iOS 18: Your Phone App Just Got This Hidden Upgrade

You can now easily search through your call history in just a few steps.You can now easily search through your call history in just a few steps.  Read More Software & Apps

Apple released iOS 18 to the general public on Sept. 16, a week after the company announced its new iPhone 16 lineup, Apple Watch Series 10 and more at its September event. The operating system introduces a bunch of new features to your iPhone, like the abilities to customize your lock screen and schedule messages to send later. And it gives you an easy way to search through your call history with a new search bar. 

Before iOS 18, your Phone app’s Recent calls tab 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 was and how often you use your iPhone for calls. But iOS 18’s introduction of a search bar in Recents takes the guesswork out of this.

Read more: iOS 18 Brings These Features to Your iPhone

Here’s what to know about the search function in your iPhone’s Recents tab.

With iOS 18, yes. To search your recent calls, go to your Phone app and tap Recents across the bottom of the menu. Tap the search bar across the top of the page to open a new menu that shows the sections Calls and Voicemails. Both of these options also have the option to See All. 

You can use the search bar to search for a specific contact’s name, a contact’s number or dates. For example, typing “mom” or “dad” pulls up all the phone calls and voicemails from your mom or dad, as well as their contact card. Similarly, typing “August” or “July” into the search bar pulls up all calls and voicemails from that month. 

You can also type a specific date, like “July 5,” and that pulls up calls and voicemails from that particular date.

For more on iOS 18, here’s my iOS 18 review, what to know about T9 dialing in the operating system and our iOS 18 cheat sheet. You can also check out what to know about the iOS 18.1 developer beta.