There are big, big things coming to iOS 18. You’ll be able to customize your iPhone like never before, every app gets good quality-of-life updates, and of course, Apple Intelligence permeates the entire system (if you have one of the newest iPhones capable of running it).
Given all the hype out of WWDC for all the new features, you might be a little disappointed with September rolls around and iOS 18 is released. That’s because some of the best features won’t be in it–by design. Apple has announced that some of the features are “coming later this year,” which is usually Apple-speak for “we’ll add these in iOS 18.1, 18.2, or 18.3.”
Here’s a quick list of the iOS 18 features that Apple has said not to expect in the launch, but will come in an iOS 18 update at a later date.
Mail categories and digests
The ability for Mail to automatically sort your emails into categories, show summaries of them, and group related emails into scannable “digests” is all coming in an update after the initial iOS 18 launch. While iOS 18 will launch with some Apple Intelligence features in “beta,” some of them will roll out in the months after launch and it looks like this great new Mail stuff is part of that.
Home support for robot vacuums and electricity reports
Controlling your robot vacuum with the Home app is coming later, and so is the new electricity usage report in the Energy tab.
That second one is going to be limited to Pacific Gas & Electric customers at first, anyway, so for anyone outside of those parts of California, you probably won’t see that feature until 2025.
Siri’s most advanced features
Siri is getting a big boost right at iOS 18’s release–the new glowing edge interface, conversational understanding, contextual awareness, and deep product knowledge are all going to be available as soon as Apple Intelligence is.
But there are more advanced Siri features that Apple says are coming “over the course of the next year,” which means maybe not until sometime in 2025.
The first is on-screen awareness, where Siri will be able to “see” what’s on screen when you invoke it so it can take proper contextual actions. The other is greatly expanded App Intents where Siri can take hundreds of different actions in and across apps. For example, I have a big note in the Notes app with the bread recipes I experiment with. I could have Siri proofread that text, summarize it, and then attach that summary to an email to my sister.
Siri’s personal contextual awareness is another big boost coming after iOS 18’s launch. The idea is that it will build a profile of you (all on your device, private and secure) using the data on your iPhone–calls, texts, locations, images, emails, PDFs, and so on. Then it can use that to provide uniquely tailored help. One example would be if you’re on the web in Safari and have to fill out a form with your driver’s license. Siri could see that you have a photo of your driver’s license in Photos, recognize that it’s you, and fill out the form for you with the license number and other data lifted from the photo.
Apple
Apple
Apple
New emojis
Apple’s got an AI-assisted “Genmoji” feature in iOS 18, but the new emojis that have been added to Unicode’s official emojis list aren’t coming until sometime in 2025. Typically, new emojis arrive in the iOS x.4 release which arrives around March or so.
You can see a list of the new emojis here.
Drag-and-drop between iPhone and Mac
This is sort of a macOS feature, and sort of an iOS feature–you’ll have the ability to mirror your iPhone screen to your Mac right when iOS 18 and macOS 15 are introduced in the fall. The feature should be there at launch, but in a later update, Apple will add the ability to drag and drop files and photos between your iPhone and Mac.
