Ahead of next week’s release, Apple seeded iOS 18.1 RC. The Release Candidate version of the company’s major iOS 18 update comes packed with Apple Intelligence features, in addition to other tweaks and functions available for iPhone users with devices not supported by Apple’s AI platform.
With iOS 18.1 RC, Apple offers the following Apple Intelligence features:
- Writing Tools: Users can rewrite, proofread, and summarize text nearly everywhere they write, including Mail, Notes, Pages, and third-party apps
- Improved Siri: With a new design, Siri can maintain context between requests. Even if you stumble over words or shift what you’re saying mid-sentence, Siri can understand what you actually want.
- Priority notifications: They appear at the top of the stack, letting you know what to pay attention to at a glance. Notifications are summarized, so you can scan them faster.
- Priority messages in Mail: Elevate time-sensitive messages to the top of your inbox, like an invitation that has a deadline today or a check-in reminder for your flight this afternoon.
- Reduce interruptions: With iOS 18.1 beta 1, an all-new Focus Mode understands the content of your notifications and shows you the ones that might need immediate attention, like a text about picking up your child from daycare later today.
- Email summarization: Tap to reveal a summary of a long email in the Mail app and cut to the chase.
- Record and transcribe calls in the Notes app: Just hit record in the Notes or Phone apps to capture audio recordings and transcripts. Apple Intelligence generates summaries of your transcripts, so you can get to the most important information at a glance.
- Smart Reply in Mail: Quickly draft an email response with all the right details. Apple Intelligence can identify the question you were asked in an email and offer relevant selections to include in your response.
- Clean Up: This Photos app feature can identify and remove distracting objects in the background of a photo without accidentally altering the subject.
- Summarization: Apple Intelligence can now summarize more than just Messages and Mail notifications.
Besides that, iOS 18.1 RC also brings other important updates. With the previous beta, Apple added the following functions:
- Control Center tweaks: Apple now offers all Connectivity toggles as standalone options, which means users can ditch the built-in solution to the specific buttons;
- Drag and Drop with iPhone Mirroring: The latest beta of iOS 18.1 brings drag-and-drop for iPhone Mirroring, which was missing from the original release of iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia;
- Camera Control: There’s a new Camera Control option that lets you switch to the front-facing camera
The company is also adding a hearing aid feature to AirPods Pro 2 with iOS 18.1 RC. BGR will let you know if we find anything else.
