How to Prepare Your iPhone for iOS 18

iOS 18 will become available as a software update for iPhone on Monday, September 16, alongside iPadOS 18 for iPad. With some fun new features, customization options, and capabilities, it’s easy to see why people are excited about installing the new software update on their iPhone or iPad.

Before you dive into updating your iPhone to iOS 18, or iPad to ipadOS 18, consider taking a few steps to prepare your device.

1: Check that your iPhone can run iOS 18

You will find that iOS 18 has moderately strict system requirements, so if you have a much older iPhone model you might be out of luck. The list of iPhones that are compatible with iOS 18 are as follows:

• All iPhone 16 models
• All iPhone 15 models
• All iPhone 14 models
• All iPhone 13 models
• All iPhone 12 models
• All iPhone 11 models
• All iPhone XS models
• iPhone XR
• iPhone SE 2nd generation

And to be clear, when we say “all models” of a particular phone, that includes the base model, the Plus model, the Pro model, and the Pro Max model, wherever applicable.

2: Housekeeping and Freeing Up Storage Space

With any major system software update, you might find it worthwhile to do a little housekeeping on your device. This might include deleting apps you no longer use or need, removing unwanted media files and caches from particular apps (many video player and podcast apps are notorious for large caches!).

You need at least 16GB of free storage available on your iPhone (or iPad) to be able to install iOS 18, so make sure that your device has at least that amount of storage capacity available.

You can go to Settings > General > Storage and explore here to see what is taking up space and how much you have available.

2: Update Your Apps

Most app developers have been spending their summer months getting their apps ready for iOS 18, so the next thing you’ll want to do is to update your apps. This ensures things are fully compatible with the new operating system, and can take advantage of new features and capabilities, if they’re implemented.

You can go to the App Store app, then tap on your profile picture and scroll down to the Updates section. Most likely, you’ll want to update all apps, unless you’re holding onto an older version of a particular app for one reason or another.

4: Backup Your iPhone

Backing up your iPhone (or iPad) is arguably the most critical step before installing any major system software update.

Backing up matters because you can restore your stuff if something fails during the update process. That might not be common, but it does happen, and losing all of your data is not a fun experience, and something that is easily avoidable by performing routine backups of your device.

There are multiple ways to backup your iPhone, and ideally you’ll choose an iCloud backup, plus a local backup, for redundancy. You can back up iPhone to iCloud, back up iPhone to a Mac, or backup iPhone to Windows PC. Use what works for you, as long as you do not skip this step.

Backing up to a local computer also allows you to easily downgrade from iOS 18 back to iOS 17 if you choose to do so, or wish to do so, for whatever reason.

5: All Set, Install iOS 18!

You have a compatible iPhone, you cleared up storage space for the software update to iOS 18, you updated your apps, and you backed up your iPhone (or iPad)… now you’re ready to go and install iOS 18!

iOS 18 is available from the Settings app > General > Software Update, starting on Monday.