iOS 18 is a smart upgrade, even without AI

It’s a strange year for iOS.

Usually, the new software version comes all at once. Not so with iOS 18. The basic stuff is there, and in a normal year, things like RCS support and a redesigned Control Center would be more than enough. But iOS 18’s main feature, Apple Intelligence, isn’t even part of this first release, and we may not see some of the most interesting features until 2025. The iOS 18 rollout is starting now and will just keep going for the foreseeable future.

iOS 18 is an ambitious update, even without Apple Intelligence. The customization options are more extensive than ever, and with a little fiddling around, you can personalize your iPhone like never before. It’s almost un-Apple-like.

Control Center is a good place to start. The quick-access settings panel has looked and worked essentially the same for the past decade, but it’s getting a major overhaul in iOS 18. I think this is Apple at its best: everything you need is still there and the vibe is overwhelmingly familiar, but once you get into it, you realize it’s a massive change.

The controls are now split into pages, with familiar elements like connectivity and focus modes where you’d expect them on the first page. And each page is highly customizable: you choose the controls you want to add or remove, and decide where you want them and how big you want them to be. Things get even more interesting when third-party apps start adding their own controls.

It took me a minute to get used to the new layout. At first, I would swipe down too far and jump to the second or third page of controls. It took me about a week to memorize this again, and you can easily delete the extra pages if you want. Personally, I hope to turn the new Control Center into a little remote control for my phone, reducing the number of visits to individual apps.

Another change in iOS 18 will be either an insignificant addition or a big deal – there is nothing in between: the addition of RCS. I belong to the latter category, and I can tell you, it was a Thrill to see my first RCS messages forwarded to my friends on Android. Without any action on my part, my messages went back to RCS instead of SMS after downloading the iOS 18 beta. It worked surprisingly well. I see tap indicators and read receipts, and tapbacks finally show up as reactions rather than a whole extra message.

The real moment of truth will come when my friends finally upgrade to iOS 18 and we can send each other photos without a lot of complicated side-channeling. I showed remarkable I’ve held off on asking my iPhone friends to download beta software, but you can bet my campaign to get them all to upgrade to iOS 18 starts today. If you’re an iPhone owner who regularly messages someone on Android, you should do the same. This incarnation of RCS on the iPhone won’t end the blue and green bubble war, but it will solve the biggest problems in cross-platform messaging for people on both sides.

Just as important as sharing priceless memories with my friends? The fact that iOS 18 also allows you to deface your homescreen in unprecedented ways. You can make your homescreen completely Alex Cranz-style if you’re a weirdo, or you can put the damn icons exactly where you want them for the first time since the iPhone was invented. Imagine that!

Apple has shown off the app icon coloring feature with lots of pretty examples, but I personally haven’t found a way to use it without it ending up looking too “Material Ew.” But placing icons anywhere on the screen already feels so intuitive that I can’t believe we couldn’t do it sooner.

You know this is a big update when an entirely new password app is only the fourth most interesting thing. It’s self-explanatory, and after snooping around a bit, I’m convinced this is an app for your parents who refuse to learn how to use a password manager. You can store passwords and access them from your iOS, iPad, and macOS devices as you’d expect, but you can also share individual passwords or groups of passwords with other people, which would be handy for families and people in the same household.

The catch, of course, is that everyone has to be in the Apple ecosystem, and since I frequently switch between iOS and Android, that’s not something I can really use long-term. Incidentally, using an Apple password manager first-hand would also make switching from iOS in the future much more difficult, which is probably no coincidence. But if my parents were fully committed to Apple, I would absolutely make sure they used it.

One feature I know I will use in the long run? Transcription in voice memos. This may be a feature for my fellow journalists, but friends, it is Good. I’ve been using Pixel phones to record and transcribe interviews for years, and the Pixel is basically the undisputed best tool for the job. In iOS 18, Voice Memos finally transcribes your recordings in real time or after the fact, and is comparable in quality to the Pixel Recorder app. It may not be a feature for the masses, but those who know it know what it’s about.

A new Control Center and a more customizable app grid don’t look like much on paper. And many people will probably just leave them as is, which is fine. But if you don’t mind putting in a little effort, you’ll find iOS 18 quite worthwhile—no artificial intelligence required.

Still, AI is the big missing piece of the puzzle. I was able to preview some of it in early betas: The new glowing Siri will make you “oooh” loudly the first time you use it, and the first version of Apple Intelligence will offer email summaries, notification overviews, and writing tools. I’m not really sold on any of this yet, but the big stuff—or so we’ve been told over and over again—is still to come. Siri will gain contextual awareness and the ability to actually do things for you, which is potentially a big deal. That’s all coming in a later update; until then, you’ll mostly have to make do with the same old Assistant.

Currently, Apple Intelligence is still slowly coming into focus. But even without the major AI features, iOS 18 is off to a good start. Apple just needs to finish it.