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The icon tinting looks really sick. It was long over due to give iOS a fresh look. I also like how you can choose to get rid of distracting stuff in Safari.
Honestly not a huge fan of it, too hard to find the apps at a glance, but I can see people using it for themes and all that. I like the default dark mode icons
 
After upgrading to iOS 18, I noticed my iPad Pro M2 runs noticeably faster. Running Geekbench 6 confirmed this, showing a 5% improvement in both CPU and GPU performance.
Good to know! I updated my iPad yesterday but didn’t have time to try it out , busy with macOS and iPhone 😄
 
You have to specifically click the actual light symbol now in order to turn them off.
Ah… Thanks for that. Would have been nice to have some sort of “We changed this to this”, but that’s why we have forums.
 
So none of the more interesting new features are actually available. We need to wait some time in the fall or winter for them. Why does Apple always release software that isn't finished or ready. Why not just skip the September launches if the thousands of workers at Apple can't get their jobs done on time, and release the software at the end of the year?
Because the old OS version doesn't run on the new phones.
 
Honestly not a huge fan of it, too hard to find the apps at a glance, but I can see people using it for themes and all that. I like the default dark mode icons
I know what you mean. At first I had trouble deciphering the different icons but i've now gotten used to it and not switching the icons around helped accelerate that.
 
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Repositioning icons and widgets is still a complete mess. Yes, it allows you to leave spaces between icons but if you drag an icon over another icon, everything shifts all over the place even worse than it did before. This makes it mostly unusable. Shame, because that was the feature I was most looking forward to. I hope this isn't their vision of how it's supposed to work because if it is, it's crap and it makes me wish that they'd just left it alone.
 
iphone 13 mini is listed as one of the compatible phones, yet, i go to Software update, it offers only iOS 17.7. anyone know why that is??

EDIT: still weird but, at least after completing iOS 17.7 install, it then has the iOS 18 option. “3 hours remaining…” sheesh!
That 3 hours remaining means your wifi is slow. But I will say the ios 18 is not that great. ITS VERY GLITCHY AND NOT SMOOTH. My biggest issue is the icloud storage bug. I deleted old backups and backed up again and the icloud storage just keeps increasing. I havent done anything different. I have 0 texts 1 pic 25 contacts. In ios 17.6.1 I had 57mb and when I updated to ios 18 it went to 83mb then I deleted old backup and tried again and it went to 87mb and did it again and its now at 97mb......something is definitely wrong here. When you delete old backups the icloud storage should go down not up. I am convinced they gave us the beta version on accident.
 
As is often the case, many of my favorite features are ones I haven't seen anyone talk about.

Like full parity for third party password managers in Autofill. Finally I can turn off Apple's Passwords completely and only fill from my own third party password manager, in any text field. So much better.
 
What I do not like about Apples approach to the software update, too many new options all at once. Immediate learning curve with a significant possibility of frustration. Couple their decisions with everyday life, not a good experience. September is becoming a dreaded as opposed to a welcoming time of the year.
 
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Thank you to everyone at Mac Rumors who was involved in putting together this Ultimate Mega Guide.

The fact that we need a mega guide to begin with shows just what a user-unfriendly mess iOS 18 is. Tim Cook doesn't care about user-friendliness. Scott Forstall used to be the head of iOS development, and was a master of user-friendliness, but Cook fired him in 2012. Had Forstall still been in charge of iOS, iOS 18 would've been far more user-friendly, so much so that no mega guide would be necessary.
 
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Before this iOS, you could swipe up from any screen to get to your tools to turn the brightness up or down, etc. Now it only works from the Home Screen. So now, if I am looking at photos and the screen is dark, I have to return to the Home Screen, swipe up, increase the brightness, then go back to the photos app.
I've always swiped down from the top right corner. It's working for me and I upgraded to ios 18
 
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One thing I needed to get used to was the Apps drawer within the Settings App. I wanted to make some changes in Safari and I could not find it until I realized that iOS 18 put them in the Apps drawer. It wasn't until I scrolled down to realize that it was a short scroll in the settings app, that it became clear something was different. :p
 
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One thing I needed to get used to was the Apps drawer within the Settings App. I wanted to make some changes in Safari and I could not find it until I realized that iOS 18 put them in the Apps drawer. It wasn't until I scrolled down to realize that it was a short scroll in the settings app, that it became clear something was different. :p
Most annoying thing ever. Good thing I dont have many apps on my phone.
 
I am confused. This is how it worked on the iPhones until the iPhone 8 which had a home button but these models didn't get an iOS 18 update.
I have an iPhone SE. iOS 18 works, and the swiping up to get to control center works, but you have to go into Control Center and check the box to make it work in apps.
 
Before this iOS, you could swipe up from any screen to get to your tools to turn the brightness up or down, etc. Now it only works from the Home Screen. So now, if I am looking at photos and the screen is dark, I have to return to the Home Screen, swipe up, increase the brightness, then go back to the photos app.
Thanks to others...figured it out. You now have to go into Control Center settings and check the box to allow Control Center access (swipe up) from within apps. I have iPhone SE.
 
After updating Home & Lock Screen is using nearly a quarter (24%) of my iPhone battery. WTF Apple?
 
The new photo app got tons of complaints.

The more I play with the app, I found there are inconsistencies in exhibiting pic in grid views.

In the library, the pics are displayed more less the same as before, exhibited tightly together in rows of thumbnails.

However, for views other than in library, including people, trip, album, utilities and search results, the pics are exhibited with THICK gaps in between thumbnails. It looks ugly, like thick gaps between tooth, as well as wasting too much display estates in particular for small screen mobile users.

The new search are boosted for having textual search capabilities, what I found as far is simply breaking the search text into a few keywords searches which had been supported in previous rev.


The good things for new photo app, only a few, are the removal of day views, the additions of auto generated trip views and showing the taken location of a photo in pic view (before it has to go to info to see the location)


The best upgrades for iOS 18 are note app and calendar app. There are some nice touch on map app too.
 
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