iOS 18.3 New Features: What’s Different and Why You Should Care

ios 18.3 featured

Apple recently released iOS 18.3, the third major update to iOS 18. bringing several small but significant changes. Let’s take a look at all the important iOS 18.3 new features below.

Apple Intelligence On By Default

Apple Intelligence is one of the most talked-about features of iOS 18. In iOS 18.3, it is enabled by default. That means that if you don’t want to use it, you need to go into your Settings app, select “Apple Intelligence & Siri,” and turn off Apple Intelligence. Otherwise, it will remain enabled by default.

‌Apple Intelligence‌ is available on the iPhone 15 Pro devices, iPhone 16 Pro devices, iPad mini 7, and all iPads and Macs that have an M-series chip. So, on all these devices, ‌Apple Intelligence‌ will now be enabled automatically when iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, or ‌macOS Sequoia‌ 15.3 is installed.

Earlier, you had to manually turn on ‌Apple Intelligence‌ to use it, but now you need to manually turn it off if you wish to opt out. This can be seen as a somewhat controversial move. Let me know your take on it in the comments below this article.

Changes to Apple Intelligence Notification Summaries

Apple Intelligence has been in the news recently due to major complaints by organizations like the BBC that it incorrectly summarized headlines, providing users with false information. For instance, Apple Intellignece falsely claimed that the man convicted of killing the United Healthcare CEO had shot himself.

Therefore, in iOS 18.3, Apple has temporarily disabled notification summaries for the News and Entertainment category. Of course, the feature will return in a future update after it has been refined to be more accurate.

Furthermore, when you activate Notification summaries, you will now see a warning that this feature is currently in beta mode and could thus contain errors.

Apple Intelligence notification summaries will also appear in italicized text to stand apart from other notifications on your screen.

Finally, Apple has added the option to turn off notification summaries for an app directly from the Lock Screen or Notification Center. You can do this by swiping on it, tapping “Options,” and selecting the “Turn Off Summaries” option.

Visual Intelligence Updates

Visual Intelligence is an intelligent search feature on the iPhone 16 that allows you to look up something using the camera. iOS 18.3 features an upgrade to Visual Intelligence wherein you can now add an event to your Calendar by taking a picture.

Visual-Intelligence-Demo

To do this, you need to launch the Visual Intelligence interface by long-pressing the Camera Contro. Then, take a picture of event details listed on a flyer or poster. Your phone will recognize the date and time of the event and add it to your calendar. Pretty nifty!

Apple also claims that Visual Intelligence can now easily identify a broader range of plants and animals, which is great news for nature enthusiasts.

Updated Calculator App

Just like on the latest macOS 15.3, the Calculator app on iOS 18.3 can now handle incremental calculations. That means you can just tap the “=” sign to repeat the last calculation.

A New Wallpaper

If you love giving your screen a new look, you’ll appreciate the new Black Unity wallpaper, launched in honor of Black History Month.

Black unity wallpapers are part of iOS 18.3 new features

The wallpapers are available for iPhone and iPad. They match a newly launched special-edition Black Unity Sport Loop for the Apple Watch and a Unity Rhythm watch face.

Bug Fixes and Security Updates 

iOS 18.3 fixes two pesky bugs. Firstly, you will no longer experience the issue wherein the keyboard used to disappear after you typed in a Siri request with the Type to ‌Siri‌ feature. Secondly, iOS 18.3 resolves the problem that caused audio playback to continue even when the Apple Music app was closed.

Additionally, the latest iOS update fixes several system vulnerabilities to make your iPhone more secure. For instance, Apple fixed some issues with AirPlay that could allow attackers to execute code or crash apps. It also fixed a Photos app vulnerability that could allow someone to access the ‌Photos‌ app even when your ‌iPhone‌ is locked. These fixes are reason enough to immediately upgrade to the latest iOS 18.3.

You might also want to catch up on what’s new with iPadOS 18.3 and macOS 15.3.

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