11 Hidden iOS 18.3 iPhone Features You Should Probably Know About
Restart your iPhone from the new control center
You don’t have to press any physical buttons to restart your iPhone if you’re running iOS 18. The redesigned control center features all the classic controls you’re used to, like brightness, volume, orientation, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, but there are several new controls, including one to restart your iPhone.
All you need to do is swipe down from the top-right of your iPhone and press and hold down on the new power button in the top-right of the control center. You can’t just tap it; you have to hold it down for a second or so, and then the slider to power off your iPhone will appear.
To turn your iPhone back on, you’ll still need to press and hold the physical side button.
Watch this: 11 Hidden Features in iOS 18
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So if you meet any of those scenarios and you don’t want to text the Wi-Fi password to them, you can use the QR code. Go to the new Passwords app, go to the Wi-Fi section, tap on the network you want to share and then hit Show Network QR Code. If the other person scans the QR code with their camera, they’ll be connected to the Wi-Fi network.
A wide flashlight beam (left) and a narrow beam.
Note: This feature only works on iPhone models with the dynamic island, including the iPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 14 Pro Max, iPhone 15 series and iPhone 16 series.
Quickly turn off AI notification summaries for certain apps from your lock screen
In iOS 18.1, Apple introduced notification summaries — Apple Intelligence-powered notifications that summarize your notifications from a single app. If you have multiple unread notifications from an app like Gmail or Amazon, you’ll see an italicized summary appear on your lock screen, condensing them all into a few sentences you can quickly digest.
Unfortunately, notification summaries don’t always work very well, especially for text messages and news apps. In fact, as of iOS 18.3, notification summaries are disabled for all news apps across your device, like the Apple News and CNET app. But if you want to disable the feature for other apps, you can easily do so without even unlocking your phone.
From your lock screen, find a notification summary for an app you want the feature disabled for and swipe left on the notification. Tap on Options and then hit “Turn Off “App Name” Summaries to stop notification summaries for that app. You’ll continue to receive notifications, they’ll just be individual, like you’re used to.
Anyone that is tracking the AirTag won’t be notified when it’s near them.
Transcribe Voice Memos and make them searchable
The Voice Memos app is incredibly convenient for capturing ideas or song snippets, but they’ve always been obfuscated. You can give them a descriptive title, but that doesn’t help when you want to find that one memo you recorded that contains the word “porcupine.” In iOS 18, the app can create transcriptions of your voice memos and search for words that were previously available only as audio waveforms.
In the Voice Memos app, tap one of your memos to reveal its controls and then tap the Edit Recording button, which looks like a waveform. Or, tap the three-dots button to the right of a memo and choose Edit Recording.
Next, tap the Transcribe button to create the transcription (or view the text if it’s already been transcribed). Tap Done.
With transcripts made, voice memos are more easily searchable.
Hide app labels for a cleaner home screen
Is your home screen feeling a little too cluttered? If so, this new feature could help. Now with iOS 18, you can get rid of app labels or the names of the apps that you see underneath each app icon on your home screen. If you can recognize an app from just the icon, who needs the label?
On your home screen, press and hold down on any blank space, until you enter jiggle mode, and then hit Edit > Customize. A menu will appear at the bottom of the screen; choose the Large option, which will make your app icons slightly larger and remove the app labels.
This only works for apps that have widgets on iOS.
Secretly identify songs using the Action Button
No lie, it’s satisfying when someone asks, “What song is this?” to be able to activate Music Recognition on the iPhone and get an answer quickly. To get the answer means very noticeably asking Siri to run Shazam or activate Music Recognition in the control center. Wouldn’t it be fun to let your friends think you’ve been blessed with an encyclopedic knowledge of pop music?
In iOS 18, you can come close using the Action Button. Go to Settings > Action Button and swipe through the options until Recognize Music is selected.
View images that contain handwriting in your Photos library in iOS 18.
Share a specific section of a podcast
Did the hosts of your favorite podcast say something especially funny or thoughtful that you want to share with someone? In the Podcasts app in iOS 18, you can send an episode to a friend with the playback advanced to that moment — but the capability isn’t easy to find.
Tap the Now Playing bar in the app at the bottom of the screen to view the playback controls and pause the episode. Use the progress bar to go back to the start of the section you want to share.
Next, tap the More (…) button and choose Share Episode. In the sharing options that appear, tap From Start below the episode title, and then select From [the current time]. Tap Done.
Specify that the shared episode begins at the time you chose.
