Apple provided the third beta of iOS 18.3 to developers today, and while the betas have so far been light on new features, the third beta makes some major changes to Notification Summaries and also tweaks a few other features.
Notification Summary Changes
Apple made multiple changes to Notification Summaries in response to complaints about inaccurate summaries of news headlines.
- For now, summaries for apps in the News and Entertainment category have been disabled. Apple Intelligence will no longer summarize news notifications, but this is temporary and will be reinstated in a future update when Apple has made some changes.
- In the Settings app, the Notifications Summaries section makes it clear that this is a beta feature and that errors are a possibility.
- During setup, Apple has added the following wording for Notification Summaries: "Summarization may change the meaning of the original headlines. Double check important information."
- Summarized notifications are now shown with the text italicized to distinguish them from standard notifications.
- Notification Summaries can be disabled on a per-app basis directly from the Lock Screen by swiping on a notification and tapping on the "Options" button to get to an interface for turning off summaries.
All of the Notification Summary changes have been made in iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and macOS Sequoia 15.3.
Camera Control
On iPhone 16 models, the Camera Control section in the Settings has a renamed toggle. The toggle for AE/AF lock has been renamed to "Lock Focus and Exposure," which would be clearer to non-photographers who do not know what AE/AF Lock is.
Lock Focus and Exposure is an optional setting that lets you lock your settings with a light press and hold on the Camera Control button, and it is meant to work similarly to a DSLR camera.
Messages
In the Messages sidebar that's accessible by tapping on the "+" button in any conversation, there is now a Genmoji entry, and tapping it takes you to the Genmoji creation interface.
This is simply another way to get to the Genmoji creation tools, which have previously been available by tapping on the emoji keyboard button.
PDF Editing
When editing a PDF through the screenshot interface, if you crop content out, Apple now provides a warning that cropped content is not removed from the PDF.
"Content outside the cropped area won't be visible in most PDF viewers, but it can be made visible in some apps," reads the message.
More Features
Know of something new in the latest iOS 18.3 beta that we left out? Let us know in the comments below.
