Updated to iphone 18.5? Your Phone May Be Leveled Up With These Ten Options!

Although Apple is focused on the features that will be available with iOS 26, you won’t have to wait for a better phone knowledge. If you’re running apps 18.5, there are already a bunch of settings you can change to improve efficiency, increase cell life and get more out of your system right now. These minor adjustments can help you organize your smartphone more quickly and effectively, reduce conflict, and improve your overall experience.

Whether you’ve really updated or haven’t poked around your options in long, this is the perfect time to give your phone a swift tune-up. The appropriate changes can make daily tasks feel better and save you from unwanted problems down the line.

After looking through the most recent variation, I discovered 10 settings that immediately changed how I used my phone. Some are plain quality-of-life improvements, while people help cut down on background discharge or improve protection. These changes don’t require you to get a tech analyst, and most of them are simple to apply. If your phone has been feeling a little slow or just not working the way you want it to, these rapid changes may be all it takes to getting things back on track.

For more on what’s fresh in&nbsp, apps 18, learn about changes to the&nbsp, overhauled Calculator app&nbsp, and the&nbsp, Mail&nbsp, game. Don’t forget to check out our iOS 18 build schedule, which includes making sure you have a backup backup before upgrading, for more information.

In the Mail software, move off groups.

When it comes to things like internet, everyone has their own way of dealing with the flow of information. Usually, the Mail software has kept a historical record, but that can get unmanageable if you also find scores of promotions, receipts and other types of e-mail. Creates electronic buckets for Primary, Transactions, Updates, and Offers using the new categories feature, which predicts how your messages may be sorted.

If that strategy doesn’t work for you, here are two things to try.

Tap All Mail in the event that categories are a little too important but you still want a temporal view of your Inbox.

• To turn off categories altogether, tap the three-dot menu ( … ) in the top-right corner, and then tap&nbsp, List View.

Change the plug screen’s definition buttons.

In real estate, location is everything, and the bottom edges of the iPhone lock display are the perfect spots, each an easy finger click away when your system is also locked. Before apps 18, those comments were held by the lamp and lens keys, with no way to change them.

In apps 18, you can ultimately replace them with other keys ( believe me, there’s a better way to turn it on ) or remove them completely. This is a relief for those who accidentally turn on the flashlight ( there’s a better way to do that ). You can add buttons to understand music via Shazam, enable Black Mode, set an alarm/timer, help Airplane Mode, start your Wallet, send funds via Tap to Cash and more.

Here’s how:

1. On the iPhone’s lock screen, touch and hold anywhere on the display until you see the&nbsp, Customize&nbsp, button. Face ID, Touch ID, or your passcode are required to unlock the phone. If it opens the home screen, swipe down from the center-top of the screen ( not the right edge, which brings up Control Center.

2. Tap&nbsp, Customize&nbsp, and then choose&nbsp, Lock Screen.

3. By tapping the&nbsp, –&nbsp, ( minus ) button on the icon, you can remove one of the buttons.

4. Tap the space icon on the button to replace it with another function ( currently a&nbsp, +&nbsp, or icon ), and then choose the one you want on the next screen. ( You can also opt to leave that space empty with no button. )

5. If you want to change the other button, repeat those steps for the other button.

6. When you’re finished, tap and don’t tap.

7. Tap the lock screen again to exit the customize mode.

Use Prioritize Notifications to receive significant alerts.

For iPhone models that can run Apple Intelligence, a new option in iOS 18.4 is fast becoming one of my favorite AI features. Go to Settings &gt, Notifications, and under Apple Intelligence, tap Prioritize Notifications. As new alerts arrive, and some days seem like they can be flooded, Apple Intelligence determines which ones are more likely to be significant to you. For example, texts from people in your contacts could be flagged in favor of random scam messages. You can turn on or off individual app’s priority notifications on that settings screen.

Set up some of the new Action button tasks.

The Action button on the iPhone 15 Pro, &nbsp, iPhone 16, &nbsp, iPhone 16E&nbsp, and iPhone 16 Pro replaced the dedicated mute switch found on every earlier iPhone model with a configurable control. Holding it on or off will usually serve the same function, but you can also set it up for other things, like opening the Camera app, executing multiple actions simultaneously, or even ordering coffee. The iOS 18.4 update adds Visual Intelligence as an option for the Action button. That makes the AI technology available on the iPhone 16E, which does not include the novel new Camera Control&nbsp, but is now an option for any iPhone with an Action button.

The Action button adds new features to iOS 18. You can bypass Control Center and choose a control of your choice, such as opening the Remote interface for navigating Apple TV or using Shazam to identify a song.

Go to&nbsp, Settings &gt, Action Button to choose a different action for the Action button. Swipe sideways to select and activate one of the available actions. For the Controls, Shortcut and Accessibility options, tap the&nbsp, Choose&nbsp, button to pick which specific action to run.

Give your home screen a radical new appearance.

You wouldn’t think that putting icons where you want is a radical new feature, but that’s because iOS has always had a locked arrangement. Apps get added from top to bottom, left to right. You could change the way icons appeared and move them to different screens, but that was about it.

In iOS 18, apps can be positioned nearly anywhere. You no longer have to deal with having your kids or pets ‘ faces obscured by icons on your wallpaper. They still adhere to a grid– Apple isn’t about to sanction anarchy– but can be placed freely.

Also, Dark mode finally applies to all of the iPhone’s home screen, with options for coloring icons and affecting the brightness of the wallpaper image. How to modify the appearances are provided here.

Arrange apps: &nbsp, Touch and hold the home screen to enter” jiggle mode”, and then drag the icons to new positions. They will still be slid around to fill gaps, but you can still move them with care and make them where you want.

You can also quickly convert compatible apps into widgets that display more information. Maps, for instance, can be a map of your current location with shortcut buttons to search for places or bring up a list of nearby places ( such as dinner spots ). Look for a&nbsp, a row of resize buttons&nbsp in the menu that appears by pressing the app icon. Once expanded beyond the standard icon size, you can drag the handle in the bottom-right corner of the new icon. To get it back to its single icon size you need to touch and hold again and choose the&nbsp, single-icon&nbsp, button

Set Dark mode:   If you’ve ever experienced a retinal blast of black text on a white background in a darkened room at night, you’ll like the new home screen option and the ability to lock screens. iOS has previously included a Dark mode, where light backgrounds switch to black or dark gray, text switches to white or light gray and other interface elements are dimmed to coexist in a dark environment. That’s never been applied to the home and lock screens in any significant way– only the dock and some widgets– until iOS 18.

To enter jiggle mode, first, enter the home screen by touching and holding the home button. Tap the&nbsp, Edit&nbsp, button in the top-left corner and choose&nbsp, Customize&nbsp, from the menu. Choose a mode for the icons and background at the bottom of the screen ( I’ll get to Tinted&nbsp in a moment ): &nbsp, Automatic, &nbsp, Dark, or &nbsp, Light. In Dark mode, the icons gain black backgrounds, and folders and the Dock become dark gray. ( Developers have the option of making Dark mode icons for their apps. Apps that haven’t yet been optimized appear generally darker in the interim.

In Dark mode, the background image also changes. Apple’s default iOS 18 wallpaper dynamically changes from light to dark as the day progresses, or you can choose colors that offer a light and dark option. When you use a photo, the overall exposure is reduced so that the output of light is diminished.

If you want dark icons but aren’t a fan of the dimmed photo treatment, tap the sun icon in the corner of the options sheet at the bottom of the screen to toggle back to Light mode just for the background.

Tinted icon sharing: A new and unique option is to tint every app icon so that they are the same color. In the Customize options at the bottom of the screen, choose&nbsp, Tinted&nbsp, as the icon style. You can then adjust the&nbsp, Hue&nbsp, ( the slider with the color spectrum ) and&nbsp, Luminosity&nbsp, ( the slider with the dark to light range ) to choose the color tint you prefer.

What if the color in your background image is being matched? Tap the eyedropper&nbsp, button and then drag the reticle to pinpoint the color you want– the border indicates the selected color.

The tint is applied not only to icons but to widgets as well. The images that appear in a widget like Photos show up as duotones that match the theme.

Large icons: &nbsp, Do the labels below each app icon seem redundant to you? With just one setting, you can now change the labels and adjust the icons ‘ sizes. Open the Customize options as described above and tap the&nbsp, Large&nbsp, button.

After making any of these changes, tap anywhere on the screen to apply them and exit the Customize interface.

Change the appearance of the Control Center

Control Center was once a convenient place to quickly access controls such as playback volume and Airplane mode but under iOS 18 it’s a configurable playground. You can position controls where you want, resize many to reveal more information and add new controls on multiple screens.

On the iPhone SE, swipe down from the top-right corner to the Control Center ( or swipe up from the bottom ). To enter edit mode, touch and hold or press the&nbsp, +&nbsp, button at the top-left corner.

Drag a control to another screen slot to reposition it, just like you do with moving apps. Many of the controls also include a bottom-right handle that can resize the control– in most cases, it reveals the name of the control and its current status ( such as&nbsp, Flashlight Off ).

Control Center also now spans multiple screens. Move up to the home controls for the smart lights and appliances, as well as the communication options that appear when you long-press the Connectivity block, which includes Airplane Mode, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Cellular, and others. Look closely and you’ll see that those screens are actually individual controls expanded to occupy the entire Control Center area.

You can rearrange the order of those screens by moving their controls. If you want Home controls to be the first swipe rather than Now Playing, drag the large Home control up to the left to make room for Now Playing.

To remove controls, tap the&nbsp, –&nbsp, ( minus ) button that appears. You can also add additional controls, such as tapping and adding a control and scrolling through the options that come with starting a&nbsp, Screen Recording&nbsp, and a number of accessibility options.

Read more: All the new controls you can add to Control Center

Any of your sensitive apps can be hidden or locked.

Our phones carry some of our most sensitive data and yet it’s not uncommon to hand a phone to a friend to view photos or look up something online. That doesn’t mean they’re going to snoop but it doesn’t &nbsp, not&nbsp, mean they might be more curious than you’re comfortable with. iOS 18 adds the ability to lock and hide apps in order to protect sensitive information or to ensure that data stays hidden.

For example, let’s say you keep an ongoing set of lists of gift ideas for family members in the Notes app. Individual notes can be locked, but that step must be completed separately. Maybe a few ideas were made as individual quick notes or drawings. Instead of micromanaging access, you can lock the entire Notes app by doing the following:

Touch and hold the app icon you want to lock and select from the menu that appears whether to require Face ID or Touch ID. Confirm your choice by tapping&nbsp, Require Face ID&nbsp, ( or similar ) in the next dialog.

To remove the authentication step, touch and hold the app and choose&nbsp, Don’t Require Face ID&nbsp, ( or similar ).

Nothing directly indicates that an app is locked; you’ll discover this when you try to open it. There’s one more level of app security available, which is to hide apps in a special locked folder. Tap the button next to the Face ID field in the app’s dialog box and choose Require Face ID. Confirm the action by tapping&nbsp, Hide App&nbsp, on the next screen.

The app disappears from the home screen and gets slotted into a Hidden folder at the bottom of the App Library ( swipe left beyond your last home screen to view the App Library ). Tap the&nbsp, Hidden&nbsp folder and use Face ID to authenticate to access apps there.

iOS 18 imposes some limitations on hidden apps. Some, like many of the built-in ones like Notes or Reminders, can only be locked and cannot be concealed at all. Also, the Hidden folder locks itself when you launch an app or swipe away from the App Library.

In the Photos app, turn off loop videos.

Many apps have implemented a small but annoying ( to me ) feature, and now Photos under iOS 18.2 has it too: Videos automatically replay when you watch them until you tap the Pause button. That can be fun once or twice, or when viewing short clips. I dislike having to intervene to get them to stop at the end of each time.

Now I can take action once. Turn the option off by going to&nbsp, Settings &gt, Photos, scroll down, and watch the list of videos that you can loop. A video will play on its own but then stop at the end as it should.

If you’d rather the video didn’t play at all until you tap the Play button, also turn off&nbsp, Auto-Play Motion&nbsp, in the same Settings screen.

Change the calendar’s view.

Big new features like locking and hiding apps are great additions but so are the tiny changes that you encounter every day. The Calendar app includes two new ways to view your schedule.

When you’re in the , Month , view in portrait orientation in iOS 18, pinch with your two fingers to view more or fewer details. As you “zoom in”, individual events appear as colored bars and then as labeled events with times, all while keeping the monthly grid of days and weeks.

The&nbsp, Day&nbsp, view, which breaks down your day hour by hour, now has a new&nbsp, Multi Day&nbsp, view that shows two consecutive days to give you context for what’s coming without turning the phone into landscape orientation and viewing the&nbsp, Week&nbsp, view. Click the View&nbsp, Single Day&nbsp, View&nbsp, View&nbsp, View&nbsp, and Multi Day&nbsp buttons at the top of the popup menu.

Improve movie and TV show dialogue in the TV app

Trouble hearing dialogue in movies and television shows isn’t a new problem– for example, the Apple TV has had a feature for a while where you can ask Siri,” What did she say”? and start playing that portion of the video again after a brief period of time, adding subtitles, and replaying that section. You can even buy&nbsp, soundbars that can overcome muffled TV speech. There are a lot of reasons why it’s harder to hear dialogue, but the TV app for iOS 18 includes a high-tech workaround to make dialog more discernible.

While you’re watching a video in the TV app, tap the&nbsp, More&nbsp, ( … ) button and then expand the&nbsp, Audio&nbsp, heading in the menu that appears, if the phone is in horizontal orientation, tap the Audio Adjustments button. Tap&nbsp, Enhance Dialogue&nbsp, and choose&nbsp, Enhance&nbsp, or&nbsp, Boost. Each of them raises the audio quality of the dialogue while reducing background noise.

These are just a few new features and changes in iOS 18. Check out our broader coverage of Apple Intelligence, more impressions of the system after using it for months and how these all work together with the&nbsp, iPhone 16 models.