I found this Claude explanation of firmware update useful in providing additional detail and context.
Here's a breakdown of each item, with context on what's happening and when you'd actually run into it:
1. American Football added to Action Priority. The R5 II has subject-detection modes (People, Animals, Vehicles), and within People there's an "Action Priority" submode tuned to specific sports (it already had soccer, basketball, and volleyball). Football was a gap because helmets and shoulder pads hide the facial and body cues the AI normally uses to lock onto humans — autofocus would often hunt or jump between players. With this update, set the camera to People → Action Priority → American Football when shooting games at any level, from high school Friday nights to the NFL. The camera will weight detection toward the helmet/pad silhouette instead of looking for a clean face.
2. Improved tracking for Register People Priority, even when Off. The R5 II lets you "register" specific faces (up to ten) so the AF system prioritizes them in a crowd — useful for shooting your kid's soccer game where you want focus to stick to them, not the other team. Two things are changing: the registered-people feature itself works better in hard cases (profile shots, partially blocked faces, small-in-frame subjects, and children specifically), AND general human detection is improved even with the feature switched Off. The asterisked warning is important: updating wipes any registered face data, so if you've trained the camera on family members, dump that data to an SD card first via Save/load registered data on card, then reload after updating.
3. AF for close-up demos in more movie modes. This is a feature aimed squarely at YouTubers, product reviewers, and unboxing videos. When you hold an object up close to the lens, the camera detects the gesture and snaps focus from your face to the object, then back when you lower it. Previously this was limited in which movie exposure modes supported it; now it works in Movie Manual Exposure, Movie Auto Exposure, and the various Creative Zone movie modes, so you can combine it with your preferred exposure control and AF area settings. If you've ever held something up to camera and watched focus refuse to leave your face, this is the fix.
4. Wi-Fi frequency band selection (5 GHz vs 2.4 GHz) in the Bluetooth-to-Wi-Fi handoff. Canon cameras commonly use a low-power Bluetooth pairing with your phone, then upgrade to Wi-Fi when you actually need bandwidth (transferring a RAW, browsing images). Now you can pick the band for that Wi-Fi side. Use 5 GHz when you want speed and you're in a crowded RF environment (events, hotels, anywhere with dozens of 2.4 GHz devices) — transfers will be much faster. Use 2.4 GHz when you need range, or when your phone or access point is older and doesn't support 5 GHz reliably.
5. Number of connections for FTP transfer. FTP transfer is how working press photographers (sports, news, motorsport) push images from camera to a remote server during a game or event so editors can publish in near-real-time. "Number of connections" sets how many parallel upload threads the camera opens. More threads = faster overall transfer on a fast network with a capable server, but it can saturate weak links or get throttled. Sports shooters on stadium press Wi-Fi will tune this until they find the sweet spot for their venue.
6. Up to four Color Temp values, with a button to switch between them. White balance in Kelvin (instead of presets like Daylight/Tungsten) gives precise control, and now you can store four different Kelvin values and assign a custom button to cycle through them. The use case is mixed-lighting environments where you keep moving between, say, a daylight-balanced room (5500K) and a tungsten-lit hallway (3200K) — wedding receptions are the classic example. Tap the button, jump to the right WB, keep shooting, no menu diving.
7. False Color works simultaneously with HDR/C.Log View Assist. This is for video shooters. Canon Log and HDR recording look low-contrast and washed-out on the monitor because they preserve dynamic range for post; View Assist applies a temporary LUT-like correction so the image on the screen looks normal while you're recording. False Color, separately, paints the image in colors based on exposure (e.g. red for clipped highlights, green for middle skin tones) so you can dial exposure precisely. Previously these were mutually exclusive — turning on View Assist disabled False Color or vice versa. Now you can use both, so you get a normal-looking preview AND exposure-zone information overlaid on it.
8. Pre-continuous Shooting assignable to a custom button. Pre-continuous Shooting (Canon's name for pre-burst capture) starts buffering frames as soon as you half-press the shutter and writes a half-second or so of pre-shutter-press frames when you fully press. It's how you catch a bird the instant it takes off, or a goalkeeper the instant before the save. Putting it on a custom button means you can toggle it on/off without going into the menu — useful because the buffering does cost battery and write cycles, so you only want it enabled during the unpredictable moments.
9. Save/Load AF-related settings via SD card. AF on the R5 II has dozens of sub-settings (case studies, tracking sensitivity, acceleration, area presets). If you own two bodies — common for wedding and sports shooters — you previously had to manually replicate every setting on the second body. Now you can configure one camera, export settings to a card, and import on the other. Also useful for a rental house, a team of shooters who want identical AF behavior, or just backing up your hard-earned tuning.
10. Electronic level during movie recording. A digital horizon indicator showing tilt and roll. Used to be photo-only; now displays during video too. Most useful for handheld video, locked-off shots where you don't have a tripod head with a bubble level, and quick run-and-gun work where you want to confirm the horizon isn't drifting.
11. Grid display during movie recording. Compositional grid overlays (rule of thirds, etc.) in video mode. Helpful for framing static interview shots, locking off architectural footage, or anyone learning composition.
12. Playback and menu screens on two HDMI outputs. When the camera is feeding an external monitor or recorder via HDMI, you can now mirror not just the live recording feed but also the playback view (for reviewing takes) and the menu screens (for adjusting settings while looking at the big monitor). Useful on set: a client or director can watch playback on the monitor, and a 1st AC can read settings without leaning over the camera.
13. Switch receiver camera group settings from the sender in EOS Multi Remote. EOS Multi Remote lets one camera (the sender) trigger and partially control others (receivers) over wireless — used for multi-angle product shoots, sports remotes mounted around a field, or synchronized multi-camera capture. Cameras are organized into groups, and previously the receiver's group assignment had to be set on each receiver. Now the sender can reconfigure receiver groups remotely, which matters when you've physically mounted a camera somewhere awkward (rafters, goal nets) and don't want to climb back up to change a setting.
14. DPRAW support added. Dual Pixel RAW. The R5 II's sensor has two photodiodes per pixel (the basis of Dual Pixel AF), and DPRAW saves the data from both, giving you two slightly offset perspectives in one file. In Canon's Digital Photo Professional software, this enables Portrait Relighting, Background Clarity, and micro-focus shifting in post. The files are roughly double the size of regular RAW. Useful for portrait and product photographers who want post-capture flexibility; overkill for sports or action where buffer and card speed matter. Set camera shutter to mechanical to enable DPRAW selection in menu.
15. EDSDK/CCAPI support. These are Canon's Software Development Kits — EDSDK is a C/C++ SDK that runs on a host computer connected via USB, and CCAPI is an HTTP-based API that runs over Wi-Fi. They let third-party developers (or your own scripts) control the camera: trigger captures, change settings, download files, run automated tethered workflows. Used in research imaging, automated product photography, photo booths, museum archival rigs, and custom tethering apps that go beyond what Canon's own EOS Utility offers.
16. Err49 fix during SFTP communication. Err49 is a generic communication error. If you've been using SFTP (the encrypted variant of FTP transfer) and seeing repeated Err49 messages mid-transfer, that's now fixed. Relevant if you transfer to a corporate or news-org server that requires SFTP.
17. Auto power-off no longer breaks interval timer shooting. Interval timer (intervalometer) shoots frames at regular intervals for time-lapses. Previously, if auto power-off kicked in between intervals, the camera could end up unable to resume shooting properly. If you've been doing long time-lapses and had sessions die unexpectedly, this is the fix — though as a workaround, people often disable auto power-off entirely for time-lapses.
18. Camera no longer restarts when pressing shutter mid-delete. Self-explanatory: if you were deleting images in playback and pressed the shutter to start shooting again, the camera could restart. Now it handles the interruption cleanly.
19. USB connection to smartphone recognition fix. When connecting the camera to a phone via USB cable (for fast tethered transfers, as an alternative to Wi-Fi), the camera wasn't always recognized. Now resolved. Most relevant for journalists and sports shooters who use USB-to-phone for the fastest possible file transfer to filing apps.
20. General stability improvements. Catch-all for fixes Canon doesn't enumerate — minor crashes, edge-case freezes, memory leaks discovered through telemetry. Always worth installing.
A few practical notes if you're about to update: back up your registered people data first (item 2), check that your batteries are well-charged, and use a freshly formatted card in slot 1 if Canon's updater asks for one. The DPRAW and SDK additions (14, 15) are the biggest "new capability" items; the rest are quality-of-life refinements that mostly matter if you're in the specific workflow each one targets.
