iOS 18 started rolling out earlier this week, so now attention shifts to iOS 18.1 (and the related iPadOS 18.1). The main difference is Apple Intelligence, which wasn’t ready in time for the iPhone 16-series launch. The first batch of AI features should arrive in October, unless you are in the EU or China – then the timeline is unclear at best.
Anyway, Apple has reached the fourth round of betas for iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1. watchOS 11.1, tvOS 18.1 and visionOS 2.1 are now also starting the beta testing procedure.
Apple Intelligence itself is still in active development, so some features are ready, others will come later. Also, Intelligence only works on iPhone 15 Pro and the four iPhone 16 models, plus iPads and Macs with Apple silicon.
One new feature for beta 4 is that Type to Siri shows suggestions that automatically update as you type. Type to Siri is an alternative to using voice prompts that has been available for years, but now AI-powered autocomplete suggestions help speed up the process.
Apple Intelligence features: Writing tools • Object removal • Image generation
Other AI features include system-wide writing tools, object removal from photos and image generation based on text prompts.
As usual, we would warn you that beta software isn’t suitable for your daily driver device as it still has known and unknown bugs. Unless you are a developer experimenting with the new AI features, you’d be better off waiting for the proper release in October.
