Do you need your iPhone to feel and appear like everybody else’s? Of course not — there’s a complete business of instances that allow you to make your iPhone stand out, so it is sensible that you simply’d need the software program to additionally mirror your character. When I first put in iOS 18.2, I went straight to the next eight settings and options and configured them to enhance my day-to-day expertise. Some are top-tier options whereas a couple of are much less apparent.
Now is a good time to get a bounce on this, with iOS 18.3 simply across the nook. If you could have an iPhone that runs Apple Intelligence, remember to take a look at the options you are going to use most. Or if in case you have little interest in them, learn to flip off Apple Intelligence.
For extra on what’s new in iOS 18, study enhancements to the overhauled Calculator app and the Mail app. Don’t neglect to seek the advice of our iOS 18 improve guidelines, which incorporates ensuring you could have a correct backup earlier than upgrading.
Watch this: 11 Hidden Features in iOS 18
Change the default buttons on the lock display
In actual property, location is all the things, and the underside corners of the iPhone lock display are the prime spots, every a straightforward thumb press away when your machine continues to be locked. Before iOS 18, these posts had been held by the flashlight and digicam buttons, with no option to change them.
In iOS 18, you may lastly exchange them with different buttons — or take away them completely, a balm for folk who unknowingly activate the flashlight (imagine me, there is a higher option to flip it on). You can add buttons to acknowledge music by way of Shazam, allow Dark Mode, set an alarm/timer, allow Airplane Mode, open your Wallet, ship cash by way of Tap to Cash and extra.
Here’s how:
1. On the iPhone’s lock display, contact and maintain wherever on the show till you see the Customize button. You’ll must unlock the cellphone utilizing Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode. If it opens the house display, swipe down from the center-top of the display (not the appropriate edge, which brings up Control Center.
2. Tap Customize after which select Lock Screen.
3. Remove one of many buttons by tapping the – (minus) button on the icon.
4. To exchange the button with one other perform, faucet its house (now with a + icon) after which select the one you need on the following display. (You also can choose to go away that house empty with no button.)
5. Repeat these steps for the opposite button if you wish to change it.
6. Tap Done whenever you’re completed.
7. Tap the lock display once more to exit the customise mode.
Remove a lock display button by tapping the – (minus) button, after which select a brand new management to interchange it.
Set up a number of the new duties obtainable on the Action button
The Action button on the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro changed the devoted mute swap discovered on each earlier iPhone mannequin with a configurable management. By default it serves the identical objective — maintain it to show Silent Mode on or off — however you may configure it for different actions like opening the Camera app, performing a number of actions without delay and even ordering espresso.
In iOS 18, the Action button will get new capabilities. You can bypass Control Center and select a management of your alternative, reminiscent of opening the Remote interface for navigating Apple TV or utilizing Shazam to determine a tune.
To select a distinct motion for the Action button, go to Settings > Action Button. Swipe sideways to pick out and activate one of many obtainable actions. For the Controls, Shortcut and Accessibility choices, faucet the Choose button to select which particular motion to run.
iOS 18 now enables you to program the Action Button together with your favourite Control Center management.
Give your own home display a radical new look
You would not assume that placing icons the place you need is a radical new function, however that is as a result of iOS has at all times had a locked association. Apps get added from prime to backside, left to proper. You may rearrange the order by which icons seem and transfer them to different screens, however that was about it.
In iOS 18, apps might be positioned almost wherever. You not must cope with a wallpaper picture of your children or pets being obscured by icons. They nonetheless adhere to a grid — Apple is not about to sanction anarchy — however might be positioned freely.
Also, Dark mode lastly applies to the entire iPhone’s dwelling display, with choices for coloring icons and affecting the brightness of the wallpaper picture. Here’s the best way to customise the seems.
Arrange apps: Touch and maintain the house display to enter “jiggle mode,” after which drag the icons to new positions. It will nonetheless slide them round to fill areas, however with endurance, you may transfer them into the spots you need.
Position app icons the place you need so this excellent lady is not coated.
You also can shortly flip appropriate apps into widgets that show extra data. Maps, for example, is usually a map of your present location with shortcut buttons to seek for locations or deliver up a listing of close by locations (reminiscent of dinner spots). Touch and maintain the app icon and search for a row of resize buttons within the menu that seems. Once expanded past the usual icon measurement, you may drag the deal with within the bottom-right nook of the brand new icon. To get it again to its single icon measurement you could contact and maintain once more and select the single-icon button
Some apps might be expanded into bigger icons that act like widgets.
Set Dark mode: If you have ever subjected your self to the retina blast of black textual content on a white background late at night time in a darkened room, you’ll recognize the brand new Dark mode possibility for the house and lock screens. iOS has beforehand included a Dark mode, the place mild backgrounds swap to black or darkish grey, textual content switches to white or mild grey and different interface parts are dimmed to coexist in a darkish atmosphere. That’s by no means been utilized to the house and lock screens in any vital means — solely the dock and a few widgets — till iOS 18.
First, contact and maintain the house display to enter jiggle mode. Tap the Edit button within the top-left nook and select Customize from the menu. At the underside of the display, select a mode for the icons and background: Automatic, Dark or Light (I’ll get to Tinted in a second). In Dark mode, the icons acquire black backgrounds, and folders and the Dock turn into darkish grey. (Developers have the choice of creating Dark mode icons for his or her apps. In the meantime, apps not but optimized get a typically darker look.)
In the house display’s Dark mode, icons and the background are given a darker remedy.
In Dark mode, the background picture additionally modifications. Apple’s default iOS 18 wallpaper dynamically modifications from mild to darkish because the day progresses, or you may select colours that provide each a lightweight and darkish possibility. If you utilize a photograph, its general publicity is lowered to dim the sunshine output.
If you need darkish icons however aren’t a fan of the dimmed picture remedy, faucet the solar icon within the nook of the choices sheet on the backside of the display to toggle again to Light mode only for the background.
Tinted icons: A brand new and completely different possibility is to tint the entire app icons in order that they share the identical coloration. In the Customize choices on the backside of the display, select Tinted because the icon fashion. You can then alter the Hue (the slider with the colour spectrum) and Luminosity (the slider with the darkish to mild vary) to decide on the colour tint you favor.
Apply a common tint to all app icons, with controls for adjusting the hue and luminosity.
What if you wish to match a coloration from a background picture? Tap the eyedropper button after which drag the reticle to pinpoint the colour you need — the border signifies the chosen coloration.
The tint is utilized not solely to icons however to widgets as effectively. For a widget reminiscent of Photos, the photographs it shows present up as duotones to match the theme.
Large icons: Do the labels under every app icon appear redundant to you? Now you may take away the labels and improve the scale of the icons with one setting. Open the Customize choices as described above and faucet the Large button.
Make the house display icons bigger and conceal the app labels.
After making any of those modifications, faucet wherever on the display to use them and exit the Customize interface.
Change up how the Control Center seems
Control Center was as soon as a handy place to shortly entry controls reminiscent of playback quantity and Airplane mode, however beneath iOS 18 it is a configurable playground. You can place controls the place you need, resize many to disclose extra data and add new controls on a number of screens.
Swipe down from the top-right nook to disclose the Control Center (or swipe up from the underside on the iPhone SE). To enter edit mode, contact and maintain or press the + button on the top-left nook.
Just as with transferring apps, drag a management to a different slot on the display to reposition it. Many of the controls additionally embody a bottom-right deal with that may resize the management — usually, it reveals the title of the management and its present standing (reminiscent of Flashlight Off).
Rearrange the controls in Control Center and, for some, increase them to disclose extra data (or simply make the button a bigger goal for urgent).
Control Center additionally now spans a number of screens. Swipe as much as view controls for media at the moment taking part in, Home controls for good lights and home equipment and a web page devoted to the communication choices that seem whenever you long-press the Connectivity block containing Airplane Mode, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Cellular and others. Look intently and you may see that these screens are literally particular person controls expanded to occupy all the Control Center space.
You can rearrange the order of these screens by transferring their controls. Suppose you need Home controls to be the primary swipe as an alternative of Now Playing: In the enhancing mode, drag the big Home management as much as the earlier display (Now Playing will shift to the appropriate to make room).
Some controls get their very own screens, reminiscent of Home. Normally it is on the third display, however right here it has been moved to the second display.
To take away controls, faucet the – (minus) button that seems. You also can add different controls: Tap Add a Control and scroll via the obtainable choices starting from beginning a Screen Recording to a bunch of accessibility choices.
Read extra: Best iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro instances
Lock or conceal any of your delicate apps
Our telephones carry a few of our most delicate information, and but it isn’t unusual handy a cellphone to a buddy to view pictures or search for one thing on-line. That does not imply they will snoop, however it does not not imply they is perhaps extra curious than you are snug with. For information you wish to guarantee stays out of sight or so as to add a layer of safety in entrance of delicate data, iOS 18 provides the power to lock and conceal apps.
For instance, as an instance you retain an ongoing set of lists of reward concepts for members of the family within the Notes app. You can lock particular person notes, however that requires a separate step. Maybe a couple of concepts had been made as particular person fast notes or drawings. Instead of micromanaging entry, you may lock all the Notes app by doing the next:
Touch and maintain the app icon you wish to lock and select Require Face ID or Require Touch ID (or Require Passcode if Face ID or Touch ID usually are not enabled) from the menu that seems. Confirm your alternative by tapping Require Face ID (or related) within the subsequent dialog.
Lock particular person apps.
To take away the authentication step, contact and maintain the app and select Don’t Require Face ID (or related).
Nothing outwardly signifies that an app is locked — you may discover out whenever you attempt to open it. There’s another stage of app safety obtainable, which is to cover apps in a particular locked folder. Touch and maintain the app and select Require Face ID after which faucet Hide and Require Face ID within the dialog. Confirm the motion by tapping Hide App on the following display.
The app disappears from the house display and will get slotted right into a Hidden folder on the backside of the App Library (swipe left past your final dwelling display to view the App Library). To entry apps there, faucet the Hidden folder and authenticate with Face ID.
When you select Hide and Require Face ID to guard an app, it will get put into the Hidden folder in App Library (prime). Tap the folder and authenticate to entry the app (backside).
iOS 18 imposes some limitations on hidden apps. Some, reminiscent of lots of the built-in ones like Notes or Reminders, can solely be locked and can’t be hidden in any respect. Also, the Hidden folder locks itself whenever you launch an app or swipe away from the App Library.
Turn off Loop Videos within the Photos app
Many apps have carried out a small however annoying (to me) function, and now Photos beneath iOS 18.2 has it too: Videos mechanically replay whenever you watch them till you faucet the Pause button. That might be enjoyable a few times, or when viewing brief clips. I’m not a fan of getting to take motion to make them cease every time.
Now I can take motion as soon as. Go to Settings > Photos, scroll down till you see Loop Videos and switch the choice off. A video will play by itself however then cease on the finish because it ought to.
Turn off Loop Videos to cease each video from replaying mechanically.
If you’d somewhat the video did not play in any respect till you faucet the Play button, additionally flip off Auto-Play Motion in the identical Settings display.
Adjust the view of your calendar
Big new options like locking and hiding apps are nice additions however so are the tiny modifications that you simply encounter daily. The Calendar app contains two new methods to view your schedule.
In iOS 18, whenever you’re within the Month view in portrait orientation, pinch with two fingers to view extra or fewer particulars. As you “zoom in,” particular person occasions seem as coloured bars after which as labeled occasions with instances, all whereas holding the month-to-month grid of days and weeks.
In the Calendar app’s Month view, pinch to zoom in and see extra particulars.
The Day view, which breaks down your day hour by hour, now has a brand new Multi Day view that reveals two consecutive days to provide you context for what’s coming with out turning the cellphone into panorama orientation and viewing the Week view. Tap the View button on the prime of the Single Day view and select Multi Day from the popup menu.
The new Multi Day view within the Calendar reveals two days without delay (proper).
Improve film and TV present dialogue within the TV app
Trouble listening to dialogue in motion pictures and tv reveals is not a brand new drawback — for instance, the Apple TV has had a function for some time the place you may ask Siri, “What did she say?” and it’ll mechanically again up a couple of seconds, activate subtitles and replay that part of the video. You may even purchase soundbars that may overcome muffled TV speech. There are a number of causes it is more durable to listen to dialogue, however the TV app in iOS 18 features a high-tech workaround to make dialog simpler to discern.
While you are watching a video within the TV app, faucet the More (…) button after which increase the Audio heading within the menu that seems; if the cellphone is in horizontal orientation, faucet the Audio Adjustments button. Tap Enhance Dialogue and select Enhance or Boost. They every dampen background noise and lift the dialogue’s audio.
Turn on Enhance Dialogue within the TV app to discern characters’ speech higher in noisy scenes.
These are just some new options and modifications in iOS 18. Check out our broader protection of Apple Intelligence, extra impressions of the system after utilizing it for months and the way these all work along with the iPhone 16 fashions.
Apple’s iPhone 16, 16 Plus Show Off Bolder Colors and Buttons
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