7 New iPhone Features That Will Make Your Life A Whole Lot Easier

On Monday, Apple announced new features that are on the way at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference.

Our cellphones have become one of the primary ways we talk to each other, and there are upcoming iPhone features for iOS 18 that are giving users more ways to express how they feel, organize their thoughts, and stay in touch with family off the grid. Here’s how:

For fans of Gmail’s feature for scheduling emails to send at a later time, you’re in luck –– Apple is rolling out a similar feature for iMessage. Gone are the days of worrying about waking up in time to send that birthday text or early morning reminder to the group chat.

In its press release, Apple said that users will have the ability to cancel or edit the message at any time. You’ll also be able to see that your message has been scheduled.

Being able to quickly skim through a transcribed conversation is a huge time-saver. And if you currently use a third-party service to transcribe phone conversations (looking at you, fellow journalists), you might be pleased to learn that Apple has announced its own upcoming feature.

After the iOS update, people using the Phone app will be able to record calls and read transcriptions and AI-powered summaries of the conversation after the fact. Apple is calling its AI features “Apple Intelligence” and announced that they will launch in beta this fall for iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia.

At its developer conference, Apple said that the person on the other line would first get an automatic heads-up that they are being recorded.

Formatting your words with a playfully bolded phrase can help get your meaning across more than just text alone. After the new iMessages app update, iPhone users will be able to underline, bold, strikethrough and italicize texts.

You will also be able to react to messages with any emoji, rather than just the thumbs up, exclamation points and other limited options we currently have.

You can even create your own emoji with an AI-powered feature Apple is calling “Genmoji.” In Genmoji, users can type “Labrador with red glasses” in the iMessage emoji search bar and get an AI version of what that will look like, as one example.

Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant, will have new capabilities and be able to answer more questions in the iOS 18 update. In the new Siri, you can ask it text-based questions as well as voiced ones.

Can’t remember when you took that photo and which album you put it in? You will be able to ask Siri to pull up photos, links and PDFs, as well as edit images or move items across various apps, according to Apple.

As one example, Apple shared that Siri can pull up a photo of your driver’s license and copy-paste the number into a form or can pull up an old link your friend shared with you.

Apple is building off of its Emergency SOS feature and will allow iPhone iOS 18 users to do SMS texting over its satellite. This way, you can shoot off a text to or share a video with a loved one even when you do not have cell service or a Wi-Fi connection.

At WWDC, Justin Titi, Apple’s director of intelligent system experience engineering, announced a Rewrite feature that will be available in Mail, Notes, Pages, third-party apps, and systemwide for macOS Sequoia.

In the demo, we see Rewrite being used in the Mail app where a woman is following up after a networking conversation in an email. Using the Rewrite options allows the user toggle between “professional,” “friendly” and “concise” versions of that email. There will also be a new proofreading service that can give you grammar and sentence structure suggestions on your messages.

If you handed over your phone, is there a dating app or a photo that you would be embarrassed if someone else saw? Apple is making it a little harder for strangers to tap and access sensitive information.

Under the new iOS update, you will be able to lock specific apps on your iPhone, so that you can only access them through authentication features like Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode. After selecting this feature, information from those apps would not show up in your search bar, notifications or Siri suggestions.

Beyond these specific iPhone features, there are other updates that may make your life a little more convenient.

After the new macOS Sequoia update, people will be able to mirror and control their iPhone screen directly on their Mac. This way, you can click through your phone on your Mac device without using a touchscreen. But while you’re using the mirror feature on your Mac device, the iPhone will temporarily lock itself, so no one else can access your iPhone.

And there are new security options being rolled out. Similar to existing password managers like LastPass and 1Password, Apple is introducing its own passwords app that will access your credentials, generate complex passwords, and securely store them all in one place. Apple said the new Passwords app will soon be available on Mac, iPad, iPhone, Vision Pro, and on Windows through iCloud.