iPhone 16 and iOS 18 will get the app update I’ve wanted for years

Carrie Marshall
·2 min read
Apple calendar app icon.
Apple calendar app icon.

The iOS operating system that runs on iPhones has been with us for a very long time, but it still has some weird quirks that Apple hasn't quite eliminated. However, it looks like one of the longest-standing quirks is finally going to be sorted in iOS 18, which will release later this year alongside the iPhone 16.

iOS 18 is going to be overhauling a lot of the core iOS apps, and one of those apps is the Calendar. According to AppleInsider, it's finally going to get the integration with the Reminders app that it's been missing for so many years. The same change will also be coming to the Mac and to the iPad, and for me it can't come soon enough.

What's the problem with the Calendar?

On every iPhone, Apple gives you two organisation apps: Calendars and Reminders. You can't see your reminders in your Calendar, and you can't see your calendars in Reminders. This is enormously silly, because in a typical day you'll have a mix of time-sensitive tasks and tasks that don't need done at a particular time but do need done on that day. But iOS doesn't care. Calendars live in Calendar and reminders live in Reminders and never the twain shall meet.

First world problems, I know. But it's incredibly annoying if like me you're scatterbrained and rely on your phone to ensure you don't forget to be anywhere or do anything.

That app separation will finally change in iOS 18, with a new unified experience that will enable you to create, schedule and edit reminders from within the Calendar app. You'll be able to tag it and/or attach notes, you'll be able to set reminders for specific dates, times and locations, and you'll be able to attach high priority labels too. And presumably the changes will also be reflected in the Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets so you can get a bird's-eye view of your entire schedule in a single tile.

The current separation of Calendar and Reminders has been good news for the likes of Fantastical, whose app plugs into both apps and enables me to see content from both at once. And iOS 18 is likely to get another feature that was previously a USP for Fantastical: plain English, natural language instructions. With the increasingly AI-powered iOS 18 we should be able to have more conversational interactions with our apps, and Calendar is likely to be one of them.