Apple has finally released iOS 18 was released to the public on September 16th after months of beta testing. It is one of the biggest iOS updates in history and heralds a new era of Apple Intelligence, with more customization options, RCS support, a new photos app and much more.

I haven’t used the betas of iOS 18, so the public release is the first time I’ve tried all the new features except Apple Intelligence (this is coming in iOS 18.1 next month).

While I’m excited to finally have the next big iOS update, I also can’t believe how bad some of the features are that I’ve been waiting for months. Let me explain.

Messy home screen customization

What I love about Android software is how customizable it is, especially the home screen. You can easily place apps and widgets wherever you want.

After many years, Apple has finally added this type of customization to the iOS home screen. With iOS 18, we can place our app icons and widgets anywhere on the home screen grid and even change our Control Center layouts.

There’s one problem though: it’s like iOS is fighting me every time I try to make a change. It feels very unlike Apple, as the whole experience is far from seamless.

Since iOS 14 allowed us to change our app icons without jailbreaking using Shortcuts, I’ve had the same home screen for the past few years. That’s because I’ve struggled a lot with the lengthy Shortcuts process to achieve a mostly consistent look on my home screen. But I really wanted to redesign my entire home screen with iOS 18 and the new dark theme for the icons and found the process quite cumbersome to say the least.

While Apple has made it possible to place apps and widgets anywhere, even with spaces in between, it feels like an afterthought. If I pull an app out of Search or the App Library and try to place it in the middle of a blank page, it immediately moves to the top-left corner, like it used to. And since it’s still grid-oriented, you still have to stick to it, so it’s not like you can just have an app or widget right in the middle of the home screen. It’s also impossible to have a 2 x 2 widget in the middle, with a column of apps to the left or right. So it’s not exactly “anywhere” you want.

The new Control Center is not what I was hoping for

Similarly, while I like being able to customize the Control Center layout, it’s even worse. I had all the controls I wanted, but when I resized a control or moved a control, everything else seemed to move to a different location. The controls didn’t move a spot, they just went where they wanted – it didn’t make sense.

This happened several times, and every time I tried to move something back to where I wanted it, everything else shifted again. It was a never-ending, infuriating battle with iOS to get my Control Center the way I wanted it.

Another thing I noticed is that iOS 18 also doesn’t seem to like it when I have a dual focus mode app on the home screen. I have 1Password on my main home screen and also in my work focus mode. However, every time focus is enabled with my schedule, 1Password is nowhere to be found on my work home screen. This has to be some kind of glitch as I had no issues with this on iOS 17 before.

So far, iOS 18 feels immature

I’m a little shocked at how poor the home screen and control center customization was. Wasn’t this in beta for a few months? It just feels a bit, well, immature compared to what I’ve tried so far with the final version. I’m surprised this implementation of the home screen and control center made it out of beta because it’s still feels like a beta.

Not to mention, iOS 18 is still missing a key part of the overall experience with Apple Intelligence. The Apple Intelligence features will be introduced starting with iOS 18.1, which is currently in beta and is due out sometime in October. But considering that this is a big part of iOS 18 as a whole, my iPhone 15 Pro with iOS 18 feels incomplete at the moment.

I really hope that next month’s iOS 18.1 improves these things and finally gives us Apple Intelligence. Otherwise, I think I’ll refrain from making any more changes to my Home Screen and Control Center unless I want to throw my iPhone out the window.