Last month, Apple hosted its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), where the company unveiled its latest iOS 18, packed with many new features and Apple Intelligence. Since then, the company has released two developer betas in the past few weeks, with extended support for multiple new languages across the lock screen, Siri, keyboard, and search on iOS 18. In the latest update, the tech giant announced several new features and support for Indian languages.
Expanded Language Support and Lock Screen Customisation
Apple’s virtual assistant Siri will receive support for nine Indian languages and will be able to understand the Indian English accent. Earlier, Siri could understand Hinglish (a mix of English and Hindi). However, now it will not only understand but also be able to respond in Hindi.
One of the main highlights of this update is the ability to customise the time on the lock screen with numerals in Indian languages. Eligible iPhones will feature numerals from 12 languages, including Arabic, Arabic Indic, Bangla, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Meitei, Odia, Ol Chiki, and Telugu.
Multilingual Keyboard and Other Features
The Cupertino-based tech giant has also introduced Multilingual Keyboard and Alphabetical Layouts. This means Indian users can have two regional languages support on their iPhones along with English. This is something available on the Android side for a long time.
Interestingly, since Apple is focusing heavily on AI, the keyboard will automatically switch languages by analysing the app and ongoing conversations. The multilingual keyboard will also support QuickPath and Emoji Prediction. However, it’s essential to know that support for this feature is currently limited to English, Bangla, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu.
Furthermore, iOS 18 will introduce Live Voicemail transcriptions that will be able to understand Indian English accents. Apple has also introduced Hindi in the Translate app, Safari webpages, and other systemwide translation features, including apps like Notes.
Apple has also enhanced the search. With improvements to language search, users will be able to find the word they are looking for in the spellings they are accustomed to without having to consider the spelling style in which the content is composed. For example, different spellings like “অঙ্কন” and “অংকন” in Bangla, “चंद्र” and “चन्द्र” in Hindi, etc., can now be looked up regardless of which spelling is typed. Enhanced language search is available in Assamese, Bangla, Devanagari, and Gujarati.
