Apple Invites app: How to handle party planning from your iPhone

To tackle your party planning, the new Apple Invites app can help you get organized with RSVPs and keep everybody up to date. It can even handle a shared music playlist and photo album that anyone can contribute to.

And yes, you can invite people who don’t have the app installed yet, don’t have an Apple Account or don’t have an Apple device at all. You can invite people via email; they can RSVP on the web and get follow-up notifications in their inbox.

Keep reading or watch our video guide — and download the app here.

How to plan a party with the new Apple Invites app

Managing invitations might be the most maddening part of planning a party. Luckily, Apple created a service that can make sending invitations, checking RSVPs and other crucial tasks a lot less of a headache. As with most Apple software, the new Apple Invites app is streamlined and produces beautiful results. It also adds some unique features that only Apple could pull off, like shared photo albums and party playlists.

You can download Apple Invites from the App Store for free. It only requires iOS 18 to run, which is compatible with the iPhone XS, XR, second-generation SE and newer. However, creating an invitation requires an iCloud+ subscription. If you pay for any extra iCloud storage space, like the 99 cents per month 50GB plan, you already have it — same goes if you pay for any Apple One bundle. People you invite do not need to be paid subscribers.

Also, the app is currently only available for iPhone. On a Mac or iPad, you can use it on the web at icloud.com/invites.

Table of contents: How to plan a party with the new Apple Invites app

1. 1. Create an event and add details
   2. Add a background image
   3. Create a shared photo album
   4. Start an Apple Music playlist
   5. Send your invitation out
   6. Manage your event
   7. Reply to an event invitation

Create an event and add details

After you download the Apple Invites app, open it and you should see the large Create Event button. (That’s assuming you don’t have any events to show, as it likely will the first time you launch the app.) You can also tap the + at the top of the screen to start creating your event invitation.

• Give the event a title — and pick from four available fonts.
• Tap Date and Time to set when the event is being held. Enable Include End Time to specify when it ends, as well. Enable All-day to make it a day-long event with no specific time. Check both to create a multi-day event.
• Tap Location to enter an address or business on Apple Maps. You can also specify a Location Name, like “Lewis’s House” or “Lakeside picnic tables” to appear alongside the address.
• Tap Add a description to enter additional details about the event, up to 1,000 characters. You can also edit your own name as it appears on the invitation.

Add a background image

The Apple Invites app makes it simple to spruce up your event invitation. Tap Add Background at the top of the screen to add a cover image.

Apple offers three styles of stock images to choose from. Emoji are patterns of Apple emoji, similar to the Lock Screen style. Photographic are high-quality images in a variety of themes. Colors are basic geometric graphics in blue, green, orange, pink, purple, red and yellow.

You also can tap Photos to pick an image from your library, or Camera to take one.

On a device with Apple Intelligence enabled (an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 16 running iOS 18.2 or later) you can tap Playground to create an AI image using Image Playground.

Create a shared photo album

Want to start a shared photo album all attendees can add their best snaps? The Apple Invites app makes it easy. Just tap Create Album to start a shared photo album. Anyone invited to the event will be able to contribute their pictures to it, for everyone else to see. (They don’t need to have the Apple Invites app.) Enter in a name and tap Done.

Start an Apple Music playlist

If you want to cede control of the soundtrack to your party, you can use the Apple Invites app to create a shared playlist. Just tap Add Playlist to either select an existing playlist or create a new one. Anyone invited to the event will be able to see and contribute to the playlist — provided they have an Apple Music subscription.

Send your invitation from the Apple Invites app

Ready to go? Tap Preview in the top right to see what it’ll look like when you send out your invitation from the Apple Invites app. If you like what you see, tap Next to begin sending them out. Apple offers a bunch of nuanced options for how this works:

• You can create a public link. Tap Messages or Mail to send it out using those apps, tap Share Link to bring up the share sheet for another app, or Copy Link to paste elsewhere. Enable Approve Guests if you want to limit attendance to people you know.
• Tap Choose a Guest to send private links and invite specific people. Tap a name to pick someone from your contacts, then tap Share Link. You also can tap New Guest to enter a name for someone not in your contacts.

Tap the Event Settings button in the upper right for nitpicky additional settings:

• Additional Guests lets you offer invitees a +1, +2, or even up to a +5.
• Approve Guests limits attendance to people you personally approve.
• Remove Background Preview hides the preview image until guests are verified, for privacy.
• Background Image Description lets you add alt text to the invitation image, for people who use screen readers.
• Pause Replies will prevent people from RSVPing, if there’s a problem.
• You can duplicate, cancel or delete the event.

Manage your event

At any point, you can open Apple’s Invites app to check who’s RSVP’d, edit the event, send out more information or more invitations.

Tap on the guest list to see who’s going, and how many +1s they’re bringing, and any messages they’ve written. Tap their name to see their contact information, bless them with the ability to invite other people (if the feature isn’t already enabled for everyone) or remove them from the event.

If you need to change the event details, tap the More (⋯) button in the upper right and tap Edit. When you tap Done, you’ll see a panel asking to review changes, with an Update Event button. This will send a notification to everyone who’s attending of the changes.

Send Note lets you send a message to all the guests, such as parking information or additional details you want to make sure they read.

You can tap Invite Guests to invite more people, with all the same options as before.

Scroll down to see updates on weather information for the date and time of the event, or to open the playlist in Apple Music.

Reply to an event invitation

But enough about sending invites. What if you receive one? Event invitations will open in your web browser if you don’t have the Apple Invites app installed or don’t have an Apple Account. (A banner will appear at the top prompting you to download it.) You can verify your email address to RSVP.

Tap Going, Not Going or Maybe to respond. If you were allowed a +1, you can specify how many people are joining you.

Type something in Add Message… if you want to say something to the host, like “I’ll bring my strawberry jello pretzel salad!” or “I might be a little late.”

You can see all the event information, along with the shared photo album and playlist. Click Join Album and Add Music to contribute.

Tap the Add to Calendar button at the top to add the event to your personal calendar. The calendar event will have a URL attached to it that you can tap to open the event information. Unfortunately, if any changes are made by the host, the calendar event does not automatically update — you need to tap the Add to Calendar button again.

Other Apple apps

Now that you know how to use the Apple Invites app to get your party started, check out our how-tos on other Apple apps: