Apple’s latest iPhone update brings these new and useful features to your phone.
Apple released iOS 18 on Sept. 16, a week after the company announced its new iPhone 16 and 16 Pro lineup, Apple Watch Series 10 and more at its September event. The company announced the operating system at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June. The operating system brings a lot of new features to your iPhone, like more ways to customize your home screen and updates to the Messages app.
I’ve used the operating system since it was released in beta after WWDC. In that time, I’ve explored the features Apple mentioned at its event, and I uncovered a few other features the company didn’t mention.
Here’s what you should know about the new features and improvements iOS 18 brings to your iPhone.
Customizable home and lock screens
You’ve been able to customize your iPhone’s home and lock screens with widgets and different backgrounds, but iOS 18 lets you customize your home screen’s apps and layout, as well as your phone’s lock screen functions.
During the WWDC, Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, showed how iOS 18 lets you arrange your iPhone’s apps and widgets on your home screen however you want. Previously, these icons would fill your home screen from top to bottom, sometimes obstructing backgrounds you might like. iOS 18 lets you arrange your icons around your background or in any way you want — something Android has offered for many years.
You can also easily customize the appearance of your app’s icons. You can give your icons a dark mode filter or tint your icons to match your wallpaper.
The operating system also lets you swap out the camera and flashlight functions on your iPhone’s lock screen. That way you aren’t accidentally turning your iPhone’s flashlight on while putting it in your pocket — but you might open another app instead.
Updated Control Center
Apple also announced at WWDC that iOS 18 updates your iPhone’s Control Center. With the operating system, you can access more controls for things, like whatever music you’re listening to and specific apps. You can also change which apps you see, as well as their size, so you have quicker access to the buttons you use more often.
And third-party apps are tailoring their apps for the new Control Center as well. For example, you can add an Instagram control to your Control Center so you can easily access the social media app. Other third-party apps will likely follow suit.
Messages gets a lot of upgrades
Your iPhone’s Messages app also gets an update with iOS 18. With the latest operating system, you can schedule messages to send later, react to messages with more Tapbacks and format messages and specific words in your messages with text effects. If you want to emphasize something in a text, you can bold it, underline or use other effects to get your point across.
The OS also brings Messages via satellite to many iPhones. The feature works similarly to Apple’s Emergency SOS via satellite feature introduced on the iPhone 14 and 15 series. Emergency SOS is for making an emergency call even if you don’t have a signal, but Messages via satellite will let you send a message to anyone, even without a signal. So you can message your spouse or parents to let them know how your camping trip is going.
Apple also brings RCS — rich communication support — to Messages, so your iPhone will play nice with your friend or family member’s Android device.
Lock and hide certain apps
Letting someone borrow your iPhone can be a nerve-wracking experience, especially if you don’t want them to see or access certain apps. iOS 18 lets you lock and hide apps.
If you lock an app, it will then require your Face ID or passcode to unlock and access it. If you just don’t want someone to know you have a certain app on your iPhone, you can stash it in a Hidden apps folder in your App Library. This is similar to removing apps from your home screen without deleting them from your iPhone, but it arranges all your hidden apps in one place.
Redesigned Photos app
It can be fun to look at memories in your Photos app, but navigating through the app can be challenging if you take a lot of photos. So Apple redesigned your iPhone’s Photos app in iOS 18.
The redesign should make it easier to find specific photos by organizing your photos in more ways, like in categories like Recent Days and Pinned Collections. Photos will also be organized by theme, so if you’re looking for photos from a trip, you should be able to find them faster.
The updated Photos app in iOS 18 also lets you filter out receipts and screenshots so they don’t clog up your Library.
New Camera settings
Apple also introduces a new setting for your iPhone’s Camera app with iOS 18. The new setting is called Controls Menu. To find it, go to Settings > Camera > Preserve Settings.
“Preserve the previously used camera tool when expanding the controls menu, rather than showing the list of camera tools,” the setting’s description reads.
You can also now record a video and play music at the same time through your iPhone. This also works for screen recordings. While the audio quality for videos with music isn’t great, the audio quality on screen recordings is pretty good.
New password manager app
Apple turned its password keychain feature into a full-blown app called Passwords. According to Apple, Passwords safely stores all your credentials in one place. It can also sync your passwords across your Apple devices. That way if you change your Netflix password on one device but not on another, the password will follow you so you don’t forget it.
Apple Intelligence for Siri and more — on some iPhones
Apple announced that it’s rolling out Apple Intelligence, its spin on generative AI, in iOS 18. However, Apple wrote on its website that these improvements will be available only on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max for now.
Apple Intelligence will bring improvements to Siri to make the assistant more capable and helpful, it will allow you to create new images called Genmojis and it will bring new writing tools and capabilities to those iPhones.
These features weren’t included in the initial release os iOS 18, but they are present in the first public beta of iOS 18.1. There’s no word on when Apple will release iOS 18.1 to the general public.