iPadOS 18 Arrives With Calculator App, Better Handwriting, and More

The iPadOS 18 update is now rolling out to compatible iPad models. It has new customization options, enhanced handwriting abilities, a long-awaited Calculator app, and much more.

The iPad now uses clever AI to improve your handwriting on the fly. While you’re taking notes with the Apple Pencil, Smart Script will smoothen and straighten what you write, making it more legible (a great feature for someone like me with hurried handwriting). Smart Script will even learn your handwriting to the point that it can recreate it. So when you copy-paste some text, it won’t stick out like a typed sore thumb. It’ll naturally blend with the rest of your longhand. You can also edit this pasted handwriting to correct or reformat it.

You can even work with a new Calculator app using the Apple Pencil. That way you can work out math problems just like you would on paper, except the Calculator will automatically solve equations as soon as you write them down. It’s not just basic math operations either, since it handles every function that a typical scientific calculator can. The Calculator app itself now has unit in-built conversion and history features.

Apple

Speaking of taking notes, the Notes app can now create live audio transcriptions as you record. It’s great for students and professionals alike who need to record and search through their meetings. Another neat little feature lets you highlight text and create collapsible sections within the notes. It keeps everything tidy and organized.

With the iPadOS 18, the iPad also becomes a lot more customizable thanks to rearrangeable app icons and widgets, new themes for the icons, and a fully editable Control Center. The Control Center has been reorganized into swipeable “screens,” and you choose which toggles appear on it (and how big they are).

Apple

There’s a new Passwords app, an updated interface for the document viewer, a Highlights feature in Safari, a game mode, and a new layout for the Photos app. Apple Intelligence is supposed to finally upgrade Siri and bring new AI writing and image generation tools to the later versions of the iPadOS 18.

The iPadOS 18 update is rolling out now to compatible iPad models, alongside the release of iOS 18 for iPhones.

Source: Apple