After a few months of beta testing, Apple is finally releasing iOS 18.1 to iPhone users. This launch marks the beginning of the Apple Intelligence era. Still, even if you don’t have an iPhone compatible with Apple’s artificial intelligence platform, iOS 18.1 is a compelling update.
For iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16, and iPhone 16 Pro users, the main reason to download this software is Apple Intelligence. Here’s how to join the waitlist and what to do if you’re stuck on it. These are the top iOS 18.1 features regarding Apple’s new AI platform:
- Writing Tools: Users can rewrite, proofread, and summarize text nearly everywhere they write, including Mail, Notes, Pages, and third-party apps
- Improved Siri: With a new design, Siri can maintain context between requests. Even if you stumble over words or shift what you’re saying mid-sentence, Siri can understand what you actually want.
- Priority notifications: They appear at the top of the stack, letting you know what to pay attention to at a glance. Notifications are summarized, so you can scan them faster.
- Priority messages in Mail: Elevate time-sensitive messages to the top of your inbox, like an invitation that has a deadline today or a check-in reminder for your flight this afternoon.
- Reduce interruptions: With iOS 18.1 beta 1, an all-new Focus Mode understands the content of your notifications and shows you the ones that might need immediate attention, like a text about picking up your child from daycare later today.
- Email summarization: Tap to reveal a summary of a long email in the Mail app and cut to the chase.
- Record and transcribe calls in the Notes app: Just hit record in the Notes or Phone apps to capture audio recordings and transcripts. Apple Intelligence generates summaries of your transcripts, so you can get to the most important information at a glance.
- Smart Reply in Mail: Quickly draft an email response with all the right details. Apple Intelligence can identify the question you were asked in an email and offer relevant selections to include in your response.
- Clean Up: This Photos app feature can identify and remove distracting objects in the background of a photo without accidentally altering the subject.
- Summarization: Apple Intelligence can now summarize more than just Messages and Mail notifications.
If you have an iPhone 15 or older device, there are at least five features that you should be excited about with iOS 18.1:
- Record calls: iOS 18.1 allows you to record calls. While transcribing and summarizing are exclusive to Apple Intelligence-compatible devices, everyone can record calls.
- Sleep Apnea Detection: iOS 18.1 and watchOS 11.1 include sleep apnea detection. This feature requires an Apple Watch Series 9 or newer.
- Control Center tweaks: After revamping the Control Center with iOS 18, Apple is adding even more new features with iOS 18.1. For example, all the connectivity toggles are now available standalone, so you can ditch Apple’s built-in option for your own solution. There are also new widgets for Apple’s own apps.
- RCS support expansion: While the final list remains unclear, Apple has once again expanded RCS support to more carriers worldwide.
- iPhone Mirroring Drag and Drop: With iOS 18.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1, Apple adds the ability to drag and drop items from the Mac to the iPhone and vice versa while using iPhone Mirroring. This feature was delayed from the original software launches.