Every summer, Apple runs a beta program to help find bugs and get feedback on features for its upcoming operating system releases. There’s a lot of great stuff to look forward to in iOS 18, and you don’t have to wait until September to try out some of the new features, as long as you’re willing to accept a few bugs along the way.
Now that the public beta has been released, anyone with an Apple Account can try out iOS 18; just be aware that not all features are present or finished and that you might experience some performance degradation, shorter battery life, or bugs. It’s always recommended you run the beta on a secondary device or have a backup available. Read our guide for more on how to register for and install the iOS 18 beta.
Once you’ve got the beta installed on your iPhone, here are some of the best features you should try out first.
Customize the Control Center
Control Center is getting a really big update in iOS 18, and it could become one of the most frequently used parts of your iPhone. Swipe down from the upper-right edge as you normally would to open Control Center, but notice that it now has multiple pages stacked vertically—swipe up and down to switch between them.
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Tap the + button in the upper left to edit Control Center—you can drag the corner of controls to resize them, move them around, or add or remove them. There are lots of additional controls, and there will be more on the way as third-party apps will be able to add Control Center controls!
Personalize your Home screen
Tap and hold on any empty space on your Home screen for a couple of seconds and all the icons will jiggle and dance, and they’ll have an (-) icon in the upper left.
In this mode you can move icons to any position on the grid you want, leaving empty space wherever you want it. While moving an icon around, use a second finger to tap other icons and you’ll “grab” them all together, making it easy to move multiple apps to a different page. You can even resize widgets just by dragging the corner .
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From this mode, tap Edit in the upper-left and then Customize. A small interface will slide up from the bottom of the screen, allowing you to change icon size between Small and Large, select dark or light mode for icons, or “Tinted” mode that lets you change their shade to anything you want.
This level of personalization is nothing new to Android users but is unheard of on the iPhone.
Send an RCS message
Once you upgrade to iOS 18, you’ll have RCS support in Messages—meaning that your “green bubble” conversations with Android users will have a lot of modern features like typing indicators, read receipts, full-size images and videos, tapbacks, and more.
But RCS requires support from your carrier and isn’t everywhere just yet. But the major carriers—Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile—are all on board. We have a guide to RCS in iOS 18 that will help you make sure it’s enabled, check if your carrier supports it, and how to know when it’s in use.
Try out the new flashlight
If you have an iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max, or an iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max, you have a really cool new flashlight in iOS 18. Yes, I know it’s just the flashlight, but trust me it’s one of the slickest things in iOS 18.
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Just fire up the flashlight from the lock screen or Control Center and you’ll see a slick new interface come down from the Dynamic Island. You can swipe up and down to change the strength of the flashlight and even swipe left and right to change the width of the beam! The beam width change uses the special hardware made for the Adaptive True Tone flash, which is only available on this year and last year’s iPhones Pro models.
Get to know the new Photos app
The Photos app is getting a major design overhaul in iOS 18 and it seems to be easily the most controversial part of the new OS so far. Unlike other changes that are either hidden or optional, the new Photos interface is a big shift that is forced on everyone, and some users don’t like the change.
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Apple has already made some tweaks based on early beta feedback, so be sure to spend some time using the new Photos app and then use the Feedback app to let Apple know what you think.
Scroll around your photo library at the top. Try the categories underneath to get to specific types of images. Don’t forget to tap the “Customize” button all the way at the bottom of the main Photos interface to select and reorder the different groups and collections you want to see. Some things may change before the final release in September, but you’ll want to get used to the new interface now.
Make the Action Button better
If you have an iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max, your mute switch was replaced by an Action Button that you can customize in the Settings menu. A lot of users haven’t found a better use for it than to keep it as a mute toggle, but it’s getting some new tricks in iOS 18. You can set it to “Recognize Music” to quickly Shazam a song, but the big improvement is the ability to set it to Controls and then select one of many Control Center controls: Ping your Apple Watch, open Calculator, toggle Airplane Mode, open Quick Notes, scan a QR code, and much more.
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Author: Jason Cross, Senior Editor, Macworld
Jason has written about technology for more than 25 years - first in the gaming press, then focusing on enthusiast PCs and general technology. He enjoys learning how complicated technology works and explaining it in a way anyone can understand.