If You Want Apple Intelligence on Your iPhone, Here’s What You Need to Do

iOS 18.1, the latest update to Apple’s mobile operating system, finally brings AI features — er, Apple Intelligence — to everyone with a newer iPhone, including the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone16 And iPhone 16 Pro. iPads with M-series processors (from around 2020 or later) or the Brand new iPad Mini can also add Apple Intelligence features, with iPad OS 18.1.

But installing the latest updates doesn’t automatically add Apple Intelligence features to your devices. You will need to request access to Apple Intelligence and register on a waiting list. Here’s how to get started with new AI technologies.

Learn more: More Apple Intelligence features like ChatGPT dropped with iOS 18.2 developer beta And Do you have iOS 18? Make these long-awaited changes to your iPhone settings

Why is there an Apple Intelligence waitlist?

During the developer and public betas of iOS 18.1, Apple gradually rolled out the first wave of Apple Intelligence features. Although most of the new features run locally on your iPhone, some tasks are offloaded to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute infrastructure.

Keep in mind that AI features tend to be computationally intensive, which is why Google Gemini and OpenAI handle most of their processing in the cloud. They can distribute a task among hundreds or even thousands of processors around the world. Apple’s Private Cloud Compute technology does the same thing, but with fewer processors.

Rather than risk overloading servers with millions of simultaneous requests as iOS 18.1 becomes widely adopted, an Apple Intelligence waitlist gives Apple the opportunity to increase the computational load.

Watch this: Apple’s Monster iPhone update: How Apple Intelligence works on iOS 18.1

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How to request access to Apple Intelligence

After downloading and installing iOS 18.1 on your iPhone, you took a backup before upgrading, right? – open the Settings app and go to Apple Intelligence and Siri (formerly Siri).

At the top of Settings, tap Join the Apple Intelligence Waitlist > Join the Waitlist.

When will Apple Intelligence be available on my phone?

It is unclear how long it will take to gain access. On my iPhone running the developer beta, it took a few hours, while others arrived after a few minutes. As things ramp up for the release, wait times might be longer.

As an example, the iOS 18.2 developer beta includes the new Image Playground app for creating Genmoji and AI-generated artwork, and Apple is rolling out access. After a week, I’m still waiting to use it.