Apple Releases iOS 18.3: Crucial iPhone Update With Apple Intelligence Changes

Updated Tuesday, Jan. 28 with details of more features that have emerged in iOS 18.3.

The latest iPhone update is here (and exactly when it was predicted to land). It includes an important update to those iPhones which run Apple Intelligence—something all iPhone users with access to these features need to think about. It follows on from iOS 18.2.1, a small update released on Monday, Jan. 6. And now the release is out, new elements have emerged, minor and major, which are useful additions.

These include greater versatility for Visual Intelligence, the return of a popular capability in the Calculator app and more. Full details below.

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Which iPhones Can Run iOS 18.3?

The new version of iOS 18 is compatible with any iPhone from 2018 onwards. That means the iPhone Xs, iPhone Xs Max and iPhone Xr from 2018 and all iPhones after that, including the iPhone SE in both its second- and third-generation models.

How To Get It

In the iPhone’s Settings app, click on General, then Software Update. After that, click Download and Install, and let the software work its magic. This is a biggish update, 1.14GB on my iPhone 16 Pro Max.

What’s In The Release

Unlike iOS 18.1 and iOS 18.2, there’s no big Apple Intelligence feature being deployed here. In fact, one live feature will be paused when you update to the new version. That’s because there have been problems with some specific notification summaries created by Apple Intelligence. These relate to news notifications and caused issues for news organizations. To tackle this, Apple has suspended News & Entertainment category summaries temporarily.

This update also adds warnings that summarization can cause issues, and the summaries will now appear in italics. Apple Intelligence is found on six iPhones: iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max.

The Big Difference With Apple Intelligence

There’s also one crucial change for these phones: from now on, Apple Intelligence is turned on by default. This is important: if you don’t want Apple Intelligence, you’ll now need to toggle it off in Settings under Apple Intelligence & Siri.

The new features are increasingly useful, but some parts of them need data, if ChatGPT is invoked, so you may not want to use that. On balance, I’d say it’s worth keeping the toggle turned to on, but the important thing is you make your own choice.

One thing that might be on your mind is iPhone storage. If your phone doesn’t have too much space to spare, bear in mind that Apple Intelligence uses storage to operate. The new software, as Tim Hardwick at MacRumors points out, enables “Apple Intelligence on supported devices by default. Whether you own an iPhone, iPad, Mac‑—or indeed all three—regardless of what you think about Apple Intelligence, there's one reason why you may want to disable Apple's AI features at the earliest opportunity: To reclaim storage,” as Tim Hardwick at MacRumorspoints out.

How much storage, you ask? The post goes on, “According to Apple's support page, Apple Intelligence now requires 7GB of storage space. This number applies whether you're using an iPhone, iPad, or Mac.” And it’s possible that this storage requirement could still grow in the future, for example when Siri is refreshed in iOS 18.4 in a matter of weeks.

If you have previously disabled Apple Intelligence but then gone along with the welcome screens encouraging you to check it out, then you need to turn it off if you don’t want it. If previously you chose “Set Up Later” as your option, that choice is still respected now. Disabling Apple Intelligence restores your storage levels.

Apple iOS 18.3: Smaller Changes

Since launch it’s been clear that there are more minor updates in the new release coming: iPhone 16 series phones have a Camera Control and the AE/AF lock toggle is renamed as Lock Focus and Exposure. If you crop content when editing a PDF, Apple will now warn users that the cropped area is not removed from the PDF (which could save some embarrassment). And Messages will add a Genmoji entry to the + button, so it’s easier to create your own personalized emoji—this is another Apple Intelligence feature.

Visual Intelligence (exclusive to iPhone 16 series models) has now expanded so that as well as adding an event to the Calendar when you point the camera at a poster or flyer, you can now identify plants and animals, too.

The Calculator app allows you to repeat calculations when you tap the equal sign (so after 2 x 2 you press = and it shows 4, tap = again and the x2 calculation happens again to show, yes, that’s right you math wizard, 8).

Apple has added Unity Rhythm wallpaper to honor Black History month and that wallpaper is accessible to every iPhone running iOS 18.3.

An issue where the keyboard disappeared when starting a typed Siri request has now been fixes.

And, a curious one this, that might even seem spooky in the wrong circumstances, the new update resolves an issue where audio playback continues to the end of a song even when you’ve closed Apple Music. As though Apple was saying, “I like this song, you’re going to hear it to the end.”

Finally, you can now turn off notification summaries directly from the lock screen, if you’re running Apple Intelligence.

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