The latest update for iPhone, iPad, and Mac is officially here. After nearly two months of beta testing, Apple is rolling out iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS 15.2 to all compatible devices today. Here’s what’s new.
New Apple Intelligence features
Apple first rolled out Apple Intelligence, its suite of generative AI features, with iOS 18.1. While users with compatible devices were able to try features like an AI-assisted Siri, Writing Tools, and the Magic Eraser-esque Clean Up, many of Apple Intelligence’s advertised capabilities were held back. The company is rolling out AI features in batches, seemingly to give certain options more time to bake, as well as limit the number of users that have access to new AI tools at any given time.
With iOS 18.2, a number of big Apple Intelligence features are making their way to eligible iPhones, iPads, and Macs:
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Image Playground, an AI image generator baked into Apple apps like Messages, Keynote, and Freeform
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Genmoji, a feature that lets you make your own emojis via AI art to share with friends
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Image Wand, which turns rough sketches, writing, or text into AI art
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Describe Your Change, a new Writing Tools feature that lets you tell Apple Intelligence how you want your text rewritten or altered
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ChatGPT integration, so you can ask the bot for help with text composition, image recognition, and document processing
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If you have an iPhone 16, you also have access to Visual Intelligence, which can tell you things about your surroundings. You can point your camera at something in front of you, like a sign in a foreign language, and Visual Intelligence will translate it for you.
Check out our in-depth piece for more info on iOS 18.2’s new Apple Intelligence features. As a reminder, Apple Intelligence isn’t available on all iPhones running iOS 18.2. The above AI features are only compatible with iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and iPhone 16 devices.
Other new features in iOS 18.2
This update isn’t all about Apple Intelligence. Apple is also rolling out other new features that are accessible to all iOS 18 iPhones, not just iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16.
In the Mail app, you now have Mail Categorization, which automatically sorts your messages and attempts to prioritize the most important ones, and “Digest view,” which bundles messages per sender.
In Photos, you can now scrub frame-by-frame on videos, and disable auto-looping (so videos don’t continue playing once they’re finished). Apple has also made some quality of life improvements to the app: You can swipe right to go back to the previous view in Collections; clear your album history in Recently Viewed and Recently Shared; and find your Favorites album in Utilities as well as Pinned Collections.
When you open Safari after updating, you’ll notice new background images to choose from for your Start Page. (Apple hasn’t added to these in some time.) You can now export your browsing data, and import browsing data from another browser to Safari. Apple is now defaulting URLs to HTTPS instead of HTTP whenever it can (so more of your website visits will be encrypted) and you’ll now see your download progress in your iPhone’s Dynamic Island.
There are also a number of various features and changes sprinkled throughout the rest of iOS:
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On iPhone 16 Pro, you can record over Voice Memos, to effectively create a two-track recording, which you can import to Logic Pro.
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You can share your Find My devices, like an AirTag, with a trusted third party, like your airline.
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You can search for things in Apple Music and the Apple TV app with natural language, and the app will understand what you’re looking for.
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You can set your favorite categories in Podcasts for custom recommendations, and a new Personalized Search page offers additional recs.
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News+ Puzzles now offers Sudoku
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Apple has expanded the Hearting Test for AirPods Pro 2 to Cyprus, Czechia, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Romania, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.
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In Stocks, you’ll now see pre-market price quotes to track NASDAQ and NYSE tickers before the market opens.
There are also a couple bug fixes: Apple resolved an issue where new photos wouldn’t appear in All Photos, as well as an issue where Night mode photos would look “degraded” when taken in long exposure on iPhone 16 Pro.
Which iPhones are compatible with iOS 18.2?
If your iPhone can run iOS 18, it can run iOS 18.2. That includes the following:
Again, only iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and iPhone 16 devices can run Apple Intelligence.
How to update to iOS 18.2
Once the update is available, you’ll find it in Settings > General > Software Update. Allow your iPhone to look for the update: Once it loads, follow the on-screen instructions to download and install iOS 18.2 on your device.
