The Phone app on iOS 18 has had a couple of nice updates that make it a little bit easier and quicker to use. One of those is the fact that you can now search for your contacts from the keypad as you’re typing in a phone number. If I simply start typing in someone’s random phone number, it will automatically search contacts for me, and you can see it suggesting people at the top there. Obviously, I’ve blurred out their names and numbers, but it will suggest different people’s contacts that match the number you’re typing in at the moment.

But there’s actually a clever way of searching here, and it’s called T9 searching. This is a bit like when you used to have a phone where you texted by pressing each number multiple times to get a different letter. You can use those numbers on your iPhone to search contacts in your address book. So, if I’m going to search for “Wock” to find all of my family members, I can simply start typing that in by using the numeric keypad, so 9665 to spell out W-L, and then at the top of my screen, it will find all the contacts that match those names.

This saves me from having to open the Contacts app and then find a particular contact, because now in the phone keypad, I can simply start typing their name, and it will autocomplete it for me. Just like you’d expect, if you tap on the name at the top, it will start to call that person for you as quickly as that.

That’s just one way your iPhone is better with iOS 18 because of the new functionality it unlocks. But you’ll notice this is quite a hidden feature. In fact, there are tons more hidden features that you probably should know about, so please do check out my channel to learn more about them. Or, if you’d like to have a hundred little bursts of inspiration and ideas all in one go, you can download my ebook from the link below. It’s called “100 Quick Tips for iOS 18,” and I guarantee there’ll be things in there that you never knew your phone could do now that you’ve updated. So, I’ll see you next time for more quick tips for your iPhone.