30 Must-Know New Features in iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1 That’ll Make You Want to Update

Apple Intelligence will prioritize emails in the Mail app based on several factors, such as due dates, actions that need your attention, and more. It understands the content in received emails and then shows priority ones in a box at the top of the list view. This works for iCloud and third-party accounts. You can turn “Show Priority” on and off via the More (•••) menu.

You can also have your iPhone or iPad summarize messages for you in previews. This works for any emails in the Mail app that Apple Intelligence believes should be summarized, as well as unread messages in the Messages app. You can turn this setting on or off for Mail via Settings » Apps » Mail » Summarize Message Previews and for Messages via Settings » Apps » Messages » Summarize Messages.

With Apple Intelligence, you also get notification summaries on the Lock Screen and Notification Center. These summaries highlight the most important information in notification groups using at-a-glance previews. As before, you can still tap a notification group to see all its notifications. You can turn this feature on or off for all notifications or per app in Settings » Notifications » Summarize Previews.

Apple Intelligence gives you another Focus for your iPhone or iPad called “Reduce Interruptions.” It has all the options other Focuses have, so you can customize it all you want. But it also has an “Intelligent Breakthrough & Silencing” anti-distraction feature that intelligently decides what notifications are important and allows only those to reach you while silencing everything else.

“Intelligent Breakthrough & Silencing” is also an option for all your other Focuses, so you don’t have to customize another Focus from scratch just to reap the benefits.

If you have older devices that do not support Apple Intelligence yet or devices still running iOS 17 or iPadOS 17, you will see Reduce Interruptions on those, too, but you won’t get the intelligent breakthrough and silencing that Apple Intelligence provides.

Searching for content in Photos has been improved with Apple Intelligence, so you can find photos and videos that match a description of what you’re looking for, such as “green book.” As you can see below, Apple Intelligence provides more results than without. On an iPhone 14 Pro, it only finds four photos with the words “green” and “book” in them, but the iPhone 16 Pro also shows books that are green or books in green surroundings.

While we wait for Image Playground and Genmoji in iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2 to create cool visuals from descriptive prompts, 18.1 can already create memory movies using Apple Intelligence. Simply tap the “Create a Memory Movie” card or “Create” in the Memories section, then give it a prompt and watch your story unfold.

You always had to be super clear when talking with Siri to get decent results, but now, thanks to richer language understanding, you can speak to Siri without fear of stumbling over your words or changing your mind mid-sentence.

According to Apple, “conversational context is maintained over the course of a session, so you can refer more naturally to something you said in a recent request or something Siri mentioned in a recent response.” This is probably still a work in progress because I had a hard time coming up with examples where this actually worked as I expected.

Want to know how to use a specific setting on your iPhone? Or do you want to know about the latest features available on newer iPad models? With Apple Intelligence, Siri gains product knowledge for Apple devices, and it’s got answers to “thousands of questions.”

With Apple Intelligence, you also get voice enhancements that “make Siri sound more natural, expressive, and clear,” according to Apple.

There are a lot of really cool features available on devices with Apple Intelligence, but iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1 aren’t just for them. Your older iPhone or iPad still benefits from new features and changes that apply to all models, new and old.

The iPhone 16 series could already do it, but now the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max can capture spatial photos in addition to spatial videos. Choose “Spatial” from the mode picker, then tap the camera or video button to switch between modes.

When customizing your Control Center, you now have access to more individual controls in the Connectivity grouping. New controls include AirDrop, VPN, and Wi-Fi.

App Store’s search tool lets you use natural language to find the app you want more easily. This means you’ll see more appropriate apps based on your search and fewer results with zero apps listed. For example, searching for “most popular cryptocurrency apps” before would only give me two results, both of which are definitely not the most popular for cryptocurrency. Now, I get real results, like Coinbase and other popular markets and wallets.

Before, when you went to Settings » Game Center, you would have to tap your profile name to find a link to your friends, which is where friend suggestions would appear. Tapping “Invite Friends” on Game Center’s main page would just open up a new Messages draft, and you’d have to manually type a person’s name or email address to add them.

Now, Game Center’s main page has a Friends section with links to “All Friends,” “Friend Requests,” and “Invite Friends.” The first two options will show friend suggestions, and “Friend Requests” lets you quickly approve or reject others’ invitations. “Invite Friends” now puts the spotlight on suggested friends with quick links to invite them. Searching through your contacts will also give you quick invite links next to their names.

There are even more changes in Settings » Game Center. For example:

• “Allow Finding by Friends” is now “Help Friends Find You.” It’s under a new Discoverability section, which is slightly easier to understand. Its description has also been simplified to “Allow your Game Center friends to identify you more easily by the email address and phone number associated with your Apple Account.”
• “Nickname” and “Edit Avatar” are now in “Customize Profile.” This makes it harder to change your username by accident!
• “Profile Privacy” is now “Activity Sharing.” Its description now says “Allow other players to see your profile, achievement progress, leaderboard updates, and recently played games.”
• “Connect with Friends” is now “Share Friends List.” Its description now says “Allow apps access to your list of Game Center friends for an improved gameplay experience.”
• “Requests from Contacts Only” is now in the “Friend Requests” submenu. Its description now says “Allow only people from your contacts to send you friend requests.”
• Your profile name at the top now also shows your Apple Account email address.

In iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1, Apple has renamed its long-standing “Up Next” feature in the TV app. The “Up Next” button is now called “Continue Watching” across all areas, including the player controls, Home tab, Apple TV+ tab, and queue. Additionally, when adding or removing items from your queue, “Up Next” is now rebranded as “Watchlist.”

As with nearly every iOS and iPadOS update, there are some issues Apple has addressed regarding various apps and services. Here’s the complete list this time around:

• Fixed an issue in Podcasts where unplayed episodes were being marked as played.
• Fixed an issue where videos recorded at 4K 60 fps while the device was warm could experience stutter while scrubbing the video playback in Photos.
• Fixed an issue where digital car keys may not have unlocked or started a vehicle with passive entry after restoring from a backup or transferring directly from another iPhone.
• Fixed an issue where iPhone 16 or iPhone 16 Pro models may have unexpectedly restarted.

As usual, there are also some security patches for vulnerabilities in iOS and iPadOS. The exact fixes are unknown at this point and will likely be available the last week of October.