The Biggest Apple Intelligence and iOS 18.1 Features Launching Today

Apple made a big deal of Apple Intelligence when the iPhone 16 launched late last month. And yet, the iPhone maker's first foray into AI, exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro and above, has only just arrived. Apple's iOS 18.1 (and iPadOS 18.1, which has many of the same features), is now ready for download, finally bringing with it the first wave of Apple Intelligence features. Some are even accessible on macOS 15.1 Sequoia. Even if you don't have an Apple Intelligence-compatible phone, it's worth reading on: There are some non-AI features, too.

How to turn on (or disable) Apple Intelligence

To get access to iOS 18.1's AI-powered upgrades, you'll actually need to manually turn them on. With iOS 18.1 installed on your phone (you can find it under Settings -> General -> Software Update), navigate to the Settings app and find the new tab for Apple Intelligence & Siri. Despite the "& Siri" part of the name, this toggle controls all AI features on your phone. Flip it on to enable Apple Intelligence, although note you might have to join a waitlist before the features actually reach your phone. Read on here for more details, including how to turn Apple Intelligence off if you don't end up liking it.

Credit: Apple Writing Tools

With Writing Tools, you can use AI to rewrite, proofread, and summarize your text. These features offer assistance with crafting emailsthat sound more professional, correcting grammar mistakes, and making your drafts more concise. You can also have the AI summarize your text into a bulleted list or table with key points, so you can append a TL;DR to your drafts. These tools are systemwide, so you'll be able to use them anywhere you find a text box.

Credit: Apple An upgraded Siri

Siri gets a new look in iOS 18.1, plus the ability to accept written prompts. Behind the scenes, the digital assistant also has a new language model that should make it better at understanding natural language, plus allow it to carry context from one prompt to another. For instance, you could ask Siri to send a text to "John," then ask Siri to "tell him to call me back," and Siri will know that you're still talking about John. Lifehacker will also get some competition, as Siri will be able to offer some tech support for certain Apple products.

Smart Reply

Smart Reply will give you contextual reply suggestions when texting or writing an e-mail. This is nothing new for many email users: Gmail, for example, offers contextual replies based on the content of the original message. If you're really pressed for time, and want to give a quick answer and move on, these replies can be useful, but for complex emails without easy responses, they're likely not so convenient.

Credit: Apple Call recordings and transcriptions

iOS finally gets call recording in iOS 18.1, and it's a bit more generous than expected. Despite initially being billed only for the iPhone 15 Pro and above, it started working on iPhone models as far back as the XS starting with iOS 18.1 beta 4. That's a bit surprising, as it's supposed to use Apple Intelligence, which should exclude iPhone 15 and older.

Regardless, Call Recording adds a button to the Phone app that notifies all parties that you've started recording, then saves your call's audio for you and generates a transcript of your call. The iPhone 15 Pro and above are also able to summarize calls using AI, so Apple Intelligence does play some role, although even non-AI compatible phones seem capable of getting transcripts for now.

Voice memos also get a similar treatment in iOS 18.1, so you can automatically generate a transcription for them, too.

Credit: Apple Notification summaries

You can now group related notifications together and use AI to quickly see key details from all of them at once, using the Notification Summaries feature. For instance, you might get a single notification letting you know about your electrical bill, your payment receipt, and payment received confirmation, rather than having to scroll through each individually. You'll be prompted to set up this feature when you first enable Apple Intelligence, but you can also swap it on/off or customize it under Settings -> Notifications.

Credit: Apple Summaries in Mail and Messages

Similar to the above, the Mail and Messages apps can summarize long threads for you, so you can get caught up more quickly. One beta tester in particular went viral after they found out how notification summaries handles being broken up with over text.

Credit: Apple Photos updates

The Photos app is getting a number of AI-powered updates, including the ability to Clean Up" photos by removing unwanted objects from them (similar to Google's Magic Eraser), search through your photo library using natural language, and create a Memory movie" by prompting Apple Intelligence to create a custom collage based on a natural language description.

Credit: Apple Intelligent interruption in Focus mode

Apple Intelligence can surface alerts it deems important even when you're in Focus mode. To try this out, select the "Reduce Interruptions" Focus mode in iOS 18.1.

Non-AI features in iOS 18.1

Even if you don't have an Apple Intelligence compatible iPhone (again, iPhone 15 and older), there are still a number of upgrades to look forward to in iOS 18.1. Beyond Call Recording, which seems to be coming to older phones despite its AI-branding, there's a new reset option for the fully customizable Control Center, in case you're not happy with the changes you've made, as well as dedicated tiles for connectivity options like wifi, Bluetooth, AirDrop, and cellular data; the ability to drag and drop files when mirroring your iPhone to a Mac; and greater access to your phone's NFC chip for third-party apps, opening it up for use with transit cards or hotel room keys.

iPhone 16 models can also use the Camera Control capacitive button to quickly swap to selfie mode.

What's not quite ready yet

iOS 18.1 is just an exploratory dip into AI on Apple's part, so expect more features to come down the line. These include image generation features like Image Playground and Genmoji, ChatGPT integration, an even more contextual Siri, the ability for Siri to help you out in third-party apps, and Visual Intelligence, which offers useful context about your surroundings just by snapping a photo of where you are.

Apple Intelligence will also be limited to U.S. English at launch, and currently has no timetable for an official release in the EU or mainland China.