle switch.
After you enable COVID-19 Exposure Logging on your iPhone, keep an eye out for an exposure notification app on the App Store.
At the time of this writing, there aren’t any exposure notification apps available for the iPhone to make use of the COVID-19 Exposure Logging feature. We’ll update this article, as soon as we come to know of an app.
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