by On Monday, Apple announced new features that are on the way at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference.
Our mobile phones have become one of the main ways we talk to each other, and iPhone features are coming to iOS 18 that give users more ways to express how they feel, organize their thoughts, and stay in touch with family off the grid. Here’s how:
1. You will be able to schedule a future message in iPhones.
For Gmail fans feature for scheduling emails to be sent at a later time, you’re in luck –– Apple is rolling out a similar feature for iMessage. Gone are the days of worrying about waking up in time to send that birthday text or early morning reminder to the group chat.
In its press release, Apple said users will have the ability to cancel or edit the message at any time. You will also be able to see that your message is scheduled.
2. It will be much easier to record and read transcripts of phone calls.
Being able to quickly skim through a transcribed conversation is a huge time saver. And if you currently use a third-party service to transcribe phone conversations (looking at you, fellow journalists), you might be happy to know that Apple is about to announce its own feature.
After the iOS update, people using the Phone app will be able to record calls and read AI-powered transcripts and summaries of the conversation after the fact. Apple is calling its AI features “Apple Intelligence” and announced that they will launch in beta this fall for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia.
At its developer conference, Apple said that the person on the other line would first receive an automatic notification that they are being recorded.
3. You have more ways to express how you feel in texts, including emoji reactions and formatted text.
Formatting your words with a bold and fun phrase allows you to convey your meaning in more than just text. After updating the new iMessages app, iPhone users will be able to emphasize, bold, strike through and italicize texts.
You will also be able to respond to messages with any emoji, rather than just the thumbs up, exclamation points and other limited options we currently have.
You can even create your own emoji with an AI-powered feature that Apple is calling “Genmoji”. In Genmoji, users can type “Labrador with red glasses” into the iMessage emoji search bar and get an AI version of what it looks like, for one example.
4. You can ask Siri for help to remember that photo or text.
Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant, will have new capabilities and will be able to answer more questions in the iOS 18 update. In the new Siri, you can ask it text-based questions as well as voice questions.
I can’t remember when you took that photo and what album did you put it in? You’ll be able to ask Siri to pull up photos, links and PDFs, as well as edit images or move items across different apps, according to Apple.
As one example, Apple shared that Siri can pull up a photo of your driver’s license and paste the number into a form or it can pull up an old link shared with a friend.
5. You’ll be able to text even when you don’t have cell service.
Apple is expanding its Emergency SOS feature and will allow iPhone iOS 18 users to text SMS to their satellite. This way, you can shoot a text or share a video with a loved one even when you don’t have cell service or a Wi-Fi connection.
6. AI can rewrite your emails.
At WWDC, Justin Titi, Apple’s director of Intelligent systems experience engineering, announced a Rewrite feature that will be available in Mail, Notes, Pages, third-party apps, and system-wide for macOS Sequoia.
In the demo, we see Rewrite being used in the Mail app where a woman is following up after a networking conversation in email. Using the Rewrite options allows the user to toggle between “professional,” “friendly” and “concise” versions of that email. There will also be a new proofing service that can give you sentence structure and grammar suggestions on your messages.
7. You can make apps harder for others to access randomly.
If you were to hand over your phone, is there a dating app or photo you’d be embarrassed if someone else saw? Apple has made it a little harder for strangers to tap and access sensitive information.
Under the new iOS update, you will be able to lock specific apps on your iPhone, so that you can only access them through authentication features such as Face ID, Touch ID or your password. After you select this feature, information from those apps won’t show up in your search bar, notifications, or Siri suggestions.
What else is coming?
Beyond these specific iPhone features, there are other updates that could make your life a little more convenient.
After the new macOS Sequoia update, people will be able to mirror and control their iPhone screen directly on their Mac. This way, you can click on your phone on your Mac device without using a touchscreen. But while you are using the mirroring feature on your Mac device, the iPhone will temporarily lock itself, so no one else can access your iPhone.
And new security options are being implemented. Similar to existing password managers like LastPass and 1Password, Apple is introducing its own password app that will access your credentials, generate complex passwords, and securely store them all in one place. Apple said the new Passwords app will soon be available on Mac, iPad, iPhone, Vision Pro, and Windows via iCloud.
Talk about an upgrade.
