I've been using Apple's big new iPhone update for a full week — here are 8 of the most useful features I've found so far

Siri is far less intrusive in iOS 14. Rather than occupying the entire screen when summoned, Siri now appears as a tiny glowing orb near the bottom of the screen, making it easier to ask a quick question without disrupting whatever you were previously doing on your phone.

Apple is also making it easier to make sure you're copy-and-pasting the right content from your clipboard. When you paste text, you'll see a small message near the top of the screen telling you which app you've pasted from.

More importantly, however, the feature could serve as a privacy measure for indicating when apps might be unknowingly accessing your iPhone's clipboard. Reddit and LinkedIn were found to be doing just that and have since updated their apps to stop this practice.

I only really use Memoji in sticker form, which is why I was particularly excited to see some new sticker options in iOS 14.

Memoji stickers are exactly what they sound like — emoji that are meant to look like you. Apple added Memoji sticker packs last year in iOS 13 and has now added more options in iOS 14, including a fist bump Memoji.

You can also customize your Memoji with new features like a face mask.

Apple is also adding some new accessibility features in iOS 14, one of which being the ability to set up Sound Recognition.

This feature enables your iPhone to listen up for certain sounds, such as shouting, police sirens, pets, and water running so that it can alert you accordingly. Although it's an accessibility-oriented feature, I could imagine it being useful during instances in which I may not hear the doorbell — such as when I'm wearing noise cancelling headphones, for example.

I've noticed it working well in practice so far; as shown in the screenshot above, I received a notification telling me that my cat may have been trying to get my attention in the middle of the night.

Apple wants to help you set a healthy sleep goal and stick to it in iOS 14. When the update rolls out, you'll be able to set a sleep goal and create a sleep schedule designed to help you achieve that goal.

Apple has offered a Bedtime mode that dims the display and hides notifications on the lock screen until the morning for years. With iOS 14, however, Apple has folded this into the Sleep section of Health app and added more controls for managing a sleep schedule and setting goals.

I have mine set to kick into bedtime mode 45 minutes before my scheduled sleep time, which prompts my iPhone to dim the lock screen and displays a nice message wishing me a restful sleep.

Apple also wants to provide more transparency about when the microphone and camera are being used. You'll now see a tiny colored dot near the top of the screen when the microphone or camera is being used. In the screenshot above, for example, you'll notice that there's a green dot in the top right corner to show that the camera is in use.

You may notice when taking a selfie that the result doesn't look quite the way it appeared in your iPhone's viewfinder. That's about to change in iOS 14, as there's a new setting that enables your iPhone to snap a selfie that looks like your mirror image.

Just navigate to Settings > Camera > Mirror Front Camera.

If you set dozens of alarms like I do, you're probably very familiar with the process of scrolling through the number picker to set the minute and hour.

Thankfully, Apple is moving to a more convenient method for setting alarms in iOS 14. Rather than requiring you to scroll to find the right number, your iPhone will just pull up the number pad so that you can type it in.