It’s a big week for Apple fans! With new iPhone 16 models arriving later this week, anticipation for “new stuff” is high. Luckily, there’s a new version of iOS to upgrade to today.

But Why Should you upgrade to iOS 18?

After all, there’s no major visual change in the latest version of iOS (unless you customize it, more on that later), you can still get security updates for iOS 17, and the most hyped feature, Apple Intelligence, isn’t even included in the initial rollout yet.

So what’s in iOS 18 that’s compelling enough to upgrade today? Quite a few things, actually.

To inform

Messages is getting a couple of big upgrades in iOS 18. The first is the ability to italicize and bold text. As someone who’s spent my entire life on Slack, the inability to format messages has annoyed me for years. You can also get creative with message replies, using any emoji you want, not just the default ones.

Messages are finally getting RCS support too. What does it stand for, what does it mean? It doesn’t matter, what you care about is that you won’t get extra messages when you reply to green bubble conversations.

Finally, and what I find to be the most useful new feature of Messages, is Send Later. It’s criminally hidden behind the More icon. But especially if you regularly text someone in a different time zone, you’ll want to be able to find it right away.

Amendment

For those of you who struggle with home screen customization apps or spend hours in Shortcuts trying to get that perfect monotone look, this will be welcome news. With iOS 18, you can do a lot more with the look of your device, natively. Want to position apps just so that they frame a portion of your wallpaper? Now you can, as iOS no longer forces you to use full rows.

You can also color icons any way you want. Just pick a hue and voila, matching icons! You can also choose to always have iOS 18’s new dark icons, which is a nice way to get a muted look without having to choose their color. All of these options are under the To adjust menu when you arrange your screen.

Hidden/Locked Apps

Hidden apps get a major upgrade in iOS 18 with a folder that hides whether or not there are any hidden apps at all. My issue with the original implementation of the Hidden Folder was that it was obvious whether there was something inside you wanted to keep hidden. Now you have to unlock the folder before you can even see its contents.

The most useful privacy upgrade is being able to lock any app without having to move it to the Hidden folder. Just long press on an app icon and select Face ID required. It’s a huge boon for apps that aren’t secure by default, like Journal (which, frankly, should have been lockable from the start).

Passwords

Finally, passwords get their own native app in iOS 18. For anyone who’s had to spend time digging around in iOS settings to get login credentials, this is a huge win. It’s a fairly basic affair, but it does the job in terms of easier access.

You can quickly generate a new login and secure password from the app’s main screen. There’s also a handy Security category with a list of all your compromised passwords.

Those looking to cancel their 1Password subscription will have to wait. Passwords are a great starting point, but if you’re going to spend time creating your passwords, I find 1Password’s workflow to be easier to use overall, with useful features like password history. Still, as a free option, it’s an incredible upgrade from a submenu in Settings.

Control Panel/Lock Screen

This was one that I was personally really excited about. I use Control Center all the time, for calculator, flashlight, camera, music controls, you name it. With iOS 18, you can completely customize it, adding, moving, and rearranging features to be exactly where you need them. You can even create new Control Center screens, so you can quickly get to extended controls like Music or Focus.

While we’re talking about those little monochrome icons, the ones on your lock screen are now customizable, too. You’re no longer stuck with the flashlight and camera. You can have, well, any Control Center app you want. This is especially interesting in light of the new Camera Control button on the iPhone 16 Pro Max . The question is, what are you going to put in the camera icon’s place?

But not Apple Intelligence

The only thing you won’t see in the iOS 18 launch today is Apple Intelligence. For that, you’ll have to wait for iOS 18.1, which is coming in the coming weeks. That said, it’s not really worth waiting for the current version.

While Apple Intelligence is certainly useful for things like summarizing threads in Messages (although it’s kind of hilarious when it tries to summarize individual messages) and has neat tricks like normalizing your handwriting in Notes on the iPad, there’s no killer app yet. Despite recent ads touting the summarizing powers of Mail… I still don’t find Mail on iOS compelling enough to make the switch from my beloved Spark.

That said, Apple Intelligence will continue to evolve and improve after launch (likely in October). But there’s nothing stopping you from enjoying the benefits of iOS 18 today.