15 New Hidden iOS 18 Features

While a lot of attention goes to new iOS 18 features, here are 15 odd and interesting new features you may find useful. There are new Vocal Shortcuts, music haptics, Phone app searching, Calculator features and more.

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Video Transcript: Gary here with MacMost.com. Here are some hidden features in iOS 18. 
People, of course, are talking about all the main new features, for the iPhone, in iOS 18.  But there are some smaller hidden features as well. A lot of these, of course, are things found in Settings. Let's go into the Settings App here.
First notice that like before you can go into your Apple ID. It's now called Apple Account. In there you can access yours iCloud Settings and there's a new arrangement for how that looks. But you could also access iCloud outside of that by just scrolling down and looking for iCloud right here. This is definitely going to make it easier for people like me to tell other people where to find iCloud Settings. Also notice that this listing for Settings is now a lot shorter. That's because all of the apps are now grouped together under Apps, right here. They are all in alphabetical order. You can use the letters here to the right to jump to a section and you'll find all of Apple's apps, the default built-in ones and third party apps all mixed in together and are easy to find because they are alphabetical.  
Now there are some new options for battery charging that are only available on the latest iPhones. So it is here on my iPhone 15 Pro, it's on the iPhone 16 as well. But if you have older models you may not see this. You go into Battery and then you go to Charging. There before you had the option to have battery charging set to 80%. But now you can actually do 80, 85, 95, 100. You've got all these different options here. So if 80% didn't get you through the day before but you didn't want to have it set to 100% you now have the option to maybe go with something like 90 or 95%. Still prolong the battery life a little bit while still getting a pretty good charge to last you through the day. Also, for the iPhone 15 Pro models and all the iPhone 16 they've got an Action Button. Like before you can go to the Action Button settings and you have all these different options. But a new one is the ability to choose Control. This means Control Center. If you use this basically any On/Off switch in Control Center can now be set to  be changed by the Action Button. So you've got tons of different options here including third party apps, as long as they can add themselves to Control Center, they can now be assigned to the Action Button as well. 
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Now a lot of new things are going to be under Accessibility. While they are meant for people that have accessibility issues we can all use them and benefit from them. So you'll find one such new thing listed here under Speech. Vocal Shortcuts. You can turn this On and then you can create a voice command that will work and you can set it to whatever you want. So it literally means Shortcuts here, in other words things in the Shortcuts App. But you can create a shortcut there that does something like, just, launch an app or does a whole complex series of things. I've got a ton of different shortcuts from the Shortcuts App. Like here's one to record a Voice Memo. I can create a custom phrase, like that. Then I have to speak it three times for it to learn the phrase. Listen Up, Listen Up, Listen Up. Now it is ready. So now I can simply speak this and a shortcut runs. Listen Up. Now I'm recording a voice memo. 
But in addition to any shortcuts there is one interesting item here at the top. That is Siri Request. So you can create a voice phrase that activates Siri that's not the typical Hey and the word Siri or Siri by itself. 
Now there is another way to control something with your voice. If you go down to Touch here and then to Assistive Touch, you have to have Assistive Touch turned On. But now you can also add something called Sound Actions. So there is a different sound here and you can assign them to a particular Action. So you can find all these system actions here and you can assign it to that sound. You could practice the sound here by clicking on one of these and then trying it and it will tell you if you get it or not. 
Also in the Physical & Motor section there's Eye Tracking. So you can turn on Eye Tracking and then it is going to go through this process where you have to follow the dot with your eyes. Then once you're done with that you can actually use your eyes as I'm trying to do right now to control what you're pointing at. 
Now if you go down to the Hearing Section there is something new called Music Haptics. This is a simple On/Off switch. When you do this if you play music in certain apps like the Music App your phone actually vibrates to both the drums and the base of the music. So you kind of feel the music as well as hear it. Now obviously this is for people who can't hear as well. But I find it to be a pretty satisfying experience to hold your phone in your hand while listening to music as well. I recommend that if you're a music fan to give this a try. It's really interesting. 
One more Accessibility feature. Under Motion you've got one for Show Vehicle Motion Cues. So if you turn that On you're going to see these dots on the side of your screen. As you move your iPhone around notice how the dots move. You can set it to Automatic so these only appear when you're actually in a moving vehicle. They are really interesting. I'd love to hear from people that have problems with motion sickness in cars as to whether or not these help. 
So, of course, Control Center has some major new features. If I swipe down here I can actually edit Control Center and have all sorts of new cool controls. That is a major new feature. But what isn't getting talked about as much is this little power button at the top right. Before you had to press the side button and the down volume button and that brings up several controls, powering off but also making emergency calls and things like that. But now if you want to Power down your phone you can simply tap and you have to Hold this button here and then it will bring up the Power Off. The cool thing is that like using the two buttons this locks your phone as well. It locks it such that you have to enter your passcode, Face ID or Touch ID won't work to unlock it. 
Now when using the Phone App there's a cool new search feature. You can Search for contacts. But how can you do that when all you have are numbers? Well, remember you've got those little letters under the numbers. Remember when we used to use those for texting. Well you can still use those here. So for instance if I wanted to call Joe I can type 5 for the J, 6 for the O, 3 for the E and you can see how it brings up that contact there. So I can easily search my contacts using those letters and select the one that's right or just keep typing until it's the only one left. Then maybe even after a while I can get used to the fact that 563 will be a quick way to call Joe. 
Here's a cool new feature that works with the buttons. If I want to press the Volume Up button I can do it on my iPhone and you wouldn't expect to see anything here in Screen Capture. But you will. Look closely on the left side of the screen. I'm going to press Volume Up and you can see there's a little black space that gets formed there. Here's volume Down. So the buttons now produce this little effect on the screen. It makes it look like you're actually pinching in on the side of the iPhone. It's really neat visual feedback. 
Now you probably know that in Voice Memos as well as Notes you can record audio and get a transcription. But what's not being talked about as much is you can actually import audio as well. I'm going to press the paperclip button at the bottom here to import something. I'm going to attach this file and I'm going to use an audio file. Here's one that's an audio of one of my videos, like that. It will bring that in as an audio attachment. But if I tap on it to go to the audio, not only can I play it but I have this Transcript Button right here. It will actually transcribe this audio even though I didn't record it in the Voice Memos or Notes app. You can create these transcriptions from any standard audio file like an M4A or MP3. 
Now the new Calculator App doesn't look too different from the one that was on the iPhone before. The main difference is it is available on the iPad now as well and it is the same app that is basically on the Mac also. Some people talk about the fact that you can actually backspace now. So you've got this little backspace button. The Clear Button turns into Backspace. But you could have done that before with a swipe as well. So it is not really a new feature. But what is a new feature is the ability to see the equation that you're typing appear at the top. So I can do this and you can see how it types out the entire thing. A normal calculator won't do that. You would just see one. Plus wouldn't produce any output. Then you would see two and then plus again. You would just see the result, you would never see the whole equation there. You get the answer if you click equals there and you see the equation there at the top. You can actually click the equation to go back and add more to it, like that. Then if you go to the History you actually can see the history and go back to previous equations and continue to work with those. Also you can, kind of, use parentheses now. I mean you had them before if you switched to the scientific calculator, you can see the parentheses. But now they appear in the equation there. You can treat the scientific calculator as kind of an alternative mode. Like using the Shift Key to get capital letters and symbols above the numbers. So, for instance, I can go here to basic and let's say I want to have 4 x and now I want to use parentheses. Well I can switch to scientific, use the left parenthesis, switch back to basic and then type something like this and notice how it auto-completes the right parenthesis there so I can just press equals. So I've got the parentheses there even though you can't type them in the basic calculator they still appear and work. 
Now the new Passwords App is a major new feature of iOS 18. But kind of a hidden feature of that is if you go into Wi-Fi and you go to a Wi-Fi network I can even click it and Copy or Share. But what is new is the ability to Show Network QR code. You tap that and it gives you a QR code and somebody with another device can simply point their camera at this to get access. 
Finally, here's something I consider to be a major new feature but it doesn't get mentioned very much. That's in the Files App. If you're using iCloud Drive of course you've got the system where some of your files are downloaded in local and others are only on the Server. You loose your internet connection then you can only access the files that happen to be downloaded. Which are probably your most frequently used files. But if you want to ensure that a file is always available, even when offline, in the Files App you can tap and hold on a file on iCloud Drive and now there is the option to keep downloading. So you use that and now this one is always going to be available offline. Tap and Hold again and you can turn Keep Downloading off for that file. 
So while the major new features of iOS 18 are great I'm sure there are many of you who will find these rarely talked about new features just as useful.

Comments: 9 Responses to “15 New Hidden iOS 18 Features”

Sheldon

6 months ago

Thanks bunches

Graham Caulfield

Having trouble making the "Voice Memos" shortcut. When I speak my activate word it keeps taking me to the Shortcuts App to set up a shortcut.

Gary Rosenzweig

Graham: Not sure what the problem could be. Try re-creating it from scratch.

Jim E Goddard

Great video thanks so much

Gabriel

Thanks so much for the tip with the “Vocal Shortcuts”! Great tip!
Making a Shortcut in the Shortcuts app is a bit finicky and took my quite a while to fiddle around with it, but creating the Vocal Shortcut to the Shortcut is a breeze.

Bernardo

Thank you, very useful post!

White Patrick

I recently had an iPhone 13. I wonder why when I take a photo I get Lensflare.
I have to fall back on my iphoneXR which avoids the flare.
Is there any way to stop lens flare ?

White: Sorry, I don't know. Maybe something wrong with the class over the lens?

Nancy

IOS 18 is causing issues with CarPlay. I created 3 vocal shortcuts based on this video. When I got in my car and my iPhone connected, SiriusXM, AM, FM would not work AND my 2025 Honda CRV screen showed that Voice Control was active and it would not let me turn it off. This site displays a variety of issues with CarPlay since updating to IOS 18 > https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255771678?login=true&sortBy=rank&answerId=260826485022. I turned of vocal shortcuts and CarPlay works fine.