Yesterday a report told us Apple Intelligence reportedly not launching with the new iPhone 16 family in September, instead it arrived as a software update in October. Now Apple has basically confirmed this without saying anything.
That’s because today the company released the first developer beta of iOS 18.1, and it includes the first Apple Intelligence features. That’s iOS 18.1Incidentally – iOS 18 is also being tested in beta currently, and that’s the version that’s supposed to come out in September. iOS 18.1 will be the first major update to iOS 18, and it’s likely that it could come out in October.
Anyway, logistics aside, with the first betas of iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1, Apple is finally rolling out the Apple Intelligence suite. To enable it, you’ll need to go into Settings and join a waitlist, just like earlier rumors. Right now the wait is only a few hours long, but this is a developer-only beta so this is the best case scenario we’ll ever see. It will likely be a lot longer than a few hours before the general public gets access in October, but we digress.
Writing tools (rewriting, spell checking, grammar checking, summarizing text in Messages, Notes, Mail, Pages, and other apps), the new look of Siri with a glow around the edges of the screen and the ability to type over it, summaries for transcripts and other content, new Mail categories and smart replies, as well as smart replies in Messages – they’re all there.
Participate is the ability to record and transcribe phone calls. Once you’re in a call, you can tap the record button in the upper left corner. Everyone on the call will be notified via audible message that the call is being recorded, and then the audio will be saved to the Notes app. After the call, you can listen back to the call, see a full transcript, and get a summary of the transcript.
A public beta of iOS 18.1 is likely coming in the coming weeks.