iOS 18 breaks cover: A milestone update for the iPhone, powered by AI

Apple Intelligence and revamped Siri

The major amount of new features, however, are found in the most logical place: Siri.

The voice assistant has received a serious redesign: gone is the globe icon at the bottom of the screen, Siri will now appear as a flashing outline on your screen for a less-intrusive look. The underlying architecture and essential capabilities of Siri have also been reworked. 

The voice assistant is now capable of executing various tasks in your apps, including complex multi-step queries. For example, you can ask Siri to find all pictures of your child wearing a blue jacket and text these to your significant other without any user interaction. Apple says Siri has scored a ton of new app intents, which enable it to control so much more inside stock Apple apps, but an API will allow developers to tap into the AI-powered Siri’s potential. 

Siri now also has a more natural voice, which will make conversing with it a tad more innate. You can now also type to Siri by double-tapping the app handle switch at the bottom of your lock screen. 

iOS 18 new features

Finally, after years of clamoring from users, Apple finally adds freely movable iOS icons to the home screen. While apps and folders will still adhere to the underlying grid, you will be able to put them anywhere you wish so that you have a deeper customization options. Not only that, but icons will automatically get tinted with a darker background if you enable Dark Mode on your device so that they adhere to the device’s overall theme. 

A new Customize Sheet also lets you tint app icons with any color you want, but admittedly, this feature didn’t look too great as demoed on stage. 

iOS 18 also features a redesigned control center that takes a page out of Vision OS as far as overall appearance goes. The Control Center is now multi-paginated: the primary screen shows your phone’s general controls, while a swipe down gets you to your media controls, which feature large album art and controls, as well as AirPlay controls. Another swipe down and you’re into your Apple Home controls. Each toggle can be customized in terms of size, similarly to widgets.

Not only that, but Control Center is also getting custom toggles from third-party app developers thanks to the new Controls API. For example, you can add specific toggles to warm up or cool down your Tesla without ever opening its dedicated app. 

Also, lock screen shortcuts are finally customizable. No longer are you stuck with the flashlight and camera shortcuts.

Moving on to privacy, iOS 18 will finally allow you to lock any app on your phone with Face ID so that you prevent snooping eyes from opening it, even if you hand someone your phone. Not only that, but you will also be able to hide apps and prevent them from appearing in search results, notifications, Siri suggestions, and Spotlight suggestions altogether. 

Other iOS essentials like Messages and Mail are also getting some love. Messages, in particular, scores revamped tapbacks (the reactions you can apply to incoming messages) with colorful icons. You can also react with any emoji. Messages also gets the ability to schedule texts so that get sent at the predefined time. 

There are cool new effects that will allow you to express your messages in a better way. Apple has also added many more formatting options to Messages, like strikethrough and underlined text. 

Mail, on the other hand, scores a visual redesign and a new Categorization feature, which automatically sorts incoming email in different categories depending on the content. Aside from the Primary tab, by default you’ll also have access to dedicated tabs for promotions, transactions, and updates. You can also easily see all messages from a select sender in a new view

With iOS 18, iPhone scores the Mac’s dedicated Game mode, which aims to minimize distractions. Once you open a game, you will no longer be bothered by app notifications. Of course, this feature can be disabled. 

The Photos app, one of the core elements of the operating system, has scored a major visual revamp. 

iOS 18 release date

Apple has recently confirmed that it supports its iPhones for a minimum of five years, though the norm for most recent iPhones is a longer support period. As evident in the table below, Apple could support the iPhone Xs family (iPhone Xs Max, iPhone Xs, and iPhone XR) for at least another year, as the trio is getting iOS 18 support.