Apple Intelligence is getting closer to being publicly available on your iPhone. Release candidates for iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, tvOS 18.1, visionOS 2.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1 are available today (October 21).
The release builds arrive a week after the beta six versions of each operating system released on October 14. For those who don’t know, a release candidate refers to the final pre-release build of software before its full public launch.
While the release candidate is stable and ready for use, it doesn’t mean that serious bugs won’t affect your operating system. It’s Apple’s final check for anything breakable before release.
While Apple hyped its version of AI, Apple Intelligence, with the launch of the iPhone 16, curious Apple fans have had to wait to try it out.
As the betas for 18.1 have been released, Apple has slowly added some AI tools to the iPhone. The update also brings out the excellent new Hearing Aid feature to the Air Pods Pro 2, alongside an at-home hearing test for people over 18.
You can now sign up for the public or developer betas to try the features, but Apple advises against testing the betas on your primary devices. Other features include writing tools, summarized audio transcripts and email summaries.
Apple Intelligence and Fixes
Not every Apple Intelligence feature Apple has announced is coming to iOS 18 yet, but the first wave is releasing with 18.1.
These include new writing tools integrated with every app you can type in, which will summarize text, write for you and proofread what you’ve written. The clean up tool is being added to the Photos app to remove unwanted objects and people from photos along with a conversational search in the Photos app.
Finally, Mail and Notifications are getting AI-powered summaries. Mail and Messages also get smart replies that provide suggested responses, with priority sorting to highlight important messages.
As part of iOS 18.1, expect to see a few fixes (spotted by 9to5Mac) to some annoyances within the Photos app, Podcasts and digital car keys.
- Podcasts: fixed an issue where unplayed episodes were marked as played
- Photos: fixed an issue where videos recorded in 4K at 60 fps while the “device is warm” had a stutter during playback
- Digital keys: fixed an issue where the keys wouldn’t unlock or start a car after being restored from a backup or transfer from another iPhone
- iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro: fixed unexpected restart issue
As of this writing, there is no release candidate build for watchOS 11.1, so it looks like Apple Watches might not receive the latest features just yet. The company also released regular updates for iOS 17.7.1 and iPadOS 17.7.1.
Last week, when Apple launched the iPad mini 7, the company also announced that the full iOS 18.1 public release would arrive before October ends. However, they didn’t provide a specific date.
We assume that Apple will officially launch the update on Monday, October 28, or soon after. This would give them about a week to see how the release candidate performs in the wild.