Despite the fact that most Apple Intelligence features are being pushed back, iOS 18 in its current form is still a pretty big update – as our full video walkthrough shows.

Having used the beta for some time, I’ve highlighted below what I think are the 10 most important iOS 18 features available today…

The greatest impacts are not the most visible changes

If I had to pick the features that people will notice most about iOS 18, it would of course be the Home screen. You can place apps and widgets (almost) anywhere on the screen for the first time, and you can easily resize widgets. You can also choose dark or tinted app icons.

These are very big visual changes, and I’ve obviously experimented with them, but I have to say that in the end I went back to filling my home screen with my most used apps, with no gaps and no widgets.

For me, the most impactful changes in iOS 18 are the less visible ones.

1. Customizable Control Center

This is a big problem for me! For a long time, it annoyed me that my Control Center was cluttered with junk that I never used. Now I was able to clean it up and put only the features I actually use into a logical layout. If you want to do the same, check out our guide.

2. Lock screen apps

I personally don’t care much about the lock screen, as I only pick up my iPhone with a single muscle memory command and a thumbs-up swipe, but I think the flexibility of being able to swap out the camera and flashlight apps is a big improvement for many.

3. Customizing the action button

Currently, I have the action button on my iPhone 15 Pro Max set to open the camera app in video mode, but once my fancy new iPhone 16 Pro Max arrives with its recording control button, it will be time to repurpose the action button.

I would have used it to open JustPressRecord for instant access to voice recordings, but since this is now integrated into Notes (see below) I will look to others for inspiration on possible uses.

4. Passwords app

This is a relatively small upgrade for techies, but as I said in June, this will be a large Difference for most iPhone owners.

It always amazes me how often a non-technical friend asks for help because they’ve been locked out of a website or service, for example, only to find that they use the same password for everything. Or at least a small set of passwords that are used across multiple websites and services.

With this change, Apple is essentially waving to them and saying, “Hi! There are these things called password managers. You really should use one! And here you go – this one is completely free and included with all your Apple devices.”

5. iMessage Tapbacks

For a guy who used to always respond poorly to emojis, it’s amazing how dependent I’ve become on them! In particular, using a carefully chosen emoji to respond to a message can be really helpful when I don’t have time to respond.

But while WhatsApp and other messaging apps let you use any emoji you wanted to reply to, iMessage only let you use a few. It’s great that the same options are now available there, even if the interface is a bit clunky.

6. Send later

I Love This one!

Personally, I have Do Not Disturb set so my iPhone is silent overnight, but many people don’t have that, which means it can be risky to respond to messages at inconvenient times.

This is especially problematic when friends are in other countries or I’m traveling myself, as time zone differences can easily cause unwanted disruptions. Being able to reply at a convenient time but ensure the message isn’t delivered until a civilized time is a great feature.

7. Record audio in notes with live transcription

This is another tool I love. It’s great when you’re out walking and you think of something, you can quickly record a message and get an instant transcription.

I used to use JustPressRecord for this, but it’s more convenient to have it in Notes.

8. Calendar improvements

Jeff Benjamin highlighted these improvements in his video (below). The addition of reminders isn’t relevant to me, as I’m a big fan of using the calendar as a to-do list anyway – on the grounds that if I need to do something, I might as well schedule it to make sure it gets done. But for most people, this is a huge improvement.

9. Smart copy and paste edits in photos

This is a feature I use a lot in Lightroom on Mac, so it’s great to have the same ability in the Photos app.

If you take multiple photos in the same light, you can now easily apply edits to one photo and then spread them across the rest.

As for the big UI changes in the Photos app, my jury is Despite it I’m not used to it yet, but I’ll wait a bit before I come to a conclusion.

10. Pause and resume video recordings

And I really like that. For example, when I’m videoing a vacation or a weekend, I often make 2-3 second clips and then edit them together. With pause and resume I can create a rough version of it for certain locations and it’s nice to get a quick preview of what certain sequences would look like.

Check out Jeff’s full runthrough below and let us know your own favorite features in the comments.

Image: Michael Bower/9to5Mac