Latest iOS 18.3 update ‘fixes’ AI notifications, but it still can’t compete with Android

For years, Android phones have offered notification channels, giving users more control over the alerts they receive. Conversely, iPhones have long suffered from a notification management problem, which Apple Intelligence summaries futilely try to minimize. While the latest iOS 18.3 software update tweaks the notification system, it still fails to address the elephant in the room.

Following weeks of beta testing with developers and enthusiasts, Apple has released iOS 18.3 to all users. This build “fixes” the misleading AI-generated headline problem by temporarily turning off notification summaries for news and entertainment apps. It also italicizes alerts generated by Apple Intelligence to clearly distinguish them from regular notifications and minimize user confusion.

While AI summaries can undoubtedly help iOS users digest numerous and lengthy notifications, they’re often incomplete, ambiguous, or straight-up wrong. So, by relying on AI to patch the iPhone’s broken notification system, Apple is sometimes worsening the issue. A proper solution would be overhauling the entire infrastructure to accommodate this era’s ever-increasing alerts.

Beyond the notification changes, iOS 18.3 lets iPhone 16 users add events to the Calendar app when scanning a poster with Visual Intelligence. The Google Lens rival can also identify plants and animals with this update.

Other fresh additions include a new Black Unity wallpaper and support for hitting the equals sign recurrently to repeat the last mathematical operation in the built-in Calculator app. It also packs under-the-hood bug fixes and security patches, so we advise all users to update their iPhones as soon as possible.