Five Reasons Why You Should Consider Upgrading To iOS 18

Apple has made iOS 18 available starting Sept. 16. The free software update is available for users having an iPhone X or later models. With iOS 18, Apple promises deeper customisation, personalisation, a significant update to photos, and improvements to messages and mail on iPhones and iPads.

It makes sense to avoid upgrading an OS as soon as an update is released because of possible bugs that emerge despite the rigorous testing done by OEMs. In this very update cycle, Apple had to stop the iPadOS 18 update for M4 iPad Pro models because some users took to Reddit and the Apple Discussions forum to complain about their iPads being bricked after the update.

Now that a few days have passed since iOS 18 has dropped and there are no complaints, if you’re wondering whether to upgrade to iOS 18 or not, here are five reasons why you should:

iOS 18 allows you to arrange app icons and widgets to create custom arrangement on each page or to frame the background, giving you new possibilities to personalise your home screen. You can also tap on widgets and app icons and customise their appearance to appear light, dark or tinted, and enlarge icons to a size of your convenience.

The Control Centre has been updated to be more customised and expanded to have more pages. You can adjust the size of control widgets and arrange your favourites, such as media playback, home controls or even third-party apps for easy accessibility. Overall, there is no standard but the standard you like and create, making your device and interface highly personal.

With a major update to photos, Apple has introduced a number of new default collections, such as Recent Days, Trips, People & Pets, etc., wherein the app sorts and organises your pictures without you having to do anything manually or create separate albums.

You can also personalise your photos view with custom layouts and pin favourite collections. Overall, access to your pictures is a breeze. Meaning: You get more time reliving your precious moments rather than organising or searching for them.

There are a host of new ways to express yourself with the messages update on iOS 18. New text effects (exploding/jitter/shake/nod) give conversation more life, but the recipient should also have iOS 18 to see these effects. Emoji and sticker Tapbacks further allow you to react as you wish, often in a colour of choice too.

Also, when you’re communicating with a non-Apple device, the app now supports rich communication services for the first time. This means communicating with, for example, an Android/Windows device will be more secure, and the media will be app-like, richer and more interactive, with typing indicators, read receipts, high-res pictures and more. However, do note that some users in India are complaining that the RCS feature does not seem available to them on their iPhones.

iOS 18 makes Safari more capable. Once you search something and the webpage is loaded, the browser highlights surround information, for example, more information about a movie or song you searched, a summary or a location's address, depending upon the search topic.

Apple has also added a distraction control feature, so if you find items (banners/content overlays) disrupting your browsing, the feature smartly hides them, making for a better browsing experience. The Reader Mode has also been improved.

Apple has introduced a new passwords app with iOS 18. It saves your credentials like passwords, verification codes and passcodes all in one place. And it makes retrieval of credentials easier.

The app is supported by secure end-to-end encryption and alerts you if your password is easily guessable, if you've used it too many times prior, and even if your password has appeared in a data leak, which is quite common these days. The last part is especially useful, as once you get a prompt of a potential password leak, you can immediately change it and avoid hacking/stealing of critical data and information.

iOS 18 was also supposed to headline Apple Intelligence but sadly, unlike Google's flagship Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL, which came with Gemini Advanced and a whole set of AI features out of the box, even those who buy the iPhone 16 have to wait for iOS 18.1 to see Apple Intelligence in action.

Worse, unless you are on the iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 16, you may not experience much of it either.