All You Need to Know About Apple’s Next-generation iOS 18: Features, Supported Devices, and Launch Dates

Here are the new features of Apple’s iOS 18 including the features of AI that is termed Apple Intelligence

At the latest Apple WWDC 2024 in June, Apple introduced its next-generation mobile phone operating system, iOS 18. This is the biggest major update of the iOS operating system. iOS 18 was built focusing on Artificial Intelligence, which the Apple Executives termed as Apple Intelligence. Apple added a bunch of AI stuff to its new version of the iOS with the deep integration of Siri that makes Siri more powerful. Apart from the AI stuff, apple adds new features for the home screen customizations, a newly redesigned control center, and a bunch of new accessibility features.

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As we know Apple’s implementation of any features to its device is always perfect and fully baked, the scenario is the same for this time also. Here we will discuss the Top iOS 18 features that will be the focus point for most of the general users.

Home Screen Customization

You can now place the app icon and widget anywhere on the home screen. Though this feature has been included in the Android operating system for a long time, apple restricted users to a fixed grid and the users were not able to place the app icon anywhere on the home screen. But now, iOS users will be able to place the app icon anywhere and keep the space blank based on their needs.

You can make the customization on the app icons by tinting the color of the app icon. When you enable dark mode, the color of all the app icons will be changed. You can even make the app icon and widgets larger. The interesting feature of customization is that iOS will suggest the color for the app icon based on the wallpaper that you have set.

Control-center Customization

The control center has been re-designed and now you can add multiple pages of the control center and can go from one page of the control center to another page by swiping them down. You can add more control from the control gallery where all the options will be displayed in one place. The best part of the re-designed control center is that you can rearrange and resize the shape of the controls and build your group of controls.

You can now customize the lock screen controls and change the two icons at the bottom of the iPhone’s lock screen with any other controls based on your needs.

Lock and Hide Apps

iOS 18 includes the features of locking and hiding any apps. When you lock any app, you must provide the passcode or biometric authentication to open the App. The information about the hidden apps will be hidden from the whole system including the notification and searches. All of the hidden apps will be placed in a folder at the bottom of the App Library, and you have to unlock the folder using the passcode or biometric authentication. It’s like a private workspace that is present in many Android smartphones.

Re-Designed Photo APP

The photo app is now re-designed, and you will get the grid at the top and bottom, you can swipe through different collections by topics. iOS will automatically organize the different collections based on topics such as Recent Days, and Trips. There will be an option called Pinned Collection and you can pin any collection to access the photos of that collection faster.

You can also swipe right from the grid to access the new carousel that will highlight your best content beautifully and poster-like view.

New Password APP

Apple added a new native password manager app that supports end-to-end encryption. You can find your password and ID verification code from the app that you will save. All your credentials can be saved in one place and if you enable the autofill, the password will automatically populate in the APPs where required. This will work on all Apple devices and Windows also.

iPhone Mirroring

Now, you can access the iPhone screen from the MAC via the screen mirroring. For that, your MAC needs to be updated to the macOS Sequoia that was announced on the same date as iOS 18.

You can use the keyboard and trackpad of the MAC to control the screen of the iPhone while mirroring the iPhone screen to the MAC. Besides, it supports the drag-and-drop features. To illustrate, you can pull the file from the iPhone screen to the MAC that is mirroring.

Apple Intelligence

iOS 18 comes up with a bunch of artificial intelligence features that will make Siri smarter and allow you to do AI-related stuff on the device. Every other company has already started to integrate AI into their hardware and software such as Google, Microsoft, and Samsung. Apple has also started to add AI-related stuff to their hardware and software and referred to this as Apple Intelligence. Apple intelligence is powered by the company’s large language model and requires Apple silicon. Unlike any other companies, most of the Apple Intelligence processing will be on-device and when more complex processing is required, the data will be sent to the private cloud servers that are powered by Apple’s new silicon. Apple ensures that its private cloud computing will be focused on user data and privacy. The data that is only relevant to the user request will be sent to the servers and will not be stored on the servers. While other companies mostly depend on cloud computing, apple’s approach is here little bit different. Their AI architecture is based on hybrid models, on-device processing, and private cloud computing.

Below are the top features of Apple Intelligence. Note that, not every iPhone will be able to get the features of Apple Intelligence. Apple intelligence features will be available on the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and upcoming iPhones, but some AI features will be available for all iOS 18 compatible devices, and we will discuss these features later.

New AI-based writing Tools

You will get new writing tools throughout the Apple system that will help you to find the right words virtually everywhere and summarize the selected text. Besides, it will help you to rewrite the sentence so that you can change the tone of the selected sentences and proofread your texts based on your needs. It also summarizes the prioritized notifications that will appear at the top of the notification lists.

In the Note app and phone app, you can create an audio recording with a transcript and Apple Intelligence will summarize the transcript for you.

The new focus mode, Reduce Interruptions, can now understand your context and hide the incoming stuff that will distract you.

New Image Creation Tools

Apple’s intelligence can generate new images through artificial intelligence. A new Image Playground app will help to create the AI-based image, though you do not always have to go to the playground app as it will power the other apps also to do the same. You can create a new image based on description, suggested concepts, and from the person from your photo library.

Genmoji is one of the part’s best features that will allow you to generate emojis based on the text prompts from your keyboard. You can also create the emoji using the person’s photo from the photo library. After creating the emoji, you can even change the style and edit the emoji if you want.

On your note’s app, if you draw something you can circle the sketch and the apple intelligence will provide you with more refined images. Besides, Apple intelligence can generate the image based on the surrounding text if you circle on the space. This feature is known as Image Wand.

On your Photos app, you can make a memory movie using the prompt. Besides, using the new clean-up tool you can remove the unwanted objects from the image background.

Re-fined and Smarter Siri

The Siri is now refined and when you activate the Siri, the edge of the screen will glow. You can now give the instructions to Siri by typing instead of voice. Siri will now speak more naturally and be able to explain certain phone functions. If you even mistake in the mid-sentence while giving the instructions, Siri can now understand it and can provide you with the result.

The interesting fact is that Siri can now understand what happens on your screen and if someone sends you an address, you can request Siri to add the address to that person’s contact.

Integration of ChatGPT

Apple intelligence is also integrated with ChatGPT. When you ask Siri, you can take the help of ChatGPT to generate images, text from a query, and all the other features of ChatGPT. Apple Intelligence uses the GPT-40 model, and you can access all of the features free without any account creation. If you are already a user of ChatGPT, you can link your account and access the paid features.

AI features that will not require any specific hardware support

Safari is now able to highlight key points and phrases on web pages. Besides, it is now able to provide a summary of any webpage contents. Web Eraser allows you to hide the specific part of the web pages that is annoying and reappears.

In the Messaging App, Siri is now able to summarize long messages and suggest text when replies to any messages. You can even create an AI-generated emoji based on the messages.

In the Mail app, you will get the new Smart Replies features that will help you to quickly reply to any email. The rewrite features will allow you to change the tone and style of the email. One of the important AI features in the Mail app is that now, there is an option to summarize the long email.

Accessibility Features

Eye Tracking

You can now control your iPhone using the movement of your eye. The front-facing camera and machine learning will be used to set up the eye tracking. You can press the physical button, swipe the screen, and do other related stuff to control your iPhone using your eyes.

Music Haptics

Music Haptics features will provide you with the taps, texture, and vibration in sync with the music. Apple’s own build Taptic engine will be used here which will allow people who have hearing problems to feel the music.

Vehicle Motion Cues

Apple added a new vehicle motion cure feature that will display the dots on the iPhone screen that move in the opposite direction of the vehicle movement. This will reduce the effects of motion sickness while using your iPhone.

There are more accessibility features present such as Vocal Shortcuts and atypical speech recognition.

Other New Features

Game Mode has been added to maximize the gameplay performance. When the Game mode is applied, it will minimize the background activity to provide high frame rates continuously while playing any Game.
Apple Map now includes Topographic maps and trail networks. You can save the hikes for offline access.
Apple Wallet app introduces new Tap to Cash features where you can bring two iPhone devices together to pay privately.

There are many more features included in the iOS 18 including RCS messaging, Voice Isolation and hands-free Siri interaction for AirPods Pro, New Insight features in the Apple TV, Grant specific controls with guest access and Hand-free unlock in the Home App, redesigned privacy and security and more.

iOS 18 Compatible iPhones and release date

All of the upper models from the iPhone 11 including the iPhone SE (2^nd generation), iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max will get the support of iOS 18, but as we previously mentioned not all the AI features will be present on all the devices that supported iOS 18. Only the AI features that require no specific hardware support will be available for all iOS18-compatible iPhones.

iOS 18 right now is in the beta stage and is available only for the developer. Maybe, within July there will be a public beta for the users who want to test the features of iOS 18 before the final release.

Conclusion

iOS 18 is a breakthrough update for Apple’s mobile phone operating system. With this update, Apple lands on the field of generative AI. Besides, many more customization and accessibility features are also included that create a landmark for iOS 18.