Your Phone App Gets a Stealth Update in 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 brings a host of new features to the iPhones of developers and beta testers, such as the ability to customize the Lock screen and schedule messages to be sent later. And it adds an easy way to search through your call history with a new search bar.

Before iOS 18, the Recent Calls tab in the Phone app was a running list of all the calls made to and from your iPhone. So if you wanted to quickly find someone who called you, you had to scroll through a potentially long list of calls, depending on how far back the call went and how often you use your iPhone to make 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 iOS 18 beta

But iOS 18 is still in beta, and I recommend downloading the beta only on something other than your primary device. Since it’s not the final version of iOS 18, the update can be buggy and battery life can be short, 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 recent calls on my iPhone?

In iOS 18, yes. To search recent calls, go to the Phone app and tap The last at the bottom of the menu. Tap the search bar at the top of the page to open a new menu that shows sections Connections AND VoicemailBoth of these options also have an option See all.

You can use the search bar to search for a specific contact name, contact number, or date. For example, typing “Mom” or “Dad” will show all phone calls and voicemails from Mom or Dad, as well as their business card. Similarly, typing “August” or “July” in the search bar will show all calls and voicemails from that month.

You can also type in a specific date, like “July 5,” and that will show you calls from that specific date. However, my iPhone didn’t show any voicemails in that search, even though I had one from that date.

But iOS 18 is still in beta, so it could be a software bug. Apple will likely release more beta versions of the software before making it available to the general public this fall, giving it plenty of time to iron out any issues. There’s no word yet on when exactly Apple will make the update available to the general public.

For more information on iOS 18, click here my practical experience with public beta versionswhat you need to know about T9 dialing in iOS 18 and our iOS 18 cheat sheet.

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