New features on iPhone that users may not know
An interesting new feature on the iPhone that Apple has quietly added is the glow effect on the edges. Although not known to many users, this feature promises to bring a more vivid and modern visual experience every time a notification arrives.
Even if you have used your iPhone for years and are familiar with most of its features, you may still be surprised by small but interesting changes from time to time, especially when Apple keeps updating and adding new features.
Recently, some users noticed that the iPhone screen glowed at the edges and thought that the device was faulty. However, this is actually a new visual effect in the Apple Intelligence feature set, introduced with iOS 18.
This glow effect only appears on iPhone models that support Apple Intelligence and are running iOS 18.1 or later. It serves as a visual indicator that Siri, now with deeper integration with Apple's artificial intelligence, has been activated.
Depending on how the user calls Siri, the glowing effect will appear differently, if the side button is pressed and held, the light rays will spread from the edge of the device to the screen, and if Siri is activated by voice, the light will emit from the bottom edge of the screen.
This is not just a change in appearance, but also reflects Apple's new direction in combining artificial intelligence technology and user experience.
Can you turn off the glow effect on iPhone?
The glowing effect on the edges of the iPhone screen when Siri is activated is part of the Apple Intelligence feature set currently only available on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and iPhone 16 series.
This means that only high-end devices will display the rainbow light effect when users invoke Siri. On older iPhone models, even after upgrading to iOS 18, the Siri interface still retains the traditional globe shape at the bottom of the screen.
If you don’t like the new glow effect and want to turn it off, Apple unfortunately doesn’t provide an option to turn it off separately. The only solution right now is to disable Apple Intelligence altogether, which means you’ll lose access to a bunch of advanced AI features like writing assistance, notification summarization, intelligent context understanding, and ChatGPT integration in Siri.
However, if you still want to turn off the glow effect and accept the trade-off of the above artificial intelligence features, you can do the following:
- Open the applicationSetting(Settings) on iPhone.
- Scroll down and selectApple Intelligence & Siri.
- Slide the switch next to Apple Intelligence to off.
- Confirm by selecting Turn Off Apple Intelligence in the dialog box that appears.
Once complete, the glow effect around the edges of the screen will no longer appear. Note that this does not disable Siri, you can still summon the virtual assistant by voice. However, you will not be able to type to Siri, a feature that is only available when Apple Intelligence is enabled.
