It’s generally a good idea to keep your phone’s software up to date – but some iPhone owners are feeling let down by Apple’s latest updates.
Since it was first released in September, users who have installed iOS 18 have reported issues ranging from batteries draining quickly to limited controls and annoying old apps.
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“Woke up to find my phone updated to iOS 18 while I was sleeping and the new photo layout almost sent me spinning again,” one user wrote on social media site X. “It’s bad.”
This all may sound like a lot about nothing, but it takes time and effort to learn how to use tools – even digital ones – effectively. And it can be very frustrating when out-of-the-blue design changes force us to adjust our behavior and our muscle memory, as some iPhone owners are learning.
Thankfully, there are fixes and workarounds for a few others of changes Apple doesn’t like. Here’s what you need to know.
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It features a new Photos app
What’s changed: This year, Apple almost completely redesigned the Photos app, so…
The most annoying change? This new design takes all the options for creating memories, finding photos to use, viewing and sharing albums that used to live on separate pages, and embeds them all in one. (In other words, be prepared to do a lot of flipping.)
Apple has also added a few new options that make it easier to group things up, such as wallpapers and the allowed useful Apple Intelligence tool that works with photos and video montages on demand.
Fix: For now, at least, you can’t make your Photos app look like it used to. What you can do, however, is tweak the design yourself until it’s something you can live with.
Scroll down until you find the “Edit & Reorder” option, tap it, and rearrange – or completely delete – the things you want to see within the app.
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Supersized emoji
What’s changed: If you like to pepper your messages with emoji, you may have noticed that they look bigger in iOS 18′s keyboard. There’s a space around each emoji, too, which can make finding the right one more time-consuming.
Oh, and if you send a single emoji, it will appear larger in your message thread than before. As one Reddit user said: “I don’t want to see the eggplant emoji in 4K. I don’t want this. 0/10” (Messages that include text, or multiple emojis, show those smiles in their smallest form.)
The fix: Switching to other keyboard apps like Microsoft’s Swiftkey can bring back the smaller, more saturated palette of emoji you’re used to. That said, some third-party keyboard apps request deep, or “full” access to your device in order for certain features to work.
This isn’t necessarily commercial, but it’s best to avoid keyboards that aren’t clear about what they’re doing on your phone.
If you’re worried too much about how big emoji are in your conversations, well, I’m sorry – short of sending a few messages with each one, you’re done.
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It disrupts the Control Center
What’s changed: The Control Center, accessed by swiping down from the top-right corner of the screen, has always had a lot going on. Now, in iOS 18, there is even more happening, and it’s just confusing.
For one, you can now swipe through several screens in Control Center to manage your media, turn smart home gadgets on or off, and more — although you’ll often only get duplicates of what’s on your main Control Center page. Meanwhile, some options that we used to have one-touch access to – like quickly turning Bluetooth on and off – now take another tap quickly.
It’s technically easy now to customize your Control Center – tap the “+” icon in the top-left corner to customize these icons – but finding the right drivers in the right place can also be harder than it sounds.
Fix: Use the new trim option to remove anything and everything you don’t want. (I started by removing the separate media windows and smart home controls, myself.) Unlike the Apps app, you he can make your Control Center look like you’ve used it for years without much effort.
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It drains the battery quickly
What’s changed: After installing iOS 18, or one of the later updates, some users have reported that their iPhones’ batteries don’t last as long as they used to.
Repair: There is a lot going on behind-the-scenes when you repair your phone, and that background work continues even after the repair is done. If you notice that your phone doesn’t last long after installing some new software, give it a day or two first before panicking – that’s normal.
If the bad battery life lasts for more than a few days, though, it’s time to take some action.
There’s only so much you can do about powering iOS and using its new features, although you can try turning off Apple Intelligence or turning off features like Siri listening to your wake-up calls.
There are other ways to improve battery life, too. Open your iPhone’s Settings, select the Battery option, and see which apps are using the most power – you may need to adjust the settings within certain apps if there are standout battery hogs. And here’s my personal preference: Tap the “General” option within the Settings app, then “Background App Refresh,” and remove apps you don’t want running when you’re not watching.
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