It’s a strange year for iOS.

Normally, new software releases come out all at once. That’s not the case with iOS 18. The foundation is already there, and in a normal year, things like RCS support and a redesigned Control Center would be more than enough. But iOS 18’s headline feature, Apple Intelligence, isn’t even in this initial release, and we may not see some of the most exciting features until 2025. The rollout of iOS 18 begins now and will continue as normal for the foreseeable future.

iOS 18 is an ambitious update, even without Apple Intelligence in the picture. Customization options are at an all-time high, and with a little fiddling, you can personalize your iPhone like never before. It’s almost un-Apple.

Control Center is a good place to start. The quick-access settings panel has looked and functioned much the same for the past decade, but it gets a major overhaul in iOS 18. I think it’s Apple at its best: everything you need is still there, and the feel is overwhelmingly familiar, but once you dive in, you’ll see what a huge change it is.

Controls are now spread out across pages, with familiar things like connectivity and focus modes where you’d expect them on the first page. And each page is highly customizable, letting you pick and choose which controls to add or remove, and decide where to put them and how big to make them. Things will get even more interesting as third-party apps start adding their own controls.

It took a while to get used to the new layout. At first, I found myself swiping down too far on the screen and jumping to the second or third page of controls. It took about a week to retrain that muscle memory, and you can simply delete the extra pages if you want. Personally, I’m hoping to turn the new Control Center into a little remote for my phone and use it to reduce the number of times I jump into individual apps.

Another change in iOS 18 will either be a minor addition or a huge deal — no middle ground: the addition of RCS. I fall into the latter category, and let me tell you, it was a sensation to see my first RCS messages forwarded to my friends on Android. Without any input from me, after downloading the iOS 18 beta, my messages started falling back to RCS instead of SMS. It has worked surprisingly well. I see typing indicators and read receipts, and tapbacks show up as replies and not as a whole extra message, finally.

The real moment of truth will be when my friends finally upgrade to iOS 18 and we can send photos to each other without a lot of complicated side channeling. I’ve shown remarkable I’m reluctant to ask my iPhone-owning friends to download beta software, but you can bet my campaign to get them all to upgrade to iOS 18 begins today. If you’re an iPhone owner who regularly messages someone on Android, consider doing the same. This incarnation of RCS on iPhone isn’t going to end the blue bubble, green bubble wars, but it will alleviate some of the biggest pain points in cross-platform messaging for people on both sides.

Just as important as sharing priceless memories with my friends? The fact that iOS 18 also lets you make your home screen ugly in ways never before possible. You can go all Alex Cranz on your home screen if you’re a weirdo, or you can just put the damn icons exactly where you want them, for the first time since the iPhone was invented. Imagine that!

Apple has shown off its app icon coloring feature with many nice examples, but I haven’t personally found a way to use it that doesn’t look too “Material Bwa”. But placing icons wherever I want on the screen feels so intuitive, I can’t believe we couldn’t do this sooner.

You know this is a big update when a brand new Passwords app is only the fourth most interesting thing to happen. It speaks for itself, and after looking around for a bit, I’m convinced this is an app for your parents who refuse to learn how to use a password manager. You can store passwords and access them from your iOS, iPad, and macOS devices, as you’d expect. But you can also share individual passwords or groups of passwords with other people, which would be handy for families and people living in the same household.

The catch, of course, is that everyone has to be in the Apple ecosystem, and since I often switch between iOS and Android, it’s not something I can really use in the long run. Also, using a first-party Apple password manager would make it much harder to switch away from iOS in the future, which is probably no coincidence. But if my parents were going all Apple, I’d absolutely make sure they used it.

One feature I know I’ll be using in the long run? Voice Memos transcription. This may be one for my fellow journalists, but friends, it’s Good. For years, I’ve used Pixel phones to record and transcribe interviews, and the Pixel has basically been undisputed as the best tool for the job. In iOS 18, Voice Memos will finally transcribe your recordings, either in real time or after the fact, and it’s comparable in quality to the Pixel Recorder app. It’s perhaps not a feature for the masses, but once you know it, you know it.

A new Control Center and a more customizable app grid don’t sound like much on paper. And many people will probably just leave them alone, which is fine. But if you don’t mind putting in a little effort, you’ll find iOS 18 to be quite rewarding — no artificial intelligence required.

Still, AI is the big missing piece here. I’ve gotten a taste of it in early betas: The glowing new Siri makes you “Oooh” out loud the first time you use it, and the first iteration of Apple Intelligence offers email digests, notification summaries, and writing tools. I’ve yet to be truly impressed by any of this, but the big stuff — or so we’ve been told time and again — is yet to come. Siri is getting contextual awareness and the ability to actually do stuff for you, which is potentially a big deal. That’s all coming in a later update; until then, you’re largely stuck with the same old assistant.

Apple Intelligence is slowly coming into focus. But even without the big AI features, iOS 18 is off to a good start. Apple just needs to finish it.