A week after revealing its new iPhone 16 series, Apple Watch Series 10, and other items at its September event – Apple released iOS 18. Your iPhone will get many new features from the operating system, like as enhanced customization options for your home screen and upgrades for the Messages app.
How to upgrade to iOS 18?
While iOS 18 has been released, it may not be immediately visible to you. That’s not an issue; if you’ve enabled automatic updates, your phone will let you know – when it’s ready to install.
In case you are impatient, launch the Settings application and select General > Software Update. Try refreshing the page by swiping down many times – if you don’t see anything. Additionally, by tapping Automatic Updates at the top of the screen, you can check if you have enabled automatic updates.
Although you need not buy a new phone every year, we recommend you update to the most recent operating system version to ensure you have access to the most recent security patches – and privacy enhancements. You can run iOS 18 on any second-generation iPhone SE, iPhone XR, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, or newer (iPhones 11 through 15).
10 iOS 18 Features You Must Know About
1. Personalize your home screen to the fullest (even more)
Customizing your iPhone’s home screen hasn’t always been easy. Yes, you can use Shortcuts to completely customize the design and make (or purchase) themed app-icon packs. However, iOS 18’s new home-screen personalization options allow you to simply tint your app icons to match your phone’s backdrop if you lack the motivation or time to do that. Additionally, you may turn on dark mode for your icons or have them change automatically – from day to night. When the apps begin to jiggle, long-press the screen to edit it. Then, tap the Edit button – located in the upper-left corner. Both the app’s size and the background’s brightness can be changed.
2. Send upgraded texts to everyone (even Android users)
Good news! There will be an improvement for text messages sent between Android and iPhone. (Unfortunately, Android users continue to be restricted to green bubbles.) Images and videos will be provided in a higher resolution on iOS 18 due to its support for the RCS messaging standard. This means that, instead of seeing a low-res clip that appears to have been taken with a camcorder from the 1990s, you will be able to watch the adorable video of your nieces and nephews. Additionally, you can verify whether your friends who possess Android phones are truly receiving your texts—even if they don’t respond—by looking at their read receipts. Any iPhone running iOS 18 can get support for RCS.
3. Reorganize your photos
It could be a little confusing the first time you use the Photos app after updating to iOS 18. The top of your library is still organized into a chronological grid, but as you scroll down, you’ll notice newly created photo groupings that were created automatically. For instance, People & Pets showcases the people and animals in your pictures, while Trips compiles pictures from your journeys.
You can change it totally if you don’t like it, but it’s an intriguing approach – to look through your photo collection. You can move and rearrange these parts by scrolling all the way to the bottom and selecting Customize & Reorder. To arrange Pinned Collections so that the most relevant groups are shown first, tap Modify.
A new Tap to Cash option in Apple Wallet is being introduced in iOS 18 for those who wish to pay money to someone without sharing personal information. If these requirements are satisfied, you and the recipient can send money only by tapping your iPhones together. However, you must have money stored in Apple Cash and you can only send money to iPhone owners running – iOS 18. Go to Wallet > Apple Cash > Send or request > Tap to cash to activate it. After entering the desired amount and tapping your iPhone to the recipient’s iPhone, you’re done.
5. Save hiking trails offline
As much as we love the outdoors, the thought of venturing into the woods without mobile service makes us nervous. With trail maps for every US national park, Apple Maps attempts to allay that fear. For instance, a list of trails appears when you search for “hikes in Yosemite” in Maps. You can explore what’s offered and store maps for offline use. AllTrails is a well-known program that charges a monthly fee in order to store trail maps offline. This is one of its selling points. It is now free to use with Apple Maps.
6. Sync your calendar with your reminders
If your to-do list is your lifeblood, you may already be using one of our recommended to-do list apps—Todoist, our top pick, now integrates with Google Calendar. However, you may make a to-do list in Reminders that will now automatically appear on the iOS Calendar app if you don’t want to install a different app. Additionally, you can start new reminders right in Calendar.
A small style change is also made to the calendar: in the month and year displays, color-coded events now shrink to lines and dots. It’s a convenient method to see what’s on the horizon, or at the very least, to break up the monotony of your packed schedule – with some nice colors.
7. Make sure your passwords are secure
Though they might not sound thrilling, password managers are really important. For quite some time, Apple’s Keychain has been surreptitiously handling passwords on iPhones; nevertheless, it’s likely that most users have never observed it dormant in the Settings menu. Apple is now updating its Passwords app with the same features and any passwords you’ve already input. This clear, colorful app breaks out passkeys and 2FA codes for convenient access and makes it simple to find your passwords for websites and Wi-Fi networks. Simple capabilities in the program allow you to share your credentials with other people. This could be the one thing that persuades owners of iPhones to encrypt their accounts.
8. Keep a more thoughtful journal
When Apple released its lightweight journaling app in iOS 17, we were pleased with the functionality it included and the way it was designed. The State of Mind feature in iOS 18 allows you to rapidly record your moods using mood shapes in the Journal app. You can also choose to share this information with the Health app so that you may monitor your mood over time. Additionally, the Journal app now has additional writing-prompt widgets, rich text formatting options (bold, italics, and the like), statistics showing how much you write, and the ability to convert your voice logs into text by adding a transcription to the linked audio.
9. Customize the control center
The most visually striking aspects of iOS 18 are the customizable colors and home screen configurations, but the Control Center updates are a power user’s paradise. iOS 18 allows you to choose and arrange your controls from a much broader list of alternatives, which now includes controls from third-party apps, as opposed to a single page of preselected controls. Swipe down from the top-right corner of the Control Center and long-press the screen to customize it. All of the controls are repositionable across all pages and can be resized with a rounded edge. To view all of the controls that are accessible, tap Add a control at the bottom of the screen.
10. Lock down sensitive apps
Apple has made it more difficult for criminals to take over your life by simply stealing your phone, but the issue still exists: Almost all of your apps are available to whoever finds your phone if it is unlocked. With iOS 18, you may lock particular apps, making it necessary to enter a passcode, Face ID, or Touch ID to open them. That works wonderfully for apps related to banking and medicine, or anything you’d want people not accidentally use.
iOS 18 lets you transfer apps to a secret folder that requires authentication in order to view them. There are some apps that you don’t want anyone to access at all. Notifications are not generated and searchable content is deleted from locked and hidden apps.
Final Word
Apple introduces new iPhone models every fall, but you may access new features without upgrading. Installing iOS 18, which is available now, will let you to start customizing your home screen in new ways, text high-resolution videos to your Android friends, and keep your passwords safe in Apple’s sleek new password manager—all without having to purchase an iPhone 16.