Here are 5 useful new iOS 18 features, from motion sickness fixes to satellite texting

Apple released its first public beta of iOS 18 on Monday, meaning adventurous iPhone owners can begin testing the company’s (unfinished) work for fee.

All it takes is a compatible iPhone (including the nearly six-year-old iPhone XR and newer), an opt-in to the company’s Beta Software Program and a willingness to deal with stuff that doesn’t yet work all the time.

Seriously, don’t install this beta software on a device you rely on daily. There’s no guarantee that the apps you use - not to mention Apple’s own features - will work as well as they’re meant to.

Here’s another potential downer: None of the flashy Apple Intelligence tools that the company previewed at its Worldwide Developers Conference are here, because they aren’t ready yet. Even when iOS 18 is released this fall, those AI features still won’t technically be done; Apple says they’ll be available “in beta” for people who own an iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max.

The company still plans to make early versions of some Apple Intelligence features available in preview form sometime this summer. But for those thinking of trying out Apple’s early beta software on iPhones right now, here are five features we think you’ll want to try in the meantime.

1. Text from (almost) anywhere with satellites

The days of going completely off the grid might be over. If you have an iPhone 14 or newer, you’ll be able to send texts and iMessages without cell reception from basically anywhere in the United States, just as long as you have a clear view of the sky.

See, when you wander outside of cellular range, your messages will be ferried to their recipients thanks to satellites - a feat that used to be limited to contacting emergency services. (Even better, the feature is free to use, at least for now.)

In our early testing, the feature seems to work at least partially; I managed to fire off a few text messages to my wife and a colleague on a craggy stretch of beach along California’s Highway 1 that Verizon service couldn’t reach. The catch? Even though those messages took only about 15 seconds to send, my wife wasn’t using Apple’s preview software, so I couldn’t see any of her responses until I found cell service again.

As an emergency outreach feature, satellite messaging seems to do the trick even in its incomplete form. Just, please, do yourself a favor: Don’t cavalierly put yourself in a situation where you’d need to rely on satellite messages to work perfectly. That’s asking way too much from unfinished software.

You may notice some long overdue changes to the way messages work even if you aren’t traipsing through the backcountry.

IOS 18 also includes support for RCS messages, so when you text your Android-using pals, you’ll see modern messaging flourishes such as typing indicators and read receipts, plus full-quality photos and full-length videos coming and going.

It’s not quite iMessage for Android, but it’s as close as we’re probably going to get for a long time.

2. Lock down your apps for privacy

Our phones are troves of private data, and it’s getting easier to protect your information - especially when you need to hand your phone off to someone for a moment.

In iOS 18, you can make basically any app on your iPhone perform a Face ID check before it launches. Just find the app on your home screen (or in the App Library where all of your apps live), long-press the icon to bring up a menu of actions, and select the Require Face ID option.

Just keep in mind that, with this setting turned on, you may not be able to see content inside that app - say, Telegram messages or the subjects lines of emails - in your notifications.

3. Fight off motion sickness

If you suffer from motion sickness, you may want to try iOS 18′s Visual Motion Cues.

Motion sickness often strikes when there’s a mismatch between what your eyes and brain perceive and the movement your body feels.

When this feature is on, a smattering of dots will appear around the edge of your iPhone’s screen, and they’ll start to move in response to the motion of the car - or train, or tractor - you’re riding to try to keep your eyes, brain, and body on the same page.

Apple cautions that this feature may only “slightly” help mitigate the motion sickness you feel, but it’s worth a shot if you’ve ever felt slightly ill reading your phone in the back seat. To turn it on, open the Settings app, tap the Accessibility option, then tap the Motion option to find the Vehicle Motion Cues feature.

4. Redesign your home screen

Your home screen can say a lot about you and you priorities. Now, new tools in iOS 18 can make it work better for you.

You can, for example, make all of your app icons bigger, or give them a makeover to match iOS’s Dark Mode or your wallpaper.

For the first time, iOS will also let you move your apps to nearly anywhere you want on the home screen. Personally, I’m a fan of keeping my apps toward the bottom, so I don’t need to stretch my thumb too far.

You can make most of these changes without even opening the Settings app; just long-press an empty spot on your home screen, tap the Edit option that appears in the top-left corner, then hit Customize.

In case you don’t often find yourself using the flashlight or camera shortcuts on your iPhone’s lock screen, you can now change those to open specific apps, or trigger features you’d normally find in your phone’s Control Center.

To make these changes, long-press on your iPhone’s wallpaper while it’s locked, hit Customize, then Lock Screen. You’ll see the buttons you can swap out at the bottom of the screen.

5. Transcribe lectures, meetings and more

If you’re the type who uses voice memos to help jog your memories, figuring out what’s inside all those old recordings is about to get a lot easier.

IOS 18 can transcribe the contents of those audio files. Just find the recording you’re curious about, tap the little waveform-looking button in the bottom-left corner, then tap the speech bubble button on that playback page that pops up.

These transcriptions are generated very quickly; it spit out text for an hour-long conversation in about a minute. However, the accuracy in this early software is a bit spotty, and iOS doesn’t differentiate between speakers like similar apps do on Google and Samsung phones.

If you’re more of a “jot things down in the Notes app” kind of person, you can record audio from there, too, by tapping the paper clip icon. From there, you can ask iOS to transcribe your recording and - even better - copy the resulting text straight into your notes, or wherever else you need it.