iOS 26 is now available to all through Apple’s public beta, with the official release due in September. But before diving into the biggest redesign in a decade, let’s revisit last year’s iOS 18. Ten months on, which features stood out, which disappointed, and which flew under the radar? Here’s our breakdown.
Standout Features
Customization Improvements: Apple gave users more control than ever with updates to the Home Screen, Control Center, and Lock Screen in iOS 18. That meant the ability to freely move app icons, apply custom color tints, and personalize the controls and shortcuts on these screens. A very welcome change.
Clean Up Tool in Photos: The new Clean Up feature, powered by Apple Intelligence, was a smash hit too. This impressive tool lets you remove unwanted objects or distracting background details from your photos instantly just by tapping the offending items. It works better on some photos than others, but overall it’s a very handy addition to the editing menu. You can even use it to remove entire people who might have inadvertently photo-bombed your holiday snaps.
AI-Powered Memories: The Photos app also introduced a feature allowing users to generate custom video memories. Simply describe a memory – something like “Rosie’s birthday party highlights, set to slow folksy music” and the app automatically compiles relevant clips, locations, faces, and timestamps into a cohesive narrative. It’s remarkably effective for quick, shareable highlights, and a huge upgrade to the cumbersome editing process that came before.
Didn’t Quite Land
Notification Summaries Saga: iOS 18’s AI-generated alerts, designed to condense long or multiple notifications into a short summary, faced a pretty big backlash due to their lack of accuracy. We saw a lot of news headlines completely misrepresented, to the point that Apple disabled notification summaries completely with iOS 18.3 to avoid spreading fake news. A more refined version is imminent, but it will take a lot to win back trust in the feature.
Photos Redesign Controversy: Apple’s redesign of the Photos app was met with mixed reviews, with its new unified interface proving disorienting for many users. Apple even made some changes after a month of complaints. The silver lining is that the new layout is pretty customizable, letting users put their most important collections and albums to the fore – but we suspect most people will still be pleased to see the reintroduction of distinct Library and Collections tabs in iOS 26.
The final version of Photos in iOS 18, with few changes.
Siri’s Lost Promise: Siri was set for major improvements this past year, but they never materialized. Instead, users have noted a frustrating regression. Siri struggled even with basic queries—recently unable to identify the current month. With competitors far outpacing Siri’s abilities, this marks an embarrassing step backward for Apple’s assistant.
Under the Radar
Change Your Default Apps: With iOS 18.2, Apple quietly expanded options for setting third-party defaults for messaging, calls, and password management. Users can now easily select apps like WhatsApp as the default for messages or calls triggered through Siri or when tapping a contact link. Apple’s own apps still handle incoming cellular calls and texts, but this is a nice concession to third-party apps.
Apple News+ Additions: Over the past year, Apple bolstered its News+ subscription with some nice extras, including an extensive recipe catalog and a dedicated cooking mode. It also added some fun new puzzle games (Quartiles & Emoji Game) alongside the existing crosswords and sudoku, positioning News+ as a strong rival to the New York Times ever-popular daily puzzles.
Auto Transcription and Summaries: Another underrated addition was the introduction of auto transcription for recordings within the Notes and Voice Memos apps. Users can now save a quick voice note when an idea strikes and then effortlessly search, copy, and share the resulting transcribed text. The AI-generated audio summaries are pretty handy, too.