These important features will only come to your iPhone with iOS 18.1

Apple has officially announced iOS 18, but not all features are immediately available. These features will only come to your iPhone with iOS 18.1!

Apple unveils iOS 18

Apple unveiled iOS 18 at WWDC 2024. This is the largest iPhone update ever, with many new features for the Control Panel, the home screen and the introduction of Apple Intelligence. The first test version of iOS 18 has now been released for developers, the final update will not be released until September. Unfortunately, not all the new features of iOS 18 will immediately come to your iPhone.

Also read: iOS 18 revealed: largest iPhone update ever (with Apple Intelligence)

A number of important features will only be available in a later update, probably in iOS 18.1. Other features will appear even later, not until 2025. This makes the first version of iOS 18 a smaller update than previously thought, because all new features are spread over smaller updates. Curious which features will only come to your iPhone later? We put them together for you.

1. Siri

Siri gets a major update in iOS 18. Apple’s voice assistant gets a new interface, supports text commands and tracks your screen activity. Many of Siri’s new features won’t be available until iOS 18.1 or later, including scanning your screen. For example, in a later version of iOS 18 you can go to your photo library and ask Siri to associate the image with a contact.

In addition, Apple’s voice assistant will receive deeper integration into almost all apps, allowing you to request more extensive commands. This will soon make it possible to play the podcast recommended by a friend in WhatsApp. This feature won’t come to your iPhone until the end of the year, likely in iOS 18.1 or a later update.

2. Email

Big changes are coming to Apple’s Mail app in iOS 18. It becomes much easier to organize your mailbox, because incoming emails are immediately categorized and sorted. For example, confirmation emails and payment methods are placed in their own category, just like marketing emails and discount coupons. Do you want to see all emails from one company? Then you can use the summary view for this from iOS 18.

While apps such as Messages and Photos will immediately receive a new interface with the launch of iOS 18, this will take longer for Mail. The new features will only be available in iOS 18.1 or iOS 18.2. Apple speaks of a release ‘later this year’, so we will have to wait a little longer for all the changes in the Mail app.

3. New emoji

Like every year, new emojis come to your iPhone, but in 2024 there will be a lot of them. Apple introduced Genmoji with iOS 18, a cool feature that allows you to compose a picture yourself. This way you can choose from an endless series of emojis, because you decide what they look like. All you have to do is enter a textual description, and your iPhone will then create the image using AI.

The Genmoji will be immediately available with the release of iOS 18, but this does not apply to the new ‘normal’ emojis coming to your iPhone. The standard keyboard with pictures will also be expanded, the new emojis have already been announced here. These won’t be added to your iPhone until later in 2024 or early 2025. Presumably iOS 18.1 is too early for this feature, we will probably only be able to use the new emojis in iOS 18.4.

4. Apple Intelligence

The most important change this year is Apple Intelligence. This is the first time that Apple has deployed artificial intelligence on a large scale. Unfortunately, the AI ​​features are not coming to all iPhones, only the iPhone 15 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro Max have support for Apple Intelligence. The new technology can be used immediately with the release of iOS 18, but will probably not be without problems.

According to Apple, this is still a test version Apple Intelligence. This means that there may still be errors in the software and the technology probably still needs to be tinkered with. In the weeks after the release of iOS 18, interim updates will be released Apple Intelligence need to improve. The function should be much better in iOS 18.1, but Apple will need time for that.

5. iPhone Mirroring

The new iPhone Synchronous Display feature makes it possible to use your iPhone via your Mac without it being unlocked. You can open any iPhone app directly from your Mac, even the audio from your iPhone can be heard on your Mac. This feature makes it easy to move files back and forth between your iPhone and Mac, without the need for AirDrop. Unfortunately, this feature will only be available in iOS 18.1.

6. Improvements in the Home app

Apple has announced a number of improvements to the Home app. From iOS 18 it is possible to add smart robot vacuum cleaners to the app. That’s a handy feature, because you can then ask Siri to clean the floor. Thanks to the support for the Home app, Siri starts the robot vacuum cleaner automatically. This is not immediately possible, because the function will only be added in iOS 18.1.

You can also see the energy consumption of your home in the updated Home app. The application shows how much energy you use per day and what the average is for a week, month, half or full year. This gives you a better overview of your energy consumption, so that you know better where you can save. This feature will also only come to the Home app in iOS 18.1 or later.

Release of iOS 18.1

We still have to wait a while for iOS 18.1, because Apple has to release iOS 18 first. The major update will not appear until September, when Apple also announces the iPhone 16 series. That will probably happen on a Monday or Tuesday. If we look (very) far ahead, that would be Monday 9 and Tuesday 10 September 2024. Apple releases iOS 18 a week later, on September 16, 2024 you can probably update.

The next update will be released a month later, we can expect iOS 18.1 in October. Apple usually releases the second software version at the end of October, so iOS 17.1 was released on October 25. There is therefore a good chance that iOS 18.1 will be released around the same period. So we won’t be able to use many iOS 18 features until the end of October, provided you have the right iPhone. Do you want to know whether your device supports iOS 18? Then view the list of supported iPhones here!