We Found the Best 9 Hidden iOS 18 Features for Your iPhone

New rich text messaging and Home screen customizations are two of the most obvious changes coming to your iPhone with iOS 18, but the latest update to Apple’s mobile operating system brings a ton of other exciting new features. In fact, there are so many that it’s easy to miss some of the best ones.

Every year, we dig through the latest version of iOS and look for all the hidden features that are not only hidden, but can and will affect how we use our iPhones every day. If you’re running iOS 18, here are some features and settings that Apple hasn’t really talked about, but that you absolutely need to know about.

For more, here are seven settings in iOS 18 you’ll want to change right away, how to back up your iPhone the right way, and how to fix these three annoying settings in iOS 18.

1. Restart your iPhone from the new Control Center

You don’t need to press a physical button to restart your iPhone if you’re using iOS 18. The redesigned Control Center includes all the classic controls you’re used to, like brightness, volume, direction, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi, but there are more… new controls, including one to restart your iPhone.

All you have to do is swipe down from the top-right corner of your iPhone and press and hold the new power button at the top-right of Control Center. You can’t just tap it, you have to hold it for about a second, and then a slider will appear to turn off your iPhone.

To restart your iPhone, you’ll still need to press and hold the physical side button.

2. Use QR Code to Share Wi-Fi Password

There are several ways to share your Wi-Fi network and password with people via your iPhone, and there’s a new way to do it in iOS 18. Using a QR code fills in some of the gaps for quickly sharing Wi-Fi information:

• Share with multiple people at once. Instead of sending the Wi-Fi password individually, you can have each person scan the QR code from your phone.
• Share with someone who isn’t saved as a contact. Nearby Wi-Fi Sharing only works if that person is in your contacts.
• Share with someone who has Android. Nearby Sharing and AirDrop don’t work with Android devices.

So if you’re in one of these scenarios and don’t want to text them your Wi-Fi password, you can use a QR code. Go to the new Passwords app, go to the Wi-Fi section, tap the network you want to share, and then tap Show Network QR Code. If the other person scans the QR code with their camera, they’ll be connected to the Wi-Fi network.

3. Adjust the width of your flashlight beam

The iPhone’s flashlight is getting a major upgrade. While you’ve long had the ability to change the intensity of your flashlight, now in iOS 18 you can also adjust the width of your light beam, provided you have a compatible model. You can use a wide beam to cover a larger area with less light, or a narrow beam to use brighter light on a smaller area, and everywhere in between. It’s a fun feature to play with when lighting people up for photos.

To use the new feature, turn on your flashlight (use the Lock screen or Control Center) and a new UI will appear in the Live Island. You can change the brightness by swiping up and down, but to change the beam width, you’ll need to swipe left and right. If you tap anywhere on the Dynamic Island, you can turn the flashlight off and on.

Note: This feature only works on iPhone models with Dynamic Island, including iPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 14 Pro Max, iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max.

4. Transcribe voice memos and make them searchable

Voice memos are incredibly handy for capturing ideas or song snippets, but they’re still vague. You can give it a descriptive title, but that doesn’t help when you want to find that note you took that had the word “porcupine” in it. However, in iOS 18, the app can generate text from your voice memos and search for words that were previously only available as audio waveforms.

In the Voice Memos app, tap one of your memos to reveal its controls, then tap the Edit Recording button, which looks like a waveform. Or click the three-dot button to the right of the memo and choose Edit Recording.

Then, click the Transcribe button to create the text (or view the text if it’s already been copied). Click Done.

Now, when you use the search box, the app will search for texts as well as titles to get results. Text is also available on iOS: when you search from the Home screen, you’ll see Voice Memos as a category with memos that include your search term (you may need to tap Show more results to see them).

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