Apple Invites Quick Start Guide

Let's take a look at Apple's new Invites service. 

Apple has a new app and service called Apple's Invites. It's basically a way to invite people to an event and then you can get RSVP's from them and update them about the event. So it's actually available in two ways. One is as an iPhone App. The other is as part of the iCloud.com website. So I'll start by showing you on the iPhone. But I'll also show you how you can do it on your Mac using iCloud.com. 

The most important thing you need to know is in order to create an event you need to be using iCloud Plus. In other words you need to have a subscription to iCloud. It could just be the 99 cent a month subscription to get a little more drive space. Anything that qualifies you for having iCloud Plus will allow you to create events. But to accept an invitation and RSVP you don't need iCloud Plus. As a matter of fact you don't need to be using iCloud or an Apple product at all. 

You'll find Apple Invites in The App Store. So you have to go to The App Store. You have to search for it and then get it. Once you launch it the first time you're going to get a little Welcome screen and then you get a screen like this allowing you to create an event. When you go to create an event you first get to add a background. So you get to choose from various different backgrounds that are shown here or some basic colors, or add a photo or just take a photo right now. So let's go and add something just like this and there's the background. Then you get to add an event title. So let's call this one Birthday Party. You can choose from one of four different fonts here. Try to keep things simple so you can just quickly create an event. 

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Then you can choose a date and time. So let's just pick a date here in the future. Let's choose the end of the month and let's choose a time. Let's say Starting at 8:00 and you can include an end time as well by checking that off. You can also set it to be just an all day event. So we'll just use this and now we've got the date there. Then you can choose a location. You can type the name of a business nearby or just an address. So I'll choose a nearby pub and then Done. So now I've got those things right there. It has my name here taken from my Apple ID and I can tap here and add a description if I want. I can tap something else for my name, if I want. Like if I have a nickname or whatever. Then I can also do a few other things at this point or I can come back and do it later.

One is I can create a Shared Photo Album. So this, of course, would only work with other people using iCloud Photos. But I would be able to take photos and have them appear in the Shared Album and so would other people who I have invited here. So, it is just a fun way to have people take photos at the party and then have them all instantly shared with everyone else who is at the party. You can also do the same thing with a Playlist using Apple Music. So anybody else that is using Apple Music could add songs to this Playlist. So people could add a bunch of their favorite songs and then you can just have playlist on at the party. These are kind of neat bells and whistles but you don't have to use them if you don't want them. So you can scroll through all this information and change it. Then you can go to Preview here and you can see a preview of what this will look like when people receive the invitation. Then you can tap Next. 

Now here's where you invite people. So, you can invite them either with a public link or individually. So with the Public Link you would just have a link and you can post it anywhere. Anybody with that link can RSVP. You can decide whether or not you want to approve those guests. So somebody RSVPing doesn't necessarily mean they are added to the list. You would then have to approve each person. If you turn this Off anybody can RSVP so great for a kind of public event where you just want to be able to invite anybody. You can also invite individuals. So you can tap here and it will use your Contacts. So now, for instance, I can invite this person here and I can send them an invite by Message or by email, or I can just Share the Link here and then I can actually Copy it here. So if I have some other ways, another app I use to message them, I can Copy the Link and send them that link. 

At any time I can come back to the Invites App. I can see my invites here, the ones that I'm posting and the ones I've accepted RSVP's to and I can go back in. I can tap the three dots button here and Edit. I can go to Event Settings so I can add additional guests. There's some interesting settings here. There's Additional Guests. So you can allow people +1 for instance. You can change whether or not you're approving guests for the public link if you have done that. There are a bunch of other things that you can do here. If you just want to invite more people you can see here there's Invite Guests and you go back you the screen and you can add more. 

If you want to send everybody that has RSVP a note you can. Just type the note here and send it out to them. You can also add this event to your own calendar. This works, of course, if you're hosting the party or if you just accepted an RSVP you tap here and it is going to add to your Calendar. 

But what if you're not using your iPhone for this. What if you want to do it on your Mac or even your iPad. Well, you can. You just need to go to the Web Apps at iCloud.com. You login with your Apple ID and now one of the apps that you have here is Invites. You have all the same functionality here. So here you can see the event that I created. I can create a new event here. You can see everything is here just like before. I can choose an image. I can create the name, the time, the address. I can write a description right here. Send it out and invite people. It all works basically the same just in a web browser. You can switch back and forth. You can create it here at iCloud.com and then later manage invites on your iPhone or vice versa. 

 Let's go back here to the event I created, for instance. You can see I can manage guests here. Here's the public link for this but I can also invite individuals. Let's give that a try. I'm going to invite, with the sample email address that doesn't even have an iCloud Account. I'm going to press Return and it is going to add it there. Here is the Link. So I can copy this link here and now I can send it to them anyway I want. I can always go back here to get the Link. It is an unique Link for this person. So it knows who it is I've invited and to tie it back to this particular guest in my Event. 

So to even demonstrate further how it will work for a non-iCloud user I'm going to go outside of Safari. Go to Firefox here. This is what happens when I click on that Link in a message or an email. It takes me to this page here. It is going to ask me to verify my email. The idea here is that you type the email address, the one you've got the invite to so it can verify it is you. Then when I do that it's going to send a code to that email address. So it is kind of like a double opt in. Making sure somebody can't forward that link on or post it somewhere publicly and then all sorts of people can invite themselves to the party. Of course if you are using an iCloud email address you don't have to do this. It has them login and it knows who they are. 

So here's that Verification Code. I'm going to Copy it and paste it in. Now you can see it takes to this special iCloud.com Invite Page. It looks like I'm logged into iCloud.com but I'm not. If I click here you can see all I can do is Exit. Here I've got the RSVP control so I can say Yes, I'm going. I can respond and even add a message if I want. Then Submit. So now if I go back to the page where I'm host or to the App on the  iPhone, if I go to Manage Guests you can see it shows that this person is going. 

That's basically how it works. You need to have iCloud Plus to create an event. But to accept an RSVP you don't need anything except a regular email address to be able to respond. So some of you may be wondering why is Apple coming out with a service like this. Well, it used to be there was one company that dominated this space but then Facebook came in and kind of took over. But now a lot of people don't like to use Facebook and sometimes those are exactly the kinds of people you want at your party. So an Apple Invite Service that doesn't require you to have an Apple Account to RSVP could actually be a space where Apple could take over or at the very least just add a little extra value to getting an iCloud subscription. At the very least it is a good alternative to having a Facebook account and having everybody else who is invited also have Facebook account and also not having to sign up for a completely different service which may charge you or show you lots of ads. 

So it is worth taking a look at for your next big event. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.