Apple released the second public beta of iOS 18.1 on Sept. 24, about one week after the tech giant released iOS 18 to the general public. iOS 18 brought a lot of new features to your iPhone — such as RCS messaging and home screen customization — and this beta introduces a few new features and refinements to the iPhones of developers and public beta testers. That includes some Apple Intelligence features for developers and beta testers who aren’t in the EU or China and have an iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max or the iPhone 16 lineup.
Read more: Everything You Need to Know About iOS 18
Since this is a beta, I recommend downloading it only on something other than your primary device. Because this isn’t the final version of iOS 18.1, the update might be buggy and battery life may be short, so it’s best to keep those troubles on a secondary device.
Note that the beta is not the final version of iOS 18.1, so there could be more features to land on your iPhone when iOS 18.1 is released. There’s no word on when Apple will release iOS 18.1 to the public yet.
Here are some of the features that could land on your iPhone soon with iOS 18.1.
Control Center adjustments
One of the big changes iOS 18 brought to iPhones was a revamped Control Center, and Apple made a few adjustments to these changes in the beta of iOS 18.1.
With the iOS 18.1 beta, if you go into your Control Center and tap the Connectivity tile — where you can find your Wi-Fi, Airplane Mode and similar settings — you’ll see a few controls are now tile shaped rather than row shaped. This is a small change, but it could be impactful by giving you easier control over your connectivity settings.
You can also add independent controls for Wi-Fi and VPN to Control Center. Before, these controls would be present in the Connectivity tile, or on the Connectivity page in Control Center, but you couldn’t add either as their own control. Apple previously let you add an independent Bluetooth control to Control Center. That means the only Connectivity control that you can have an independent control for at this time is AirDrop, but that could change.
If you don’t like how your Control Center is setup any longer, Apple added a way to reset your Control Center back to the default layout. Go to Settings > Control Center and tap Reset Control Center.
Call recording comes to your iPhone
With the beta of iOS 18.1, your iPhone can now record phone calls. Once you are on a call, you should see a symbol in the top left corner of your screen that looks like a sound bar. Tap this and you’ll start recording your phone call. Once you do start recording a call, an automated voice will announce to you and the person on the other line that the call is being recorded — accordingly, this feature works regardless of whether you’re talking to another iPhone user or an Android user.
Call that number for a holiday surprise.
After your call is finished or you stop recording, your iPhone will save the recording to your Notes app. You can then play the call back in Notes. Newer iPhones, like the iPhone 14 Pro, can also see transcripts of the call in Notes, but older iPhones, like the iPhone XR, can’t see these transcripts.
Before you use this feature though, please check with local law enforcement about the legality of call recording, just in case.
Expanded emoji keyboard
Another change in the iOS 18.1 beta is the expansion of the emoji keyboard. Now if you go into your emoji keyboard and you swipe left, instead of seeing the section for Frequently Used stickers, you’ll see most of your custom stickers. If you swipe left again, you’ll be in a new menu that gives you full access to your Memoji, allowing you to easily use them in place of other emoji.
The emoji in the emoji keyboard are also slightly larger than in iOS 18. It’s not an earth-shattering change, but it’s there.
Expanded RCS messaging support
When Apple released iOS 18, it brought RCS messaging support to iPhones. With the beta version of iOS 18.1, the tech giant is expanding RCS messaging support to more carriers around the world.
According to 9to5Mac, these are the carriers that now support RCS messaging on iPhone.
- Telenet (Belgium)
- Proximus (Belgium)
- BASE (Belgium)
- TracFone (US)
- C Spire (US)
Drag and drop with iPhone mirroring
According to 9to5Mac, if you have beta versions of both iOS 18.1 and MacOS Sequoia 15.1, you can now easily drag and drop files from one device to the other while mirroring your iPhone screen. This could make sharing files between your devices even more seamless than before.
Apple Intelligence features
Apple released the first developer beta of iOS 18.1 before it released iOS 18 to the general public. According to CNET’s Scott Stein and Patrick Holland, that beta introduced Apple Intelligence features, like writing tools for emails and documents, the Clean Up photo tool and changes and improvements to Siri. According to BGR, those features are included in the public beta of iOS 18.1 too.
These features are only available to developers and public beta testers outside the EU and China and have an iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, as well as the iPhone 16 lineup. If you’re a developer or public beta tester and have the base model iPhone 15 or below — like myself — you won’t be able to access these features at this time.
Those are a few of the new features public beta testers can try with iOS 18.1 public beta two. There will likely be more betas before the OS is released to the public, so there’s plenty of time for Apple to change these features. As of now, there’s no word on when Apple will release iOS 18.1 to the public.
For more on iOS, here’s my review of iOS 18, what to know about RCS messaging on iPhones and our iOS 18 cheat sheet. You can also check out everything Apple announced at its September event.
Watch this: 11 Hidden Features in iOS 18
