Apple today released the iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3 updates with several new features for iPhone and iPad owners, including much-needed tweaks for summarized notifications.
iOS 18.3turns on Apple Intelligenceby default during iPhone onboarding; what was previously an opt-in feature is now an opt-out. More importantly, itturns off those unhinged AI notification summariesbecause they can contain major factual errors and inaccuracies, at times producing embarrassing mistakes. Notification summaries are powered by Apple Intelligence, which is still in beta.
Anyway, Apple has decided to turn off those summaries for all apps from the App Store’s News and Entertainment categories.If you’ve opted-invia Settings > Notifications > Summarize Notifications, you’re able to expect to see summarized notifications again “when the feature becomes available” in a future update, per theiOS 18.3 release notes.
Notification summaries for other types of apps remain in effect. Apple has made other tweaks to better distinguish AI summaries from regular notifications, like using italicized text and the glyph in the notification banner. You can now disable summarized notifications for an app directly from the Lock Screen or Notification Center by swiping the notification, choosing “Options,” and then selecting the option labeled “Turn Off Summaries.”
Apple has also tweaked the wording to indicate this is a beta feature. “This beta feature will occasionally make mistakes that could misrepresent the meaning of the original notification,” read a slash screen in the Settings app. The company also warns you that notification summaries “may contain errors” when turning on the feature.
iOS 18.3 brings minor tweaks to the Google Lens-style Visual Intelligence feature available on the iPhone 16 lineup. If the feature detects a poster or flyer in the viewfinder, you’ll see an option to add an event to your calendar. You can also use visual intelligence to identify plants and animals. Strictly speaking, this isn’t new because you can alreadyidentify plants, animals, and more in photos with the existing Visual Look Up feature.
For people who don’t own the latest iPhone or don’t care about Apple Intelligence, iOS and iPadOS 18.3 bring a few noteworthy improvements. In the built-in Calculator app, for example, you’re able to now repeat the last mathematical operation by hitting the equals sign again. This is one of the features that got lost in the Calculator redesign in iOS 18; another is swiping to delete the last digit. Also, when cropping out areas from full-page PDF screenshots, you’ll now see a privacy message to ensure you understand that “the cropped content is not removed from the PDF” and can still be “made visible in some apps.”
iOS and iPadOS 18.3 fix a few issues as well, including the onscreen keyboard vanishing whentyping to Siriand audio playback continuing until the song ends even after closing the Music app. The built-in Screen Recording tool now supportsstereo sound, HDR video, and a live camera overlayin picture-in-picture mode for commentary-style screencasts.
To update your iPhone and iPad to iOS and iPadOS 18.3, go to Settings > General > Software Update and follow the onscreen instructions to download and install an over-the-air update.Apple’s support pagewill soon be refreshed with details about the security patches and critical bug fixes included in iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3. You can check what features are available in specific countries and languages onApple’s iOS 18 Feature Availability page.
