5 features that will make you upgrade to iOS 18 today

It's a big week for Apple fans! With the new iPhone 16 models launching later this week, there's a lot of anticipation for “new stuff.” Luckily, there's a new version of iOS to upgrade to today.

But Why Should you update to iOS 18?

After all, there are no major visual changes with the latest iOS version (unless you make customizations, more on that later), you can still get security updates on iOS 17, and the most hyped feature, Apple Intelligence, isn't even included in the first version.

So what's in iOS 18 that's compelling enough to upgrade today? Quite a lot, actually.

News

Messages is getting some big upgrades in iOS 18. The first of these is finally the ability to make text italic and bold. As someone who spends their entire life on Slack, it annoyed me for years that I couldn't format messages. You can also get creative with message reactions and use any emoji you want, not just the basic reaction replies.

Messages are finally getting RCS support too. What does that stand for, what does it mean? It doesn't matter, what's important is that you no longer receive additional messages when you react to conversations in green bubbles.

Finally, Send Later is, in my opinion, the most useful new feature in Messages. It's criminally hidden behind the More icon, but especially if you regularly text with someone in a different time zone, you'll want to be able to find it right away.

Adjustment

For those of you who struggle with home screen customization apps or spend hours in Shortcuts trying to achieve the perfect monotonous look, this is welcome news. iOS 18 gives you much more control over the look of your device out of the box. Want to precisely place apps so they frame part of your wallpaper? Now you can, as iOS no longer forces you to use entire rows.

You can also colorize icons however you like. Just choose a shade and voilà, matching icons! You can also choose to always have iOS 18's new dark icons, which are a nice way to achieve a more muted look without having to choose their color. You can find all of these options at Adjust Menu when arranging your screen.

Hidden/locked apps

Hidden apps get a major upgrade in iOS 18 with a folder that obscures whether or not there are any hidden apps at all. My problem with the original implementation of the hidden folder was that it was obvious if there was something in there that you wanted to hide. Now you have to unlock the folder before you can even see the contents.

The most convenient privacy upgrade is the ability to lock any app without having to move it to the hidden folder. Just long press an app icon and select Face ID required. It's a huge boon for apps that aren't secure by default, like Journal (which, frankly, should have been lockable from the start).

Passwords

Finally, passwords are getting their own native app in iOS 18. For anyone who had to spend time digging around in iOS Settings for login information, this is a huge win. It's a pretty simple affair, but it gets the job done as far as easier access goes.

You can quickly generate a new login and secure password on the app's main screen. There's also a helpful Security category with a list of all your compromised passwords.

Those looking to ditch their 1Password subscriptions should wait. Passwords is a great place to start, but if you spend time managing your passwords, I find the workflow in 1Password easier to use overall, with helpful features like password history. Still, as a free option, it's an incredible upgrade over a submenu in Settings.

Control Center/Lock Screen

This was something I was personally looking forward to. I use Control Center all the time, for the calculator, flashlight, camera, music controls, you name it. With iOS 18, you can completely tweak it and add, move, and rearrange features so they're exactly where you need them. You can even create new Control Center screens so you can quickly get to advanced controls like for music or focus.

While we're talking about those little monochrome icons, the ones on your lock screen are now customizable too. You're no longer limited to the flashlight and camera. You can have, well, any Control Center app you want. This is especially interesting in light of the new camera control button on the iPhone 16 Pro Max. The question is, what will you put in the place of the camera icon?

But not Apple Intelligence

The only thing you won't see today with the launch of iOS 18 is Apple Intelligence. For that, you'll have to wait for iOS 18.1, which is coming in the next few weeks. However, in the current version, it's not really worth waiting for.

While Apple Intelligence is definitely useful for things like summarizing threads in messages (though it's kind of weird when it tries to summarize individual messages) and has neat tricks like normalizing your handwriting in Notes on the iPad, there's no killer app yet. While recent commercials tout Mail's summarizing features, I still don't find Mail in iOS compelling enough to switch from my beloved Spark.

However, Apple Intelligence will continue to be developed and improved after its launch (expected in October), but there's nothing stopping you from taking advantage of iOS 18 today.