Apple iOS 18 Features: Do You Know the New Apple iOS 18 Update Features?
- written By Tahir Alvi
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It’s mid-2024, so you know what that means? Another new version of iOS is coming to an iPhone near you. I’ve been testing my iPhone’s latest version of Apple iOS 18 for the past couple of weeks. It’s been in beta, and now that the public beta is out, you too can test it on an iPhone before it officially releases for everyone in September.
There are some interesting things in this version of the new iOS update. In the past, some features depended on having a friend with an iPhone or another Apple device in your life. But it’s kind of the opposite with these; they’re all just basically new features for the iPhone itself. I’d love to see that.
1: Control Center
When you pull down from the corner, the new Control Center in Apple iOS 18 is, first of all, a little bit more colorful, and it’s paginated. It’s now three pages. I’ll be honest, I’ll probably never really use the second two pages, but they include a full-page visualizer for whatever media is playing and a list of all the one-touch toggles for basic connectivity.
But actually, it turns out this full-page list in iOS 18 is just an expanded version of what you already had on the first page, so you can get there with a couple more taps. The changes in iOS 18 make the Control Center slightly more functional but still mostly familiar.
On that first page in iOS 18, if you hit the plus button in the corner, it shows a grid, and then you can play with the size and placement of anything with a tab in that bottom corner.
They all have these predefined sizes that they morph between, so you can mess around with designing your perfect layout for your Control Center in iOS 18. You can add new controls; there’s a massive list of them to search through and surface things you do often. Right now, these are all Apple app controls introduced in iOS 18.
What I’m more interested in, though, is that these are controls, like I said, not widgets. They’re for controlling things very directly, like turning on Wi-Fi or adjusting the brightness in iOS 18.
Apple has said that third-party apps in iOS 18 will be able to build in controls as well. There aren’t any here now, but I’m very much looking forward to things like a one-touch option to turn on the AC in the car or open up the barcode scanner in my calorie tracker app. Having more controls surfaced here in iOS 18 is going to be pretty sweet.
We’ve also noticed this new flashlight control, which allows you to control the torch’s intensity and beam width when you click it. For some reason, the intensity part definitely works, but I’m not as convinced about the beam width. Still, it’s a fabulous UI addition to iOS 18.
Oh, also, in iOS 18, there’s a new button up here to turn off your phone, kind of like Android added a while ago in the settings. And finally, you can now change the controls on your lock screen from the default, which has been the flashlight and the camera forever.
In Apple iOS 18, you can hold down to customize the lock screen and go to town again.
2: The Passwords app
You know, every once in a while, a new update installs an app on everyone’s phones and drops it onto your home screen. This is one of those times. Essentially, this update breaks out all of the password tools previously buried in the phone’s settings and turns them into an app.
Your iPhone has been saving your passwords for a while now—saving Wi-Fi passcodes, remembering all this stuff. This app is just a super simple way of finding everything in one place, searching through it, and making sense of it. Plus, it also supports some new features.
For example, it includes two-factor authentication and passkeys, along with a few extra features that might be enough to make you switch from whatever password manager app you’re currently using on your iPhone to Apple’s Passwords app. So at the bottom left, you can create shared passwords and pass keys within a group of trusted contacts. It works with other people with iPhones anyway.
When you’re signing up for a new account, it’ll do the same thing it always does: offer a super secure password and then offer to remember it for you. What I found interesting is that it doesn’t have a master password. It just seems to default to Face ID on the iPhone. So, if you have Face ID, it will ask for that to log in—no master password required
The main reason I won’t be using this app is that I still use an Android phone daily. And, of course, they didn’t make an Android version of this Passwords app. They did make a Mac app and a Chrome extension, which is interesting, but no Android app. Since I still log into a bunch of stuff on Android, it’s not for me.
3: Home screen customization
the day has finally come. There is new customization stuff available to iPhone home screens. iPhone users can now put their icons anywhere on their home screens that they want.
Welcome to 2024 iPhone users. Who’s got it better than you?
Now, everything still snaps to the grid, of course, but now you can put icons on the right side or the bottom of your home screen where they’ll be reachable and they won’t have to snap back up to the top. How cool is that?
First, they give you widgets.
Now they give you this. It’s unbelievable stuff. But now, OK, if you want to customize even further, you hold down anywhere on the home screen and there’s a little edit button at the top. You hit that and then you hit customize. And then this is it. This is the entire home screen customization menu now for the iPhone.
So you can go dark mode, which tints your wallpaper a little darker, and then sets your icons that have a dark mode version to dark mode. Or you could set light mode, which is the opposite. It sets your icons to light and it tints your wallpaper light and then automatic.
But there’s also this large button here, which just makes all of your icons larger, but then also removes the text. Honestly, kind of clean. Not gonna lie.But then there’s this tinted button, which feels kind of cursed. So this is already kind of a weird looking icon. When you click it, it lets you tint the color of all the icons on your home screen to a single matching color, which sounds kind of cool in theory to match your wallpaper.
And actually, there’s even a color picker to drop exactly the same color that you’re using from your wallpaper as your tint color. But there’s just something about this tint that I can’t quite get right. Like I haven’t gotten any combination to really look that good at all.
Now, there’s been some updates on this since the first beta still doesn’t look great, like it looks better than before. But here’s what I think is going on here.
Basically, it would set all the icons to a monochrome version, but if an app didn’t support it, it just didn’t change. So a lot of people had a mix of monochrome icons and colorful icons, which also doesn’t look good at all. So I guess the tinting method could be considered a workaround. I’m sure people will play with this more. Icons will continue to get updates. I’m sure someday maybe it’ll look great for some people, but I haven’t seen that yet.
4: The little things (and RCS)
Again, There are a bunch of tiny little things and small features that individually are not huge, but they kind of feel like they add up to a bunch of useful things in the end. A lot of them didn’t even make the keynote, but like Game Mode, for example, they talked about this.
We know that when you have a game open, it gives it CPU priority and minimizes Bluetooth latency for any wireless headphones or controllers. That’s a really simple thing, but it’s nice. Apple Intelligence is behind features like this, making the experience even better.
The Photos app also got a redesign, but I am more impressed with the smart search inside Photos. It works much better. For example, if I search for something like a license plate, it not only recognizes and finds all the photos in your gallery with license plates, but it also gives you suggestions so you can narrow it down to find the right one. Searching actually works.
I’ve also noticed they added a bunch of shortcuts to Shazam everywhere, including an action button preset as one of the new defaults in the Settings app. This wasn’t here before. I thought that was interesting.
Then I Googled it and apparently, Apple bought Shazam not that long ago, which I had totally forgotten about. So there you have more of that. And RCS support does appear to finally be live on the iPhone in 2024, and it’s going great.
Now, as I predicted, it is still a green bubble, but you can now finally text between any modern Android phone and an iPhone and actually get high-quality media.
I sent myself a three-megabyte image file from the iPhone, and I got a full-quality three-megabyte image on Android.
There are also now typing indicators and read receipts.Now reactions seem to be working well, so it’s not fully integrated into a blue bubble iMessage like maybe some people were hoping, but Apple can now say that they finally did it. And now that person from that one interview doesn’t have to buy his mom an iPhone.
The best new feature in iOS 18 is the calculator. By default, when you open the calculator app, it just looks like a basic calculator. This looks very familiar. But at the bottom left, there’s a little toggle where you can switch to a scientific calculator. Apple Intelligence ensures this seamless transition and adds a touch of innovation to even the most classic features.
Or you can switch to this new thing called Math Notes. It basically looks like a notes app, where you can create a new note and literally start handwriting math notes. You can literally write an equation, and if you happen to write an equal sign, it can automatically solve that equation for you and keep it updated as you continue writing or typing. It’s pretty sick.
There are also all kinds of other things it can do, from variables to graphs. It’s basically doing everything I was asking Wolfram Alpha to do lately.
But a kind of underrated part of this is how well-considered it feels. And it also syncs across devices, just like a bunch of notes.
I’m more impressed by this than anything else I’ve seen in iOS 18.
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Alvi Hosain
I am a tech enthusiast with over 1.5 years of experience in phone reviews and gadgets. Passionate about making technology easier for everyone, I focus on creating smartphone reviews and detailed tech guides. Whether exploring the latest devices or providing tips on how to get the most out of your gadgets, I love helping others navigate the world of technology. Known among my friends for solving phone-related problems, I enjoy discussing technology and staying up-to-date with the latest industry trends.
