The Best New iOS Features for People Who Hate AI

iOS 18.2 is all set to release today, with a host of new features primarily focused on Apple Intelligence. Although I’m personally interested in these AI features, which include Image Playground, Genmoji, and ChatGPT integration, I own a few older Apple devices that can’t run any of them. If you’re in the same boat, or just don’t like AI, iOS 18.2 still has plenty of reasons to upgrade, with many new features that have nothing to do with AI. Here are some of my favorites.

How to update to iOS 18.2

On your iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > General > Software Update and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the iOS 18.2 update. Apple says the update is out now, although it appears to be rolling out somewhat slowly, as nobody at Lifehacker has access to it yet. It’ll likely be waiting for you sometime this afternoon, but alternatively, you can just enable Automatic Updates on the same page to have your phone upgrade to iOS 18.2 while it charges overnight.

Easily change your iPhone’s default apps

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If you’re tired of Apple’s default apps for mail, messages, and browsing the web, iOS 18.2 makes it very easy to change those defaults. Go to Settings > Apps > Default Apps to change all default options on one single page. The options include your browser, email app, messaging app, call filtering service, password manager, and the keyboard.

Camera Control tweaks on the iPhone 16

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The iPhone 16 series has a Camera Control button that lets you click photos and quickly tweak camera settings. With iOS 18.2, Apple has added a few more features to this button. For instance, you can now lightly press the button to lock exposure and focus before you click a photo. The other big addition prevents accidentally activating the iPhone 16 camera. This feature is called Require Screen On, and it will stop your iPhone from opening the camera when the screen is off. This feature is enabled by default, and you can find it under Settings > Display & Brightness > Require Screen On.

Share Find My item locations with anyone

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You can share the location of your AirTag or other Find My accessory with trusted third-parties, such as airline employees, if you want their help in tracking lost items. In the Find My app, go to the Items tab, select your accessory, and choose Share Item Location to share its location for a limited time.

Browsing enhancements in Safari

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iOS 18.2 has brought a few important features to iPhone and iPad versions of Safari. One of my favorites is that you can now easily import or export browsing data to or from Safari by going to your device’s Settings app and navigating to the Safari section. There’s also new background images to customize Safari’s Start Page, and iPhone owners with a dynamic island will notice that Safari now uses it to show file download progress. The most important addition, however, is that the browser will automatically upgrade http URLs to the more secure https.

Automatically remove location data when sharing photos

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When you’re posting photos and videos to your favorite app, iOS 18.2 lets you automatically strip location data from the image. You can also tweak the format to share them in. These features are under Settings > Privacy & Security > Photos > [APP NAME] > Options. Note that you’ll need to do this on a per-app basis, and that some app developers don’t yet support this feature.

Add volume controls to your iPhone’s home screen

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The moment you play music or videos on your iPhone and lock the screen, you’ll see the Now Playing widget on the lock screen. In iOS 18.2, you can now add a volume slider to the Now Playing lockscreen widget. This lets you control the volume without pressing your physical volume buttons. This feature is located under Settings > Accessibility > Audio & Visual > Always Show Volume Control.

A few more improvements

There are several more new features in iOS 18.2. You’ll notice that the Mail app now has better categorization and it sorts your email into four tabs—primary, transactions, updates, and promotions. The Photos app also has a few minor design tweaks, which include a frame-by-frame scrubbing option while viewing videos. Voice Memos now supports layered recording, too, which means that you can add vocals to a song idea and import it as a two-track project into Logic Pro on the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max.