iOS 18.1 Is Out and It Brings Apple Intelligence to Some iPhones

Apple released iOS 18.1 on Monday, about a month after the tech giant fixed a few iPhone bugs with iOS 18.0.1. Apple brought a lot of new features to your iPhone when it released iOS 18 in September — like RCS messaging and home screen customization — and this update introduces some new features and fixes to many iPhones. The update also brings a few Apple Intelligence features to people outside the EU and China and who have an iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, as well as the iPhone 16 lineup.

Read more: Everything You Need to Know About iOS 18

To download the update, go to Settings > General > Software Update, tap Update Now and follow the prompts on your screen. 

Here are some of the features that iOS 18.1 could bring to your iPhone.

Apple Intelligence features

The latest iOS update introduces a handful of Apple Intelligence features to some iPhones, like writing tools for emails, the Clean Up photo tool and an upgraded Siri. That means you can have your iPhone proofread and revise emails before you send them, remove distracting items from photos and more. 

Before you use these features though, you have to join the Apple Intelligence waiting list. To do that, go to Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri > Join the Apple Intelligence Waitlist and tap Join Waitlist. Once you’re approved, you’ll get access to the above Apple Intelligence features.

But these aren’t all the Apple Intelligence features coming to your iPhone. For example, Apple’s AI-powered emoji generator Genmoji isn’t included in this iOS update, so it’ll be included in a future update. 

These features are only available to people outside the EU and China and who have an iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, as well as the iPhone 16 lineup. If you have the base model iPhone 15 or below you won’t be able to access these features at this time. 

Call recording comes to your iPhone 

With iOS 18.1, your iPhone can now record phone calls. Once you’re on a call, you should see a symbol in the top left corner of your screen that looks like a sound bar. Tap this and you’ll start recording your phone call. Once you do start recording a call, an automated voice will announce to you and the person on the other line that the call is being recorded after a 3-second delay. This feature works regardless of whether you’re talking to another iPhone user or an Android user. 

After your call is finished or you stop recording, your iPhone will save the recording to your Notes app. You can then play the call back in Notes. Newer iPhones, like the iPhone 14 Pro, can also see transcripts of the call in Notes, but older iPhones, like the iPhone XR, can’t.

Before you use this feature, please check with local law enforcement about the legality of call recording, just in case. 

Updated RCS messaging support

When Apple released iOS 18, it brought RCS messaging support to iPhones. With iOS 18.1, it expands this functionality to include Messages for Business. Before this update, Messages for Business was only available through iMessage, so this could make it easier for more businesses to communicate with iPhones.

Control Center adjustments

One of the big changes iOS 18 brought to iPhones was a revamped Control Center, and Apple made a few adjustments to these changes in iOS 18.1. 

With iOS 18.1, if you go into your Control Center and tap the Connectivity tile — where you can find your Wi-Fi, Airplane Mode and similar settings — you’ll see a few controls are now tile-shaped rather than row-shaped. This is a small change, but it could be helpful by giving you easier control over your connectivity settings.

You can also add independent controls for Wi-Fi, VPN, AirDrop and Satellite to Control Center. Before, these controls would be present in the Connectivity tile, or on the Connectivity page in Control Center, but you couldn’t add them as their own control. Apple previously let you add an independent Bluetooth control to Control Center.

There are also new Level and Measure controls you can add to your Control Center. Both Level and Measure can be helpful for renovations if you don’t have a tape measure or bubble level on hand. 

If you don’t like how your Control Center is set up any longer, Apple added a way to reset your Control Center back to the default layout. Go to Settings > Control Center and tap Reset Control Center. 

Change primary Apple ID email address

With iOS 18.1, Apple now lets you change or add a new primary email address for your Apple ID. To do either, go into Settings > Apple ID > Sign-In & Security. From here you can tap the option to Add Email or Phone Number or you can tap an existing address and tap the toggle next to Primary Email. Once your primary email address is set, Apple will send messages to that address.

Tinted home screen widgets

Apple also adjusted the iOS 18 feature that lets you tint your home screen apps in iOS 18.1. Now, if you add a tint to your apps, it will also be applied to widgets on your home screen, like Clock, Battery and Calendar. Before this update, widgets wouldn’t be affected by tint, only apps.

Sleep apnea detection

Apple announced in September that Apple WatchOS 11 would bring sleep apnea detection to compatible Apple Watches. The feature was then approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. And according to MacRumors, iOS 18.1 enables the feature on compatible Apple Watch models paired with an iPhone running the software. 

Expanded emoji keyboard

Another change in iOS 18.1 is the expansion of the emoji keyboard. Now if you go into your emoji keyboard and you swipe left, instead of seeing the section for Frequently Used stickers, you’ll see a section for your custom stickers. If you swipe left again, you’ll be in a new menu that gives you full access to your Memoji, allowing you to easily use them in place of other emoji. 

The emoji in the emoji keyboard are also slightly larger than in iOS 18. It’s not an earth-shattering change, but it’s there.

Drag and drop with iPhone mirroring

According to MacRumors, if you have an iPhone running iOS 18.1 and a MacBook running MacOS Sequoia 15.1, you can now easily drag and drop files from one device to the other while mirroring your iPhone screen. This could make sharing files between your devices even more seamless than before.

Here are Apple’s full release notes for iOS 18.1:

Apple Intelligence (All iPhone 16 models, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max).

Writing Tools

• Writing Tools are available nearly everywhere you type, allowing you to rewrite, proofread and summarize text right in the app you’re working in.
• Rewrite suggests different versions of your text so you can choose which combination of flow and wording you like best.
• Proofread lets you view suggested improvements to what you’re writing, like grammar fixes and language refinements.
• Summarize allows you to select text wherever you’re writing and generate a high-quality summary.

Siri

• A new look and feel includes a glowing light that wraps around the edge of your screen, animates responsively to the sound of your voice and lets you keep scrolling or typing while you talk to Siri.
• Type to Siri when you don’t want to speak a request out loud by double tapping at the bottom of the screen.
• Richer language understanding enables Siri to follow along if you stumble over your words or change your mind mid-sentence.
• 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.
• Product knowledge helps you get answers to thousands of questions about the features and settings on your Apple products.
• Voice enhancements make Siri sound more natural, expressive and clear.

Photos

• Photos search lets you find photos and videos simply by describing what you’re looking for.
• Clean Up removes distractions in your photos.
• Memory movies can be created by describing the story you want to see.

Notifications

• Notification summaries make it easy to catch up on your notifications with a glanceable summary of the most important information.
• Reduce Interruptions is a new Focus that ensures the most urgent notifications get through to you while silencing potential distractions.
• Smart Reply in Mail and Messages helps you quickly respond to messages with suggested responses.
• Priority messages in Mail understands the content of your messages and prioritizes those that require your attention, displaying them at the top of your inbox.
• Transcription summaries in Notes give you an intelligently created summary of the transcript from your audio recording or call recording.

Phone

• Call recordings and transcriptions let you record live calls and transcribe them in the Notes app, with an automatic announcement that the call is being recorded.

Camera

• Camera Control can quickly switch to the front TrueDepth Camera (iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro Max).
• Spatial photo capture, along with spatial video capture, is available in a new Spatial camera mode (iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max).

Airpods

• Hearing Test feature provides scientifically-validated hearing test results from the comfort of home (intended for users 18 years or older).
• Hearing Aid feature provides personalized, clinical-grade assistance that is automatically applied to sounds in your environment as well as music, videos and calls (intended for users 18 years or older with perceived mild to moderate hearing loss).
• Hearing Protection feature helps users minimize exposure to loud environmental noise across listening modes (available in the United States and Canada).
• Features require AirPods Pro 2 with firmware version 7B19 or later.
• All features may not be available for all countries or regions, for more information visit: https://apple.com/airpods-pro/feature-availability/.

This update also includes the following improvements and bug fixes:

• Control Center has new options to add connectivity controls individually and reset your configuration.
• RCS Business Messaging lets you connect with businesses over RCS (requires carrier support).
• App Store search lets you use natural language to find what you’re looking for more easily.
• Game Center friend invites can be sent directly from the Contacts app and Friend Suggestions, and receivers can see the invites in the inbox in Settings.
• Fixes an issue in Podcasts where unplayed episodes are marked as played.
• Fixes an issue where videos recorded at 4K 60 while the device is warm could experience stutter while scrubbing the video playback in Photos.
• Fixes an issue where digital car keys may not unlock or start a vehicle with passive entry after restoring from a backup or transferring directly from another iPhone.
• Fixes an issue where iPhone 16 or iPhone 16 Pro models may unexpectedly restart.

Some features may not be available for all regions or on all Apple devices. For information on the security content of Apple software updates, please visit this website: https://support.apple.com/100100

For more on iOS, here’s my review of iOS 18, what to know about RCS messaging on iPhones and our iOS 18 cheat sheet. You can also check out what was fixed with iOS 18.0.1.

Watch this: Apple’s Monster iPhone Update: How Apple Intelligence Works on iOS 18.1

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