Apple Intelligence has been the most talked about feature on iOS 18, but there are a lot of other improvements that deserve your attention. While AI features seem fun, they won’t be available on eligible iPhones until iOS 18.1 comes out in October. Not to mention, it will initially be made available in the US only. The good news is that apart from Apple Intelligence, iOS 18 has tons of features that improve different aspects of your iPhone. Here are some of our favourites that we recommend giving a shot!
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In This Article
New home screen customisations
Personalising your home screen on the iPhone is now easy, accessible, and intuitive. You don’t need to rely on third-party icon apps anymore. Moving past the rigidity of the app grid, you can place app icons anywhere on the home page. If you want the subject of the wallpaper to be the focus of the home screen, you can space the icons accordingly. But that’s not all! Your iPhone can now intelligently recognise the primary colours of the wallpaper and add that shade to the app icons. This gives you more aesthetic control over how your home screen looks. As far as personalisation goes, this is a big plus!
Lock and hide apps
Android OEMs like Samsung, Xiaomi, OnePlus, and more have had the option to lock and hide apps for several years. Apple has finally added these helpful privacy tools on iOS 18. If you want to keep your personal apps away from prying eyes, you can hide them from the app drawer/home screen and add Face ID as a requirement to access them. To lock an app on your iPhone, long-press its icon on the home screen and select ‘Require Face ID’. To hide and lock it, select ‘Hide and Require Face ID’.
Collections in Photos app
The refreshed Photos app in iOS 18 has a new look. Images with similar themes like Trips and People & Pets are grouped together for easy browsing. These collections take the bottom third of the screen, with the library grid occupying the rest of the real estate. You can customise and reorder the collection or choose to hide them entirely. The new Photos app also lets you hide your screenshots from the grid. The new layout and design of the app can be overwhelming at first, but you get used to it after a while. Apple will be integrating this app with AI features in the coming months, so there’s a lot to look forward to!
RCS messaging
RCS messaging may not matter to folks who primarily use iMessage, but it has helped bridge the divide between Android and iOS messaging. Now that the iPhone does not rely on MMS to send and receive media from Android devices, the quality of the images and videos will rise significantly. Having RCS support also means that the text sent to Android users will now be end-to-end encrypted. Other features include delivery and read receipts, greater character limit, typing indicators, suggested replies, and more.
Send Later
If you struggle with remembering, birthdays, anniversaries, and other important dates, you can now plan your greetings in advance and schedule them for later. The Send Later feature in the Messages app can be accessed by tapping the plus icon next to the text box. Hit the send icon after setting the date and time to schedule the text. You can always edit the text until its delivery time. The scheduled messages are encrypted and stored in Apple’s servers until they are delivered. The only catch is that this feature works only for iMessage.
Passwords app
The new Passwords app on iOS 18 is a successor to the iCloud Keychain. Instead of digging through your device’s settings to find the Keychain, the Passwords app can be accessed from the home screen itself. Most of the iCloud Keychain features are already a part of the Passwords app. On top of that, you can use this app to generate two-factor authentication codes and share existing passwords with friends and family. It goes without saying that the Passwords app can be synced across all your devices.
Tap to Cash
Have you ever wanted to send Apple Cash to someone without sharing your email or phone number? Well, it is now possible with Tap to Cash on Apple Wallet. Once you have enabled this feature on your iPhone, you can share money with another iPhone user by touching your devices. For this feature to work, the other iPhone must be updated to iOS 18 as well. You can also access Tap to Cash by adding a widget to the lock screen or a control to the Control Centre. If your iPhone has the Action button, you can customise it to trigger this feature.
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Conclusion
And there you have it. These are our favourite iOS 18 features that you should try right now. If you’re excited to try the Apple Intelligence suite of features, you will need to wait until October to get a taste of it. The full list of features will be rolled out by the end of the year. Keep watching this space for more updates!
