When you’ve been holding off on updating your iPhone to iOS 18.2 till you might have some free time — or simply while you’re in a position to catch a breath — the vacations are a terrific alternative. You have bought a while to set up and run the replace, however extra vital is the prospect to discover the latest options, from Apple Intelligence to new methods to work together with Maps.
I’ve put collectively my listing of eight options and settings you must change proper now, together with a few of the top-tier options and some that fly beneath the radar. And should you do have an iPhone that can run Apple Intelligence, make sure to try the options you are going to use most. (Or when you have no real interest in them, learn to flip off Apple Intelligence.)
For extra on what’s new in iOS 18, study enhancements to Apple Maps and the Messages app. Do not forget to seek the advice of the iOS 18 improve guidelines, which incorporates ensuring you might have a correct backup earlier than upgrading.
11 Important Equipment Your iPhone Needs for the Holidays
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Change the default buttons on the lock display
In actual property, location is all the pieces, and the underside corners of the iPhone lock display are the prime spots, every a straightforward thumb press away when your system continues to be locked. Earlier than iOS 18, these posts had been held by the flashlight and digital camera buttons, with no strategy to change them.
In iOS 18, you possibly can lastly change them with different buttons — or take away them totally, a balm for people who unknowingly activate the flashlight (imagine me, there is a higher strategy to flip it on). You possibly can add buttons to acknowledge music through Shazam, allow Darkish Mode, set an alarm/timer, allow Airplane Mode, open your Pockets, ship cash through Faucet to Money and extra.
This is how:
On the iPhone’s lock display, contact and maintain wherever on the show till you see the Customise button. You may have to unlock the cellphone utilizing Face ID, Contact ID or your passcode. If it opens the house display, swipe down from the center-top of the display (not the fitting edge, which brings up Management Middle.Faucet Customise after which select Lock Display.Take away one of many buttons by tapping the – (minus) button on the icon.To exchange the button with one other perform, faucet its area (now with a + icon) after which select the one you need on the following display. (You may also decide to depart that area empty with no button.)Repeat these steps for the opposite button if you wish to change it.Faucet Executed while you’re completed.Faucet the lock display once more to exit the customise mode.
Take away a lock display button by tapping the – (minus) button, after which select a brand new management to exchange it.
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Arrange a few of the new duties obtainable on the Motion button
The Motion button on the iPhone 15 Professional, iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Professional changed the devoted mute change discovered on each earlier iPhone mannequin with a configurable management. By default it serves the identical objective — maintain it to show Silent Mode on or off — however you possibly can configure it for different actions like opening the Digital camera app, performing a number of actions directly and even ordering espresso.
In iOS 18, the Motion button will get new capabilities. You possibly can bypass Management Middle and select a management of your selection, resembling opening the Distant interface for navigating Apple TV or utilizing Shazam to determine a tune.
To decide on a distinct motion for the Motion button, go to Settings > Motion Button. Swipe sideways to pick out and activate one of many obtainable actions. For the Controls, Shortcut and Accessibility choices, faucet the Select button to choose which particular motion to run.
iOS 18 now enables you to program the Motion Button along with your favourite Management Middle management.
Give your property display a radical new look
You would not suppose that placing icons the place you need is a radical new function, however that is as a result of iOS has at all times had a locked association. Apps get added from prime to backside, left to proper. You can rearrange the order by which icons seem and transfer them to different screens, however that was about it.
In iOS 18, apps could be positioned almost wherever. You now not have to take care of a wallpaper picture of your youngsters or pets being obscured by icons. They nonetheless adhere to a grid — Apple is not about to sanction anarchy — however could be positioned freely.
Additionally, Darkish mode lastly applies to all the iPhone’s dwelling display, with choices for coloring icons and affecting the brightness of the wallpaper picture. This is learn how to customise the appears.
Organize apps: Contact and maintain the house display to enter “jiggle mode,” after which drag the icons to new positions. It would nonetheless slide them round to fill areas, however with endurance, you possibly can transfer them into the spots you need.
Place app icons the place you need so this excellent lady is not coated.
You may also shortly flip suitable apps into widgets that show extra data. Maps, as an example, generally is a map of your present location with shortcut buttons to seek for locations or deliver up a listing of close by locations (resembling dinner spots). Contact and maintain the app icon and search for a row of resize buttons within the menu that seems. As soon as expanded past the usual icon measurement, you possibly can drag the deal with within the bottom-right nook of the brand new icon. To get it again to its single icon measurement you might want to contact and maintain once more and select the single-icon button
Some apps could be expanded into bigger icons that act like widgets.
Set Darkish mode: When you’ve ever subjected your self to the retina blast of black textual content on a white background late at night time in a darkened room, you’ll admire the brand new Darkish mode choice for the house and lock screens. iOS has beforehand included a Darkish mode, the place mild backgrounds change to black or darkish grey, textual content switches to white or mild grey and different interface components are dimmed to coexist in a darkish atmosphere. That is by no means been utilized to the house and lock screens in any important method — solely the dock and a few widgets — till iOS 18.
First, contact and maintain the house display to enter jiggle mode. Faucet the Edit button within the top-left nook and select Customise from the menu. On the backside of the display, select a mode for the icons and background: Automated, Darkish or Gentle (I am going to get to Tinted in a second). In Darkish mode, the icons achieve black backgrounds, and folders and the Dock change into darkish grey. (Builders have the choice of creating Darkish mode icons for his or her apps. Within the meantime, apps not but optimized get a usually darker look.)
Within the dwelling display’s Darkish mode, icons and the background are given a darker remedy.
In Darkish mode, the background picture additionally modifications. Apple’s default iOS 18 wallpaper dynamically modifications from mild to darkish because the day progresses, or you possibly can select colours that supply each a light-weight and darkish choice. When you use a photograph, its general publicity is diminished to dim the sunshine output.
If you would like darkish icons however aren’t a fan of the dimmed photograph remedy, faucet the solar icon within the nook of the choices sheet on the backside of the display to toggle again to Gentle mode only for the background.
Tinted icons: A brand new and completely different choice is to tint all the app icons in order that they share the identical colour. Within the Customise choices on the backside of the display, select Tinted because the icon fashion. You possibly can then regulate the Hue (the slider with the colour spectrum) and Luminosity (the slider with the darkish to mild vary) to decide on the colour tint you favor.
Apply a common tint to all app icons, with controls for adjusting the hue and luminosity.
What if you wish to match a colour from a background picture? Faucet the eyedropper button after which drag the reticle to pinpoint the colour you need — the border signifies the chosen colour.
The tint is utilized not solely to icons however to widgets as effectively. For a widget resembling Pictures, the photographs it shows present up as duotones to match the theme.
Giant icons: Do the labels beneath every app icon appear redundant to you? Now you possibly can take away the labels and improve the dimensions of the icons with one setting. Open the Customise choices as described above and faucet the Giant button.
Make the house display icons bigger and conceal the app labels.
After making any of those modifications, faucet wherever on the display to use them and exit the Customise interface.
Change up how the Management Middle appears
Management Middle was as soon as a handy place to shortly entry controls resembling playback quantity and Airplane mode, however beneath iOS 18 it is a configurable playground. You possibly can place controls the place you need, resize many to disclose extra data and add new controls on a number of screens.
Swipe down from the top-right nook to disclose the Management Middle (or swipe up from the underside on the iPhone SE). To enter edit mode, contact and maintain or press the + button on the top-left nook.
Simply as with shifting apps, drag a management to a different slot on the display to reposition it. Lots of the controls additionally embrace a bottom-right deal with that may resize the management — generally, it reveals the title of the management and its present standing (resembling Flashlight Off).
Rearrange the controls in Management Middle and, for some, increase them to disclose extra data (or simply make the button a bigger goal for urgent).
Management Middle additionally now spans a number of screens. Swipe as much as view controls for media at present enjoying, Dwelling controls for sensible lights and home equipment and a web page devoted to the communication choices that seem while you long-press the Connectivity block containing Airplane Mode, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Mobile and others. Look carefully and you will see that these screens are literally particular person controls expanded to occupy your entire Management Middle space.
You possibly can rearrange the order of these screens by shifting their controls. Suppose you need Dwelling controls to be the primary swipe as an alternative of Now Enjoying: Within the enhancing mode, drag the big Dwelling management as much as the earlier display (Now Enjoying will shift to the fitting to make room).
Some controls get their very own screens, resembling Dwelling. Usually it is on the third display, however right here it has been moved to the second display.
To take away controls, faucet the – (minus) button that seems. You may also add different controls: Faucet Add a Management and scroll by way of the obtainable choices starting from beginning a Display Recording to a bunch of accessibility choices.
Learn extra: Finest iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Professional circumstances
Lock or conceal any of your delicate apps
Our telephones carry a few of our most delicate information, and but it isn’t unusual at hand a cellphone to a good friend to view photographs or lookup one thing on-line. That does not imply they will snoop, but it surely would not not imply they could be extra curious than you are comfy with. For information you wish to guarantee stays out of sight or so as to add a layer of safety in entrance of delicate data, iOS 18 provides the flexibility to lock and conceal apps.
For instance, for instance you retain an ongoing set of lists of present concepts for relations within the Notes app. You possibly can lock particular person notes, however that requires a separate step. Possibly a number of concepts had been made as particular person fast notes or drawings. As a substitute of micromanaging entry, you possibly can lock your entire Notes app by doing the next:
Contact and maintain the app icon you wish to lock and select Require Face ID or Require Contact ID (or Require Passcode if Face ID or Contact ID aren’t enabled) from the menu that seems. Affirm your selection by tapping Require Face ID (or related) within the subsequent dialog.
Lock particular person apps.
To take away the authentication step, contact and maintain the app and select Do not Require Face ID (or related).
Nothing outwardly signifies that an app is locked — you may discover out while you attempt to open it. There’s yet another degree of app safety obtainable, which is to cover apps in a particular locked folder. Contact and maintain the app and select Require Face ID after which faucet Conceal and Require Face ID within the dialog. Affirm the motion by tapping Conceal App on the following display.
The app disappears from the house display and will get slotted right into a Hidden folder on the backside of the App Library (swipe left past your final dwelling display to view the App Library). To entry apps there, faucet the Hidden folder and authenticate with Face ID.
If you select Conceal and Require Face ID to guard an app, it will get put into the Hidden folder in App Library (prime). Faucet the folder and authenticate to entry the app (backside).
iOS 18 imposes some limitations on hidden apps. Some, resembling most of the built-in ones like Notes or Reminders, can solely be locked and can’t be hidden in any respect. Additionally, the Hidden folder locks itself while you launch an app or swipe away from the App Library.
Flip off Loop Movies within the Pictures app
Many apps have carried out a small however annoying (to me) function, and now Pictures beneath iOS 18.2 has it too: Movies robotically replay while you watch them till you faucet the Pause button. That may be enjoyable a couple of times, or when viewing quick clips. However I am not a fan of getting to take motion to make them cease every time.
Now I can take motion as soon as. Go to Settings > Pictures, scroll down till you see Loop Movies and switch the choice off. A video will play by itself, however then cease on the finish because it ought to.
Flip off Loop Movies to cease each video from replaying robotically.
When you’d reasonably the video did not play in any respect till you faucet the Play button, additionally flip off Auto-Play Movement in the identical Settings display.
Alter the view of your calendar
Massive new options like locking and hiding apps are nice additions however so are the tiny modifications that you just encounter every single day. The Calendar app consists of two new methods to view your schedule.
In iOS 18, while you’re within the Month view in portrait orientation, pinch with two fingers to view extra or fewer particulars. As you “zoom in,” particular person occasions seem as coloured bars after which as labeled occasions with instances, all whereas maintaining the month-to-month grid of days and weeks.
Within the Calendar app’s Month view, pinch to zoom in and see extra particulars.
The Day view, which breaks down your day hour by hour, now has a brand new Multi Day view that reveals two consecutive days to provide you context for what’s coming with out turning the cellphone into panorama orientation and viewing the Week view. Faucet the View button on the prime of the Single Day view and select Multi Day from the popup menu.
The brand new Multi Day view within the Calendar reveals two days directly (proper).
Enhance film and TV present dialogue within the TV app
Hassle listening to dialogue in films and tv reveals is not a brand new downside — for instance, the Apple TV has had a function for some time the place you possibly can ask Siri, “What did she say?” and it’ll robotically again up a number of seconds, activate subtitles and replay that part of the video. You possibly can even purchase soundbars that may overcome muffled TV speech. There are a number of causes it is more durable to listen to dialogue, however the TV app in iOS 18 features a high-tech workaround to make dialog simpler to discern.
When you’re watching a video within the TV app, faucet the Extra (…) button after which increase the Audio heading within the menu that seems; if the cellphone is in horizontal orientation, faucet the Audio Changes button. Faucet Improve Dialogue and select Improve or Enhance. They every dampen background noise and lift the dialogue’s audio.
Activate Improve Dialogue within the TV app to discern characters’ speech higher in noisy scenes.
These are only a few new options and modifications in iOS 18. Try our broader protection of Apple Intelligence, extra impressions of the system after utilizing it for months and the way these all work along with the iPhone 16 fashions.
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