iOS 18.3 Is Coming Soon — Here's What to Expect on Your iPhone

Apple is gearing up to release iOS 18.3, its latest software update for iPhone, and it could hit devices as early as the last week of January. While it’s not as feature-packed as the previous updates for iOS 18.2 and iOS 18.1 were, there are still a few important changes you’ll want to know about.

Aside from the return of a critical Calculator feature, most of the changes in iOS 18.3 apply to iPhone models that support Apple Intelligence. Those would be the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and all iPhone 16 models. The new emoji from Unicode 16 are also missing from this update but are expected to arrive with iOS 18.4.

Note: Many of these features and changes also apply to iPads running iPadOS 18.3 and Macs running macOS Sequoia 15.3.

Apple Intelligence Enabled by Default

According to Apple’s release notes for developers, you’ll automatically be opted into Apple Intelligence after upgrading a supported device to iOS 18.3. That way, you have immediate access to all of Apple Intelligence’s features. If you don’t like Apple’s generative artificial intelligence tools, you can opt out via Settings » Apple Intelligence & Siri.

Add Events with Visual Intelligence

Visual Intelligence was introduced with iOS 18.2 for iPhone models with Camera Control, but one thing that didn’t make the cut was the ability to add events to Calendar after scanning event details from a poster, flyer, or other sources. That ability is now available with iOS 18.3. To be fair, you could add an event to Calendar manually whenever a date or time appeared in the Visual Intelligence capture, but the process is now streamlined with a Create Event action item.

Identify Plants and Animals with Visual Intelligence

Another missing thing from Visual Intelligence was the ability to identify plants and animals, which is also now included in iOS 18.3’s update.

Updated Style for Notification Summaries

Notification Summaries, another big part of Apple Intelligence, are more visually different on the Lock Screen and in the Notification Center on an iPhone 16 model, iPhone 15 Pro, or iPhone 15 Pro Max. Before, the summary glyph would help you tell them apart from regular notifications. That’s still the case, but now summaries are also italicized.

Managed Notification Summaries from the Lock Screen

Notification Summaries can also now be turned off per app from the Lock Screen or Notification Center. On an iPhone 16 model, iPhone 15 Pro, or iPhone 15 Pro Max, swipe left on the notification summary, select Options, then choose Turn Off [[App]] Summaries. You may also see options to turn summaries on when they are off for an app.

Unavailable Alerts for Notification Summaries

Notification Summaries rolled out with iOS 18.1, and aside from the benefits shown above, iOS 18.3 actually has a negative impact on the feature. Currently, summaries for news or entertainment apps are not working. However, iOS 18.3 does include a new way to help you identify which apps can use summaries and which cannot. Go to Settings » Notifications » Summarize Notifications or Settings » Apps » [[App Name]] » Summarize Notifications, and you’ll see a “Temporarily Unavailable” notice if it’s not working. If toggled on, summaries will appear again when the feature becomes available.

Equals Sign (=) Repeats Last Operation in Calculator

When iOS 18 first came out, the new Calculator design, as impressive as it was, left out a feature we had before: being able to hit the equals sign (=) to perform the last mathematical operation again. Now, that ability is finally back with iOS 18.3.

Bug Fixes

As with any iOS software update, Apple has included a few bug fixes, all listed below.

• Fixes an issue where the keyboard might disappear when initiating a typed Siri request.

• Resolves an issue where audio playback continues until the song ends, even after closing Apple Music.

Security Updates

As with bug fixes, patches for recently discovered security vulnerabilities will undoubtedly be included. Apple does not list these updates until after the stable update goes live, and we’ll add them here when that happens.

Don’t Miss: Your iPhone Is Getting New Emoji Soon — Meet the Characters Arriving in iOS 18.4

Cover photo and screenshots by Gadget Hacks