Apple has just released iOS 18 to the public and while this isn't the largest iOS update in terms of the number of new features, the quality of the new features is really impressive. There are some really good quality of life additions here in my opinion. But if you've just downloaded the new iOS, where do you start? In this video, I'll cover all the features that I think you should be trying out first. Okay, let's get into it.
Undoubtedly, the most significant new addition in iOS 18 is the ability to customize your home screen more than ever before. Let's spend a few minutes looking at that. To start, tap and hold on the home screen to enter jiggle mode.
Now in iOS 18, you'll see a new edit button in the top left of your screen. Tap on this to add widgets like in iOS 17, but you also have two new options, customize and edit pages. Edit pages lets you choose which pages of apps to include or exclude, a feature that we've had for a few years now. The one that we're interested in today is Customize, so let's tap on that.
You'll notice that jiggle mode stops and a new option appears at the bottom of the screen. The small and large buttons let you choose between small icons and large icons for your apps. Choosing small gives you the default view with the icon and app name underneath. Choosing large makes the icons bigger and removes the labels.
I've actually come to really like this mode personally. Below that, you have options for the color and tinting of the app icons. Choosing light keeps the familiar style. dark changes the icons and widgets to a new dark color scheme. Automatic will switch from light during the day to dark at night.
Important to note here is that the quality of the app tiles depends on whether the app developer has updated their app for iOS 18, although most major apps have now done this. Tinted is a bit more controversial. It allows you to apply a color tint to everything on your screen. You can choose from major colors on the top row and adjust the intensity of the tint in the bar below. I'll be honest, I hated this when this first released in the developer preview.
It is much improved now. If you change your mind, go back into the customize menu to revert to non-tinted apps. Also notice the sun icon at the bottom left of your screen.
Tapping this will darken the wallpaper or leave it as it is. I prefer the darker version but what about you? Let me know in the comments. Another customization feature is the ability to move app tiles anywhere on the grid. They don't have to stack from top left to bottom right anymore.
You can place apps around the edges, leave space in the middle or create a random pattern, but they do still have to adhere to the grid layout. Lastly, if you tap and hold an app with widget options for a second, you'll see those options in the app tile. For example, on the Notes app, you can choose between the default app tile or small, medium or large sized widgets. Another new feature in iOS 18 is the ability to lock any app behind Face or Touch ID, adding an extra layer of security for apps that you want to keep private. We've had this feature in specific apps like banking apps for a long time but now you as the phone owner can decide which apps have this feature.
So to illustrate I'll choose a third party app that wouldn't normally use Face ID. I'll tap and hold on the app and you can see a new option called Require Face ID. This is on my iPhone 15 Pro.
If the phone required Touch ID it would say Require Touch ID. I'll choose that option and you can see more information. You can either choose to just require Face ID which will lock the app so it can only be opened once Face ID is authorized, or you can go even further and require Face ID and hide the app at the same time. If I choose that option the app will disappear from my home screen. To access the app, go to the app library, scroll to the bottom and there is a discrete folder called Hidden.
By default nothing shows inside the Hidden folder. Tap on it, then use your Face ID to open the Hidden folder and access your apps. The app will still require Face ID to open, so this is kind of a double layer of protection. Just one thing to point out, by hiding the app you also hide any mention of the app anywhere on your phone. You can't search for it in Spotlight Search and you're muting any notifications and deleting any widgets that come with the app.
Keep that in mind before you choose this option. Simply requiring Face ID might be enough security for you. If you want to set everything back to how it was, go to the hidden folder, locate the app, tap and hold on it and choose don't require Face ID.
I'm sure you know that on your iPhone's lock screen there are two quick options at the bottom. The one on the left is the torch or flashlight if that's what you call it, and the one on the right is the camera. These buttons let you quickly access these functions directly from the lock screen. In iOS 18 you can choose what these buttons do. To customize this, tap once to activate your lock screen and then tap and hold to enter customize mode.
Tap the customize button at the bottom of the screen and when given the option to choose between your lock screen or home screen, tap your lock screen. You'll see that the two options at the bottom have a minus symbol in the upper left allowing you to remove them. For this example I'm going to tap the minus button to remove the camera from the right.
With that removed, tap the empty icon space and you'll see that you have loads of options to choose from now, far more than we had in iOS 17. If you scroll down to the shortcut section and choose open app, you'll get a window asking which app you want this button to open. Scroll through your apps, find the one that you want and tap on it. Tap anywhere on the screen to close that window and press the done button in the upper right corner. You've now successfully changed that button to open whichever app you chose.
By the way, if you prefer to have content like this in a written format, there's a PDF version of this video complete with screenshots and you can access it along with all other PDFs I've created plus future ones for just $5 a month all by itself as a one-time payment. You can either scan the QR code that you can see on screen or follow the link in the description of this video to learn more. The Control Center has been completely overhauled in iOS 18. You'll notice it when you first access the Control Center by swiping down from the top right corner of the screen. But let me take a moment to show you what's new. The first thing you'll see are a couple of icons at the very top of the screen.
The one on the top right is a power icon. If you tap and hold it, you'll go to the power options to power down your phone. You'll also see a plus icon in the upper left, which we'll come back to in just a moment. There are additional menus in the center of the screen. Control Center now breaks down parts into their own dedicated pages.
The love heart icon shows you your favorites, the things you access most often. If you tap the Apple Music icon it takes you to all music related controls. On my phone I have an option for AirDrop, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular data, all that stuff. The options available will depend on what you include in your control center.
Going back to the favorites page, if you tap and hold the control center for a moment you enter the equivalent of jiggle mode. Each icon now has a minus button in the upper left corner allowing you to remove it from the control center. At the bottom right of each icon there is a drag bar.
You can drag and move icons around or stretch them from the corners to make them larger. Tapping the plus button in the top left corner of the screen is the same as tapping and holding to enter the Control Center Edit option. Once you've done that at the bottom of the screen there is an option called Add a Control. Tap this to choose what to include in your Control Center. It is worth taking some time to scroll through this list because there is a lot in here especially compared to iOS 17. Another great feature in iOS 18 is that Apple now allows app developers to include their own controls in Control Center.
This means that this will grow over time and you can customize it exactly how you want. There's a search function at the top to find a particular item and when you find something you like, simply tap it to add it to your Control Center. Apple has added several new features to the Messages app in iOS 18, with the most significant and requested being support for RCS messaging. RCS stands for Rich Communication Services.
allowing iPhone and Android users to communicate using the Messages app while still enjoying features like end-to-end encryption, high resolution image and video sharing, read receipts, audio messages and more. This feature should work automatically but you can go to Settings, Apps, Messages, RCS Messaging and enable it if it isn't already enabled. In terms of app changes there are a few new additions.
First you can now add more animated effects to your text. For example if you write a message and select the text, you can press the letter A icon in the menu bar above the keyboard. This menu lets you choose from the usual formatting options like bold, italic, underline and strikethrough, as well as new animated effects. Both you and the recipient need to be running at least iOS 18 for these effects to show.
Tap backs have also been improved. When you tap and hold a message to send a tap back, you'll notice this has all had a lick of paint. If you swipe to the right you'll see suggested emojis, They might be suitable as tap backs and you can tap the emoji icon to access the full emoji menu. Finally, a much requested feature is the ability to delay sending a message.
To use this, type your message then press the plus button on the left hand side to access the message menu. You'll see a new option called send later. Tap this and you can choose the exact time that you want the message to be sent. Press the send button when you're happy with your choice and the message will appear in a different box.
indicating that it's scheduled to be sent later. You can tap and hold the message box to edit or delete the message. If you press the edit button next to send later, you can force the message to send immediately, change the scheduled time or delete the message entirely. Safari has had major improvements in iOS 18, making it an even better browser.
The first noticeable change is the reader view menu, now to the left of the address bar, which has been completely redesigned for easier navigation. Tap on it and you'll see frequently used options right away. There's also an ellipsis menu in the bottom right corner for page specific options like checking the privacy report, requesting the desktop version, adding to favorites, adding bookmarks, adjusting website specific settings, All things you could do previously but now all neatly tucked away in this menu. On the main screen you can change the font size using the buttons at the bottom center.
You can also manage extensions for the website and adjust privacy protections. In the bottom left you'll find the Find an Article button. When reading an article you'll see options at the top of the menu.
You can select Listen to Page to have the content read aloud in your chosen Siri voice with quick access to playback buttons for jumping forward or backward, pausing or speeding up. playback. Selecting show reader lets you view the reader version of the article.
Depending on the phone that you're using and when you view this video, you might see a summarize button at the top, an Apple Intelligence exclusive feature which I'm not covering in this video, I will cover that separately. In reader mode, tapping the reader button again lets you change the background color, font and other settings or exit reader mode. One of the most talked about new features in Safari is the hide distracting items function.
This lets you remove specific items from a website if you find them distracting. It isn't as comprehensive as removing all the ads with one button, which is kind of what was hinted at months before iOS 18 was revealed, but it is still quite useful. For example, if you visit a website with a lot of ads, tap the read a view option in the bottom left corner and choose hide distracting items.
Tap the item that you want to remove and a blue hide button will appear. Tap it and the item will disappear. You can do this for multiple items but you can't scroll while in this mode. Remove some items, press the done button, scroll down and repeat as needed. Your iPhone now has its own dedicated password manager app in iOS 18. To find it, go to Spotlight Search and type passwords.
If you scroll through your homepage you should see it as a dedicated app. Tap on it, unlock the app using Face or Touch ID and the app will open. When I made my videos previewing the developer betas of iOS 18, I got a lot of comments saying that this was basically the password section from settings. And while that's true, everything from the password section of settings is here, it is a bit more than that. It's essentially everything related to codes and passwords on your iPhone neatly stored in one dedicated app, making it much easier to find what you're looking for.
It isn't a massive improvement, but I do think it's a good feature. At the top left, you have an option to view all of your passwords. To the right you can view any pass keys that you've created.
This is where you use FaceID, TouchID or even OpticID if you're using a Vision Pro to access a particular website or service. The next option is Codes where your phone can generate verification codes for two-factor authentication for websites like PayPal. When I try to access PayPal my computer asks for a verification code and I can use this function to generate the six-digit code and automatically insert it into the PayPal login page. without relying on SMS.
To the right of that any Wi-Fi login credentials used on this device will show here. You can view, copy and share these passwords, create a QR code for any network or forget a network. If there's a Wi-Fi network that you saved years ago and you no longer need, you can delete it by choosing to forget the network.
In the security page any security recommendations from your device will show here. If you use a simple password or a password used multiple times or a password involved in a data breach, these recommendations will appear and you can follow the steps to change what needs changing. Recently deleted login credentials will appear under deleted.
If you need to recover something you can do it from here. At the bottom of the page if you're part of a password group you'll see it here. You can press the new group button to create a new password group and this is useful if you want to share login credentials with family members or colleagues.
This isn't a new feature, this came out last year. Finally, at the bottom right of the screen, you can create new login credentials for a website. Most people do this by inputting login credentials on the website and your phone will ask if you want to save them.
But if you need to create something without immediately logging into a website, this is how you do it. Simply add the website name, username, password, add it to a group if needed and choose save. The Notes app has seen significant improvements in overall user experience.
One of the main features is live audio transcription, which doesn't rely on Apple Intelligence to work, so this feature functions on the iPhone 12 or newer and is currently available only in English, but Apple is likely to roll it out to other languages over time. To use this feature, open a note and tap the paperclip icon above the keyboard. The menu is divided into two sections.
The bottom part works as usual, allowing you to add photos, videos or scan documents to text. The two new options above let you attach a file directly, add audio to the note or record audio. To record, tap the red button in the middle and start speaking. When finished, tap done in the bottom right corner. You'll see a preview of the transcript at the bottom of the audio recording and you can press play to listen.
Tap the audio note to view the full transcript and use the ellipsis in the upper right corner to copy and share. Also, if you keep a log of numbers in the Notes app, you can now perform basic calculations directly within a note. Create a list with the item names, an equal sign and the numbers.
At the bottom of the note, write the names of the items with plus or minus signs between them and an equal sign at the end. The app will automatically calculate your total. It is clunky, but if you're already writing out a note with calculations, it's pretty clever. For text formatting, you can now highlight text by selecting it and choosing a color from the text formatting menu. If you create section headers by selecting Heading before typing, you can collapse or expand the text under the heading as needed.
While you can't move sections around, this is still a pretty useful feature. Calendar and Reminders now work really well together. For example, if I go to the Calendar and tap and hold to create a new event, you'll notice that at the top of the screen I have the option to create a Reminder instead of an Event. I can then fill in the Reminder details just like a regular Reminder.
The main difference is that the date and time are already set for me. After pressing add the reminder shows in my calendar. If I go to the reminders app you'll see the reminder we just created also shows there. This works in reverse too so if I create a new reminder with tomorrow's date and time I can jump back to the calendar, go to tomorrow and you'll see that the reminder is also there. I can also tap to complete reminders directly from the calendar.
The photos app in iOS 18 has been completely redesigned. It is the most significant update ever for the app. and because of its importance I've decided to create a separate video covering all the new features in the Photos app. There is simply too much to cover in this video alone, I'll include a link to that video in the description if you want to watch it.
So there you go, the most significant changes in iOS 18. There are of course more changes and improvements and I'll cover those over the coming weeks and months but they're the ones that I think most people would want to know about. Also Apple Intelligence will be coming in iOS 18.1 and I've already made loads of content all about that so keep an eye on the channel if you're interested and as ever if you found this video useful do please consider leaving me a like and subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future see you on the next video