iOS 18 is available tomorrow with these 8 new features for your iPhone

After more than three months of beta testing, iOS 18 will finally be released to the general public next Monday, September 16. The update should be available for installation tomorrow at around 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time (1:00 p.m. Eastern Time) in the Settings app under General → Software Update on iPhone XS and later.

Below we've highlighted eight major new features in iOS 18, and Apple released a full list of new features and changes last week.

Please note that Apple Intelligence features are only available starting with iOS 18.1.

Customizable home screen

iOS 18 lets you place app icons anywhere on the Home screen. There are also new Dark and Tinted customization options to recolor app icons. You can also set app icons to appear larger, without text labels underneath.

Redesigned control center

Control Center has been redesigned in iOS 18. Like the Home screen, it's now more customizable, letting you rearrange and resize controls across multiple pages. You can easily add more controls from the all-new Control Gallery.

iMessage improvements

iMessage received a wide range of new features with iOS 18, including the ability to use any emoji as a Tapback reaction, text effects like shake and explode, formatting options like bold and underline, the ability to schedule messages to be sent later, RCS support for improved messaging with Android devices, and more.

Redesigned Photos app

According to Apple, the Photos app has been redesigned more extensively than ever before with iOS 18, removing tabs in favor of an all-in-one layout. The changes were controversial and prompted Apple to tweak the app's design during the beta testing phase of iOS 18.

Locks apps behind Face ID

iOS 18 adds the ability to lock any app behind Face ID, Touch ID, or an iPhone's passcode for privacy and security reasons. In addition, you can now hide an app by moving it to a hidden, locked app folder.

Passwords App

iOS 18 includes a brand new Passwords app that makes many features previously available through iCloud Keychain in the Settings app available. The app makes it easy to manage passwords, passkeys, two-factor authentication codes, and more.

Distraction control

The new Distraction Control feature built into Safari can be used to hide some website elements, such as newsletter sign-up forms and cookie consent prompts. However, Apple says the feature is not designed to be an ad blocker. If you hide an ad banner, it will become visible again when the ad content is refreshed.

Game mode

Game Mode was first introduced on Mac and is now available on iPhone. Apple says Game Mode “minimizes background activity to maintain consistently high frame rates” while gaming, “drastically reduces” audio latency on AirPods, and makes wireless game controllers “incredibly responsive.”

Read our iOS 18 review to learn more about the features.