Your Phone app gets a hidden upgrade in the iOS 18 beta
Apple released the fourth public beta of iOS 18 on August 12, about two months after the tech giant announced the software at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June. The update introduces a slew of new features to the iPhones of developers and beta testers, like the ability to customize your lock screen and schedule messages to send later. It also gives you an easy way to search your call history with a new search bar.
Before iOS 18, your Phone app’s Recents tab was a running list of every call made to and from your iPhone. So if you wanted to quickly find someone who’d called you, you had to scroll through a potentially long list of conversations, depending on how far back the call was and how often you used your iPhone for calls. But the introduction of a search bar in Recents in iOS 18 takes the guesswork out of it.
Read more: Everything you need to know about the iOS 18 beta
However, iOS 18 is still in beta, and I recommend only downloading a beta on something other than your primary device. Since this isn’t the final version of iOS 18, the update may be buggy and your battery life may be poor, so it’s best to keep those issues on a secondary device. I downloaded iOS 18 on my older iPhone XR to keep those issues away from my iPhone 14 Pro.
Here’s what you need to know about the search feature in the Recents tab on your iPhone.
Can I search for recent conversations on my iPhone?
With iOS 18, yes. To search your recent calls, go to your Phone app and tap Recent at the bottom of the menu. Tap the search bar at the top of the page to open a new menu that shows the sections To call to action And Voicemail messagesBoth options also have the ability to See all.
You can use the search bar to search for a specific contact name, contact number, or dates. For example, typing “mom” or “dad” will show all of your mother’s or father’s phone calls and voicemails, as well as their contact card. Typing “August” or “July” in the search bar will show all of the calls and voicemails from that month.
You can also type in a specific date, like “July 5th,” and it will pull calls from that specific date. However, my iPhone didn’t show any voicemails in that search, even though I had one from that date.
However, iOS 18 is still in beta, so this could be a bug in the software. Apple will likely release more betas of the software before it releases to the general public this fall, which will provide ample time to address any issues. There’s no word yet on when exactly Apple will release the update to the general public.
For more information about iOS 18, here’s my practical experience with the public beta versionsWhat you need to know about T9 calling in iOS 18 and our iOS 18 cheat sheet.
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