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iOS 18.3 Available as Soon as Today With These New Features

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Update: Apple has released iOS 18.3.

In its press release unveiling a new Black Unity Sport Loop for the Apple Watch today, Apple confirmed that iOS 18.3 is "upcoming." According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple Stores are being instructed to update the software on demo devices today, so iOS 18.3 should be released either today or within the next few days.

iOS-18.3-Apple-Intelligence-Color-Palette-Feature.jpg

Below, we recap everything new in iOS 18.3.

Notification Summary Changes

bbc-news-apple-intelligence-summaries-clean-1.jpg
Examples of inaccurate Apple Intelligence notification summaries​

Apple Intelligence notification summaries for news apps are temporarily unavailable on iOS 18.3, after the feature inaccurately summarized some news stories.

Starting with iOS 18.3, notifications that have been summarized have italicized text, which makes them stand out visually compared to regular notifications. Apple also promised that improvements to notification summaries are coming in a future iOS update.

Last, iOS 18.3 lets you easily manage settings for notification summaries from the Lock Screen.

Visual Intelligence Upgrades

Visual-Intelligence-Feature.jpg

All four iPhone 16 models are equipped with a Camera Control button that enables Visual Intelligence, a new feature that can provide information about items or places in a person's surroundings. For example, Apple says users can click and hold the Camera Control to bring up the hours or ratings for a restaurant that they pass by.

iOS 18.3 includes a few Visual Intelligence upgrades for all iPhone 16 models. First, you can now add an event to the Calendar app from a poster or flyer. Second, Visual Intelligence can now identify animals and plants.

Visual Intelligence is not available on any other iPhone models.

Calculator App Enhancement

iOS-18-Calculator-Feature.jpg

iOS 18.3 reintroduces a small but useful Calculator app function that had been removed in an earlier software update. Now, when you tap the equals sign a second time, the Calculator app repeats the last mathematical operation. This functionality is useful for calculating compound interest or other repeat operations.

Black Unity

Apple-2025-Black-Unity-Collection.jpg

In honor of Black History Month this February, Apple today unveiled a new Black Unity Collection, consisting of a special-edition Black Unity Sport Loop for the Apple Watch, a Unity Rhythm watch face, and matching iPhone and iPad wallpapers.

The new Black Unity Sport Loop is available to order today, and the watch face and wallpapers will be available in the upcoming iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and watchOS 11.3 software updates, according to the band's product page.

More

iOS 18.3 fixes these two bugs related to Siri and Apple Music:

  • Fixes an issue where the keyboard might disappear when initiating a typed Siri request
  • Resolves an issue where audio playback continues until the song ends even after closing Apple Music
Apple also added references to robot vacuum support in the Home app to iOS 18.3's code, but it seems this functionality never went live. Apple's website says the feature is coming in a future update, so perhaps we will see it with iOS 18.4.

We previously shared Apple's full iOS 18.3 release notes.

Article Link: iOS 18.3 Available as Soon as Today With These New Features
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/01/27/ios-18-3-available-this-week/
Last edited:
I hope they fix the bug causing audio cuts in FaceTime calls; several of us in my family have been dealing with this issue.
 
Anyone notice how the icloud storage stopped fluctuating in ios 18? Usually it goes up and down on its own because it deletes things on the server end when u manually delete things like texts photos etc. Im wondering if this is a bug in ios 18. Its been like this since ios 18.0 or 18.1 Im wondering if this is why my icloud storage keeps doubling in size each time i backup manually and each time i when i update ios software. This did not happen when i was on ios 17. I have continued to report this on feedback page
 
I feel like iOS 18 is the most boring and lazy iOS version ever. The only focus is Apple Intelligence, ok great on paper but it's for 15Pro/16/16Pro only and not ready at all.

Focusing iPhone 16 marketing aggressively on features that are not ready feels wrong and not really Apple generally speaking.
It's even more true in markets where Apple Intelligence is not ready at all (UE for instance). Apple could do it but they know it's not ready for a worldwide release, it's more like an alpha even today especially for Apple's standard. I hope they will improve it quickly.

Please Apple dont make new features available only for the two last generations a new standard for future iOS updates. It's ok I get it for Apple Intelligence since you need lots of RAM.
 
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Lwii2boo said:
I feel like iOS 18 is the most boring and lazy iOS version ever. The only focus is Apple Intelligence, ok great on paper but it's for 15Pro/16/16Pro only and not ready at all.

Focusing iPhone 16 marketing aggressively on features that are not ready feels wrong and not really Apple generally speaking.
It's even more true in markets where Apple Intelligence is not ready at all (UE for instance). Apple could do it but they know it's not ready for a worldwide release, it's more like an alpha even today especially for Apple's standard. I hope they will improve it quickly.

Please Apple dont make new features available only for the two last generations a new standard for future iOS updates. It's ok I get it for Apple Intelligence since you need lots of RAM.
Click to expand...
Yea and ios 18 has been so bad for me on my iphone se 2022. It has increased my icloud storage by so much for no reason. And theres an issue where it doesn't delete things on the server end after u manually delete them. Such as texts etc. I delete texts manually and i know it takes 24hr-4 days to delete them on the server end. Thats how u notice when your icloud flucuates on its own. It is not doing this. Hopefully they will fix this but prob not
 
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switz said:
Deleting messages is playing a swat a mole. They suddenly reappear on on my other devices so I. get to delete each message many times.
Click to expand...
I have the same problem. It’s ridiculous. I mean, how hard could it be? Extremely, apparently. 😳
 
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I’ll wait a few days just to insure 18.3 doesn’t introduce some horrendous new bug. I am planning to update, but I don’t see anything that would motivate me to be a day 1 adopter.
 
All minor changes. Not updating immediately. Hopefully the bug that causes screenshots on watch to not sync properly to Photos on iOS is fixed.
 
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Hi! Since upgrading to ios 18 (or 18.1, not sure) I have a very noticeable lag on opening the emoji/sticker keyboard. It got so frustrating because I keep miss-tapping the blank keyboard and the os "thinks" I want to send the specific sticker (that is not even loaded yet). Fast forward 2 seconds (when the keyboard loads them) it send a random sticker at the position miss-tapped :oops:

edit: forgot to mention I have the EU version, no Apple Intelligence features
:oops:
 
switz said:
Deleting messages is playing a swat a mole. They suddenly reappear on on my other devices so I. get to delete each message many times.
Click to expand...
Yup see I told yall there was a bug in messages in ios 18. When u manually delete texts and even when u manually delete them from recently deleted folder theyre supposed to gone from icloud too but it usually takes up to 4 days for them to be removed from the server. BUT its not doing this. You would know if it was deleting after 4 days on the icloud server end because you would notice that your icloud storage goes down on its own. So yea major bug in messages in ios 18. Maybe one day will be fixed
 
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