iOS 18 is out on Monday. To my surprise, I don’t think everyone pays attention to every Apple news story like I do. Even less likely, do they install the beta software as soon as it’s relatively safe. That makes me wonder if when everyone installs the updates if they have any idea what is in them. I’ve been using iOS 18 for 2+ months and here are some of the things that you’ll notice or might want to consider looking into. This way you’ll be ready when you update.

I’ll grab images from Apple’s iOS 18 page, which you should also check out to see all the features. I also don’t have an iPhone that supports Apple Intelligence but so far on the devices I do have with it, I don’t see much use for it.

Home Screen Changes

This is the biggest change to me, probably because it is the most seen. I enabled the large icons (Edit Home Screen -> Customize) which also removes the app labels under the icons. I like it a lot but when I use my work phone that isn’t updated yet, it’s pretty shocking how tiny the icons look. You will need to know what all the app icons are since the labels will be gone.

I don’t know what it is about the iOS 17 update but I’ve been tweaking my home screen widgets like crazy. I’ve used some widgets the past few years but once I got the weather and photo widget in place, they stayed. Maybe allowing them to be interactive made more devs include them in their apps. Here are a few of my favorites that will find a place on a screen somewhere, but I’m still moving them around.

Contacts

I hadn’t used this one before so I’m not sure how much is new. I thought it was just a shortcut to call a few contacts. Turns out there is a lot more to it.

On the widget it shows their current location, if it’s shared with you, it will add an icon if they are driving, and if you have an unread message from them it will indicate that as well.

When you click on a contact I thought it would just bring up their contact page. It actually brings up a whole summary view. I’m not sure this is even in any app, it’s different than the user pages in Contacts and Messages. It should be the default view for Contacts across the OS. It obviously shows the call, FaceTime, and message options. It also includes a map, any Messages threads they are a part of, anything shared (links), photos of them, and emails.