Apple has today released iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2 to the public; bringing several accessibility fixes and feature refinements for blind, DeafBlind, and low vision users. iOS 18.2 also brings Siri and Writing Tools integration with ChatGPT, Genmoji, Image Playground, and Image Wand to Apple Intelligence-capable devices; as well as Visual Intelligence to iPhone 16 models.
For VoiceOver and braille users, our experience is that the following accessibility bugs have been resolved or meaningfully improved in iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2:
- Summaries in the Mail app can now be read with VoiceOver when double-tapping the "Summarize" button.
- On iOS 18.2, it is once again possible to place apps into folders using the actions rotor. However, this issue is still believed to be present on iPadOS.
- There is now a "Dismiss popup" button in the screen for choosing an app or shortcut as a Lock Screen quick action, allowing the user to easily dismiss the popup and complete the process.
- VoiceOver now speaks search results when performing a T9 search in the Keypad tab of the Phone app.
- VoiceOver now offers better spoken feedback when activating Type to Siri with a four-finger swipe down.
New Features and Refinements for VoiceOver and Braille Users in iOS 18.2
iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2 includes some refinements to existing VoiceOver features:
- Apple has further refined how audio ducking works, making the feature easier to understand and customize. In iOS 18.2, there is now an option, called Ducking Amount, which allows one to adjust the amount that non-VoiceOver audio is reduced. The higher the ducking amount, the quieter other audio will be. This setting may be found in Settings> Accessibility> VoiceOver> Audio> Audio Ducking, under the 'Ducking Amount' heading.
- It is now possible to enter braille chord commands on QWERTY keyboards in the same way they can be used with Braille Screen Input. This mode supports up to 8-dot braille. Dot 1 corresponds with the F key, dot 4 corresponds with the J key, etc. Find this new option by going to Settings> Accessibility> VoiceOver> Braille> Enter Braille Chords on Keyboard. Note that when this setting is turned on, there will be issues surrounding typing, as VoiceOver drops letters randomly in any text fields. As such, to type text in a text field, it is recommended that the user turn this feature off when typing.
iOS 18.2 release notes
This update introduces new features powered by Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system that unlocks powerful new ways to communicate, work, and express yourself, all while protecting your data with an extraordinary step forward for privacy in AI. New features include Image Playground which lets you create delightful, fun images, Genmoji to create original emoji to share with family and friends, ChatGPT support integrated right into Siri and Writing Tools, and more. This release also includes Visual intelligence with Camera Control, enhancements to Mail, Photos, Safari, and other features, bug fixes, and security updates for your iPhone.
Apple Intelligence (All iPhone 16 models, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max)
- Image Playground
- A new app that lets you use concepts, descriptions, and people from your photo library to create fun, playful images in multiple styles
- Swipe through previews and choose from as you add concepts to your playground
- Choose from animation and illustration styles when creating your image
- Create images in Messages and Freeform, as well as third party apps
- Images are synced in your Image Playground library across all your devices with iCloud
- Genmoji
- Genmoji allows you to create a custom emoji right from the keyboard
- Genmoji are synced in your sticker drawer across all your devices with iCloud
- ChatGPT support
- ChatGPT from OpenAI can be accessed right from Siri or Writing Tools
- Compose in Writing Tools allows you to create something from scratch with ChatGPT
- Siri can tap into ChatGPT when relevant to provide you an answer
- A ChatGPT account is not required and your requests will be anonymous and won’t be used to train OpenAI’s models
- Sign in with ChatGPT to access your account benefits, and requests will be covered by OpenAI’s data policies
- Image Wand turns sketches and handwritten or typed notes into images in Notes
- Describe your change in Writing Tools allows you to suggest how you’d like something rewritten, for example as a poem
Camera Control (iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro Max)
- Visual Intelligence with Camera Control helps you instantly learn about places or interact with information simply by pointing your iPhone at the object, with the option to tap into Google Search or ChatGPT
- Camera Control two-stage shutter lets you lock focus and exposure in Camera when light pressing the Camera Control
- Mail Categorization sorts your messages to help you prioritize the most important messages
- Digest view groups all of the messages from one sender into a single bundle for easy browsing
Photos
- Video viewing improvements, including the ability to scrub frame-by-frame and a setting to turn off auto-looping video playback
- Improvements when navigating Collections views, including the ability to swipe right to go back to the previous view
- Recently Viewed and Recently Shared album history can be cleared
- Favorites album appears in the Utilities collection in addition to Pinned Collections
Safari
- New background images to customize your Safari Start Page
- Import and Export enables you to export your browsing data from Safari and import browsing data from another app into Safari
- HTTPS Priority upgrades URLs to HTTPS whenever possible
- File Download Live Activity shows the progress of a file download in the Dynamic Island and on your home screen
This update also includes the following improvements and bug fixes:
- Voice Memos supports layered recording, letting you add vocals over an existing song idea without the need for headphones — then import your two-track projects directly into Logic Pro (iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro Max)
- Share Item Location in Find My helps you locate and recover misplaced items by easily and securely sharing the location of an AirTag or Find My network accessory with trusted third parties, such as airlines
- Natural language search in Apple Music and Apple TV app lets you describe what you’re looking for using any combination of categories like genres, moods, actors, decades, and more
- Favorite Categories in Podcasts allows you to choose your favorite categories and get relevant show recommendations that you can easily access in your Library
- Personalized Search page in Podcasts highlights the most relevant categories and editorially curated collections tailored to you
- Sudoku for News+ Puzzles provided in three difficulty levels and available for News+ subscribers
- Support for the Hearing Test feature on AirPods Pro 2 in Cyprus, Czechia, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Romania, Spain, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom
- Support for the Hearing Aid feature on AirPods Pro 2 in United Arab Emirates
- Pre-market price quotes in Stocks lets you track NASDAQ and NYSE tickers prior to market open
- Fixes an issue where recently captured photos do not appear immediately in the All Photos grid
- Fixes an issue where Night mode photos in Camera could appear degraded when capturing long exposures (iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro Max)
Some features may not be available for all regions or on all Apple devices. For information on the security content of Apple software updates, please visit this website: https://support.apple.com/100100
How to update
iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2 are available via Over-the-Air Update (Settings > General > Software Update) via Finder on a Mac with macOS Catalina or later, or via iTunes on a PC or Mac with macOS Mojave or earlier.
Before updating, we strongly recommend making a full and complete backup of your device (either locally or in iCloud, depending on personal preference). This will ensure that, in the unlikely event that something goes wrong during the update process, you will have a current backup on hand in case a device restore becomes necessary. Also, if using OTA update, we recommend plugging your device into a power source for the duration of the download/installation process, so as to prevent the unlikely event of your battery going dead during the update.
Comments
I still have the iPhone 13, should I still upgrade to the latest
I still have the iPhone 13, should I upgrade to the latest iOS or should I leave it until I get the 16?
Depends
If you are getting an iPhone 16 sometime soon, there is no harm in waiting... Especially with that old of a device. If you are already on iOS 18, I would upgrade to iOS 18.2. If you are on iOS 17 (or something earlier), I would upgrade to whatever the latest version is within that major OS.
did the update
I have an iphone 13 pro, so I understand that to an extent, today's update was pointless, but I'm hoping to get an iPhone 16 in January, so figured I might as well update my current device. So far, I haven't noticed any issues that I wasn't experiencing before the update.
No new bugs
I liked the audio ducking change. Should have been like this from the start IMO.
Probably old topic but my…
Probably old topic but my guess judging from the rc is that the bug where on the status bar the voice changes to the primary language which appeared around ios 17 is still there?
is it fixed?
when i got a missed call on lock screen before ios 18 just doubel tap ask for touch / face id and recall it, now it only open its contact it somewhat waisting time. also, local bank app here crash before log in while vo is working ... i see battery not good performance.
ios 18.11, iphone se3.
Siri integration with Chat GPT
This is a silly ask, but will this work on an iPhone 12 running 18.2? I am more of a Gemini/ Bard kind of guy and loving the app. on my IOS Device. Siri needs more intelligence and dictation is also clunky. Life would be so much easier if I could do the following things on a locked screen without Siri telling me you will need to unlock your phone to do: Send whatsapp messages send text messages Turn ON/OFF Bluetooth/ Wifi Call
I know what you are thinking I have already set such things to work on locked screen I think under Face ID and Passcode
ChatGPT Integration Part of Apple Intelligence
Hi Mister Kayne,
Unfortunately, ChatGPT integration is part of Apple Intelligence so is only available on the iPhone 15 Pro and above.
iOS 18.2
Got it. After getting the RC 2 on Monday, yesterday got the public version for all. After that, turn off beta to avoid any issues. Working well, responsive and fast. VO is working well so far.
Kinda frustrating, actually...
Hi Mister Kayne,
I'm currently on an iPhone 14 Pro running the first RC build because I didn't see the point of updating if ChatGPT wasn't included for older devices. I emailed Apple Accessibility and got a response from their team, which is better than I can say for the engineers on the beta feedback side. If Apple wants to pull a fast one on us by saying that the majority of Apple Inteligence requires on-device hardware, then fine, but since ChatGPT integration only requires an Internet connection, it really does't make sense. If Tim Cook is really so motivated by the almighty dollar, maybe allowing more users to access these features who may not be able to afford an iPhone 16 Pro Max Plus Ultra 247A (only exaggerating here) would prevent some users from switching over to Android. Just saying.......
A big thank you
A big thank you to everybody who responded to my earlier post. You’ve been very helpful thanks again and happy holidays :-)
Started the Update...
I started the update, but now I seem to be getting the Hello screen spoken out in different languages. This is all well and good, but the screen seems to be going in a loop and I can't get out of it. Should I just power down and restart my phone? This is an iPhone 14. Tia for anyone's assistance.
Update: All good now. I held down the power button, and waited about 45 seconds before re-booting. The focus issue with VoiceOver seems to be fixed, but I haven't had much time to play around with it yet.
Lock screen
Anyone sene this Yet?
Can anyone confirm you can still call someone back when on the lock screen? weather with Whatsapp or Telegram or just the phone app?
Can anyone verify that reading the time will come before all notifications as in iOS 17? because I really liked that.
I've had multiple telling me voiceover volume works differently in iOS 18?
In 17 I noticed that when connected to a bluetooth speaker, any bluetooth speaker that I sset as a speaker, the volume of voiceover will go down and I have it set on only 5% already, it sounds like some DSP processing maybe? but it's different than earlier versions of iOS. I love that all notifications now come through the phone and not the speaker, and the volume of what ever is playing be it YTMusic or Spotify or apple music ETC doesnt duck, honestly that was really anoying. Can anyone clarify any of this?
I waited to update to iOS 18 because there still seems to be issues with it, but it tentitivly seems to b improving now?
Thanks all.
PS:
Happy Holidays to all.
PPS:
Can anyone verify what features exactly of apple intelegence require Pro-spassific hardware? because I thought most diden't?
Navigation by line in Notes…
Navigation by line in Notes is fixed.
Character browsing bug for Chinese users has been fixed
The bug introduced in 18.1 that Chinese users cannot use character browsing mode to listen to and read the explanation of words has been fixed in 18.2, which is good news. However, there are still many, many errors in pronunciation in the Chinese environment. I do not recommend users with pre-iPhone 15 to update to any version of iOS 18, because errors in Chinese voice have become very common in iOS 18
After updating to iOS 18.2
Does anybody notice a lag while using voiceover when typing or just scrolling through your phone on webpages or just apps in general? I am using an iPhone 14 Pro Max.
RE: After updating to iOS 18.2
I haven't really noticed anything like that, granted I have not done any thorough testing, just the usual suspects (email, texting, posting to AppleVis, etc).
I'm on an iPhone SE 2022 with iOS 18.2.
I can't reproduce this. I…
I can't reproduce this. I was on all betas and this isn't reproducible. I have an iPhone 15 pro max. Have you tried volume up volume down and power holding in the power button for about 30 seconds?
Stability
18.2 feels quite stable over here. No major issues, no weird behaviors.
Not much changes since I'm not on apple intelligence. I'm fine with my 13.
james
Probably done by you but suggest you do a restart, that might help.
Thanks
Hitting the volume up volume down and holding the power button seems to have fixed it
Re: Kinda frustrating, actually...
Suggested this elsewhere on Applevis. I might submit feedback to Apple regarding that. I don't really quite get why we can't just use all the stuff referred to as "Apple Intelligence" online unless we have the required hardware to process the requests on-device.
UNREAD MAIL STATUS
Hi,
Since upgrading my iPhone 16 Pro, I no longer get an accurate count of unread mail in the dock. If I open mail, I can see the correct number against the 'Updated just now' status. For example, my mail app in the dock currently says I have one unread mail but when I open the app, I am told that I have six unread mails. If I come out of the app, the number in the dock still says one!
I have my mail app set to all inboxes and to list view so that I don't see the mail categories.
Anyone else experiencing this, please?
richard Bartholomew
Excessive overheating on an older device
I updated to 18.2 from the developer side of things. Waking up this morning I noticed my phone was hot. Like, I was using it for a couple of apps i know make it warmer when in use, type of situation. The battery seems to be draining fast and as of now, it's in my freezer, yes, because I'm trying to cool it down to finish charging. anyone else have this problem? I haven't checked my battery health though I never do as it's just confusing as all hell. thanks
Siobhan
More likely you did it but did you do another restart?
Holger, doing it now
Thanks Holger, I did just takeit out, it's freezing! and just put it back on charge. It's not a huge thing seeing as it was at 80% anyway but this came out of nowhere. Thanks for the help. I thought i had restarted but in my sleepy state, not sure if it took or something.
It's normal for your battery…
It's normal for your battery to drain more after an update because your phone has to reindex everything. This happens in the background. I found out that you can see if it is happening if you go into battery settings. My 15 Pro got all the way down to 30% charge by mid afternoon after I updated, which is way lower than normal.
I've also from time to time had an app use an unusually high amount of resources, causing my phone to heat up a lot. I usually just restart my phone when this happens. Gotta love the power off button in the control center now!
Sometimes I will switch back to Samantha before I do an update since she comes up afterward anyway. I'll use her till I think my phone is done reindexing, and then switch back to eloquence after I restart.
restart
It is recommended whenever updating iOS to do a restart after several minutes. I do so after 10 minutes.
mail on iOS 18.2
I have updated my SE 2020 to iOS 18.2. When I open mail, it says no mail. Someone told me to double tap the more button and hit restore list view. I hit the more button. It only says list view. I double tap that and nothing happens. Please help!!!
RE: Mail
When you are tapping on list, in the Mail app, it actually is doing something, it's just not giving you any kind of auditory feedback. However, after double tapping on list, swipe to the right, then double tap on dismiss. You will now see that whatever inbox you're in, will now be in the old style list view.
HTH.
Re: UNREAD MAIL STATUS
To Richard and anyone else not liking the new Unread mail badge handling introduced in 18.2………
Go to - Settings>Mail>Notifications>Customise notifications> and in here under the heading Badge count you can toggle how you want this to now work with the new category vs original mail layouts! Change the selected option from “Unread messages in primary” to “All unread messages” and the badge count shown will again reflect ALL unread once again rather than just showing the number of unread that fell into the new primary category.
In my opinion I’d have thought turning off the new category view in the mail app and going back to list view would revert this new badge count change also as why would you want to only show the unread count for the primary category when you have turned off category view…….. but perhaps Apple felt the need to complicate things a little more 😉
language switching
I have two phones, an iphone se 2020 and an iphone se 2022. I'm wondering if I should update the newer phone but won't until they fix language switching, which they really broke on ios 18. Have they fixed that? I have IOS 18 on the older phone which I rarely use now. When I put it on the new phone during the betas it caused it to respring constantly. I had to restore it. Strange that my older phone seemed to run it better.
Losing speech very frequently
Since updating to iOS 18.2, I've been losing VoiceOver speech roughly every three minutes. The behaviour has persisted even after restarting the device. I can sometimes get speech to return by locking and unlocking the device, but at other times I need to restart VoiceOver twice. I'm using Eloquence.
Is it a memory issue?
I ask since Eloquence is so random with people's phones, do you possibly have either an older device, or a smaller storage factor? sorry, that came out weird, no coffee yet. :) I'm just wondering if because the older chip and the older Eloquence in general just freezes. Good luck. Have you tried any other voice? Ava, Agnes, Alex? Just to name a few and see if the behavior continues? If it does, then you'll work out the problem. If you still want Eloquence, the only one that might compare is Bruce though not my personal favorite. In fact, I still wish for those that wanted, voices can be permanently be removed thereby creating more storage space. I'd rather have music or apps or books then have voices I find distasteful to say the least. Again, sorry no help but I wish you luck.
Replying to Siobhan
I'm using an older device, and the behaviour doesn't occur with Alex. However, I can't see why it would be a memory issue or why Eloquence should need to be downloaded given that its total storage footprint is just a few megabytes, which is negligible considering the size of other components of the operating system.
VO not working on some websites
This is a new and incredibly irritating bug.
It happens most often on a text heavy site I frequent but is occurring elsewhere too. Whenever a page opens, VO does not respond. At all. I get the error "dong" noise. If I refresh the page it will work. I already have the web rotor turned off (though I still experience VO freezing while pages are loading). Is this happening to anyone else?
I like the new mail categories
I have an iPhone SE 2020 so a lot of the features I don't have, but I actually am really liking the new category feature in the mail app. My iCloud mail is my primary account, and I've had it for most of my adult life at this point, so I have a lot of mail that is very different. It's easier to find what I'm looking for this way. I also like that if you have a lot of similar mail from a sender, you can delete it all at once.