Apple released the fourth public beta of iOS 18 on August 12, about two months after the tech giant announced the software at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June. The update introduces a number of new features to developers’ and beta testers’ iPhones, such as the ability to customize the lock screen and schedule messages to be sent later. It also gives you an easy way to search your call history with a new search bar.
Before iOS 18, the Recent Calls tab of your Phone app 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 what could have been a long list of calls, depending on how far back the call was and how often you use your iPhone for calls. With the introduction of a search bar in Recent Calls in iOS 18, the guesswork is over.
Read more: Everything you need to know about the iOS 18 beta
But iOS 18 is still in beta and I recommend downloading a beta version only on a device other than your primary device. Since this is not the final version of iOS 18, the update may be buggy and battery life may be short, so it’s best to leave these issues on a secondary device. I downloaded iOS 18 on my older iPhone XR to keep these issues away from my iPhone 14 Pro.
Here’s everything you need to know about the search function on the Recents tab of your iPhone.
Can I search for recent calls on my iPhone?
With iOS 18, yes. To find your recent calls, go to the Phone app and tap News at the bottom of the menu. Tap the search bar at the top of the page to open a new menu that displays the sections Calls And Voice messagesBoth options also offer the possibility Show all.
You can use the search bar to search for a specific contact’s name or number, or for dates. For example, if you type “mom” or “dad,” you’ll see all of your mom’s or dad’s calls and voicemails, as well as their contact card. If you type “August” or “July” in the search bar, you’ll see all of your calls and voicemails from that month.
You can also enter a specific date, such as “July 5th,” and then calls from that specific date will appear. However, my iPhone didn’t show any voicemails when doing this search, even though I had one from that date.
However, since iOS 18 is still in beta, it could be a software bug. Apple will likely release more beta versions of the software before making it available to the public in the fall. That’s plenty of time to fix any issues. It’s currently unknown when exactly Apple will make the update available to the public.
You can find more information about iOS 18 here my practical experience with the public betasWhat you need to know about T9 dialing in iOS 18 and our iOS 18 cheat sheet.
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