Apple released the iOS 18.1 release candidate on Oct. 21, about three weeks after the tech giant released a few iPhone fixes 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 the RC introduces a few new features and refinements to the iPhones of developers and public beta testers. That includes some Apple Intelligence features for developers and beta testers who aren’t in the EU or China and have an iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max or the iPhone 16 lineup.
Read more: Everything You Need to Know About iOS 18
Since this is a beta, I recommend downloading it on something other than your primary device. Because this isn’t the final version of iOS 18.1, the update might be buggy and battery life may be short, so it’s best to keep those troubles on a secondary device.
Note that the beta is not the final version of iOS 18.1, so there could be more features to land on your iPhone when iOS 18.1 is released. There’s no word on when Apple will release iOS 18.1 to the public yet, but when Apple releases an RC version of an iOS update the tech giant usually releases that iOS version to the general public within a week or two.
Here are some of the features that could land on your iPhone soon with iOS 18.1.
Apple Intelligence features
Apple released the first developer beta of iOS 18.1 before it released iOS 18 to the general public. According to CNET’s Scott Stein and Patrick Holland, that beta introduced Apple Intelligence features, like writing tools for emails and documents, the Clean Up photo tool and changes and improvements to Siri. And these features are present in the beta version of iOS 18.1.
That means you can have your iPhone proofread and revise emails before you send them, you can remove distracting items from photos and more. However, these aren’t all the Apple Intelligence features coming to your iPhone. Genmoji, Apple’s AI-powered emoji generator, isn’t included in this iOS update, for example.
On the left is my original message and on the right is the message rewritten with Apple Intelligence. I like my original better, but that’s just me.
These features are only available to developers and public beta testers outside the EU and China and who have an iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, as well as the iPhone 16 lineup. If you’re a developer or public beta tester and have the base model iPhone 15 or below you won’t be able to access these features at this time.
More RCS messaging support
When Apple released iOS 18, it brought RCS messaging support to iPhones. With the beta version of iOS 18.1, the tech giant is expanding RCS messaging support to more carriers around the world.
These are the carriers that now support RCS messaging on iPhone, according to 9to5Mac.
- Telenet (Belgium)
- Proximus (Belgium)
- BASE (Belgium)
- TracFone (US)
- C Spire (US)
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 the beta of iOS 18.1.
With the iOS 18.1 beta, 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 impactful 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 the iOS 18.1 beta, 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
The iOS 18.1 beta also adjusts the iOS 18 feature that lets you tint your home screen apps. 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 the beta, widgets wouldn’t be affected by tint, only apps.
Lock Screen notification numbers
One of the new features iOS 18 brought to your iPhone is the ability to change your lock screen functions, and the iOS 18.1 beta streamlines your notifications by displaying the number of notifications from an app or user near the app or contacts image.
Before the beta, if you received a few notifications from messages or social media, the notifications would appear in a stack and display a number instead of message content.
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 9to5Mac, the latest iOS 18.1 beta enables the feature on compatible Apple Watch models paired with an iPhone running the beta software.
Call recording comes to your iPhone
With the beta of iOS 18.1, your iPhone can now record phone calls. Once you are 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. This feature works regardless of whether you’re talking to another iPhone user or an Android user.
Call that number for a holiday surprise.
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 see these transcripts.
Before you use this feature, please check with local law enforcement about the legality of call recording, just in case.
Expanded emoji keyboard
Another change in the iOS 18.1 beta 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 most of 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 9to5Mac, if you have beta versions of both iOS 18.1 and 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 the 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
Those are a few of the new features public beta testers can try with iOS 18.1 public beta. There will likely be more betas before the OS is released to the public, so there’s plenty of time for Apple to change these features. As of now, there’s no word on when Apple will release iOS 18.1 to the public.
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 to know about iOS 18.0.1.
Watch this: Testing Apple’s Hearing Aid: Hands-On with AirPods Pro 2 Software Update
