Everything iOS 18.1 Brought To Your iPhone That You Need to Know About

Apple released iOS 18.1 in October, about a month after the tech giant fixed a few iPhone bugs 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 latest update introduces some new features and fixes to many iPhones. The update also brings a few Apple Intelligence features to people outside the EU and China who have an iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max , as well as any devices in the iPhone 16 lineup .



Read more: Your iOS 18 Cheat Sheet To download the update, go to Settings > General > Software Update , tap Update Now and follow the prompts on your screen. Here are some of the features that iOS 18.1 could bring to your iPhone.

Call recording comes to your iPhone Call that number for a holiday surprise. With iOS 18.1, your iPhone can now record phone calls .

Once you're 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 after a 3-second delay.

This feature works regardless of whether you're talking to another iPhone user or an Android user. 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. Before you use this feature, please check with local law enforcement about the legality of call recording in your area, just in case. Apple Intelligence features The latest iOS update introduces a handful of Apple Intelligence features to some iPhones, like writing tools for messages , the Clean Up photo tool and an upgraded Siri.

That means you can have your iPhone proofread and revise emails before you send them, remove distracting items from photos and more. Before you use these features though, you have to join the Apple Intelligence waiting list . To do that, go to Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri > Join the Apple Intelligence Waitlist and tap Join Waitlist .

Once you're approved, you'll get access to the above Apple Intelligence features. 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.

But these aren't all the Apple Intelligence features coming to your iPhone. For example, Apple's AI-powered emoji generator Genmoji isn't included in this iOS update, so it'll be included in a future update. These features are only available to people outside the EU and China and who have an iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max , as well as the iPhone 16 lineup .

If you have the base model iPhone 15 or below you won't be able to access these features at this time. Updated RCS messaging support When Apple released iOS 18, it brought RCS messaging support to iPhones. With iOS 18.

1, it expands this functionality to include Messages for Business. Before this update, Messages for Business was only available through iMessage, so this could make it easier for more businesses to communicate with iPhones. 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 iOS 18.

1. With iOS 18.1, 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 helpful 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 iOS 18.

1, 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 Apple also adjusted the iOS 18 feature that lets you tint your home screen apps in iOS 18.1.

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 this update, widgets wouldn't be affected by tint, only apps. 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 MacRumors , iOS 18.1 enables the feature on compatible Apple Watch models paired with an iPhone running the software.

Expanded emoji keyboard Another change in iOS 18.1 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 a section for 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 MacRumors , if you have an iPhone running iOS 18.1 and a MacBook running 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 Apple's full release notes for iOS 18.1: Apple Intelligence (All iPhone 16 models, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max).

Writing Tools Siri Photos Notifications Phone Camera Airpods This update also includes the following improvements and bug fixes: 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 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 might land on your iPhone with iOS 18.2 .

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