After a few weeks of rumors and leaks, Apple has finally revealed its new Invites feature, which is part of the iCloud+ subscription. According to the company, Apple Invites helps users plan events. It looks similar to the Fantastical app feature, which lets you plan meetings with several people and let them choose the best date and hour for most.
With this release, the iCloud+ subscription has even more to offer. Despite more storage, iCloud Private Relay, Hide my Email, and HomeKit Secure Video, users can now take advantage of Apple Invites.
This feature is available for every iCloud+ user, which goes from the 50GB tier to 12TB (as part of a standalone subscription). Apple One subscribers can also enjoy this feature. Here’s how the company describes Apple Invites:
“Create online party invitations – for birthdays, graduations, baby showers & more. Track RSVPs, create shared albums, and send instantly by email or text.”
It’s unclear why Apple decided to release this feature now, but it’s nice to see it continue to add value to its subscriptions. 9to5Mac first rumored this function almost a month ago when Filipe Espósito found references to it on iOS 18.2 and iOS 18.3 beta codes.
“Code suggests that the Invites app will integrate with iCloud and will even have a web version on iCloud.com. The new app also integrates with a new iOS 18 daemon called GroupKit, which manages database models for groups of people. This daemon has been present since the first release of iOS 18.0 and hasn’t been used by any Apple apps so far.”
That said, with this new GroupKit API, it’s possible that Apple will soon release it to developers so they can implement this feature in their own apps.
Apple Invites is available as part of the iCloud+ subscription. It’s exclusive to iPhone users or iCloud web users. No iPad version so far.
