You can upgrade your iPhone to iOS 18 today, but some key features are missing

As expected, Apple has released the public beta of iOS 18. That means you can install it on your phone today and travel in time, because you'll be using an operating system that won't be released until September. However, while there are some useful improvements there are also some very big omissions.

As ever with beta software, you're advised not to install it on your main phone. However, I've been using the third developer beta, on which the public beta is based, and I've found it 99% reliable: the exception for me has been the camera app, which I've found to be quite crashy on my iPhone 15 Pro Max. Provided you don't have any apps that you absolutely depend on daily, I think this is a pretty safe installation.

Here's what you need to know.

Should you install iOS 18 public beta on your iPhone?

If you want to take advantage of the improved personalisation, yes. You can now arrange your home screen icons in a more fluid way, and you can change the tinting so that all your icons share the same colours. It's a nice change, and there's also a new colour-changing dynamic wallpaper. Control Centre has been improved and you can now change which controls appear on your Lock Screen.

There's a new stand-alone password app that I've found very reliable so far, and it's definitely an improvement on hunting around in Settings. You can lock apps behind Face ID, and there's a very revised Photos app that's proving divisive: lots of people dislike it but it does introduce a new Recovered folder where you might find photos you thought you'd lost forever.

There are some big omissions, however. Here in the UK the RCS messaging feature – which improves communication with Android – doesn't appear to be implemented yet. And the biggest missing feature of all is Apple Intelligence. If you were hoping that the beta could let you experience a smarter Siri, that's some way off still – and for those of us outside the US, it could be many months before we get Apple Intelligence on our iPhones.

You can find out more about installing the iOS public beta on the Apple website.