Apple’s new iOS 18.1 beta brings support for Spatial Photos

Apple’s new iOS developer beta is here, and it’s not one of those boring updates that only bring bug fixes.

Instead, iOS 18.1 beta 4 brings several new, user-facing features, including support for Spatial Photos on iPhone 15 Pro devices.

It looks just like a regular photo on the iPhone, but it comes to life on the Vision Pro.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/Mashable

The iPhone 15 Pro was able to take Spatial Videos for a while now, but the ability to take Spatial Photos is new. The feature is available in the phone’s Camera app, in the bottom menu. Turn it on, and the app will warn you to turn your phone into landscape mode, as well as notify you if there’s not enough light to take your Spatial Photo. If all the conditions are met, you can start taking Spatial Photos just as you would take standard photos.

Also new is the small toggle on the right that lets you switch between Spatial Photo and Spatial Video mode.

For Vision Pro owners or prospective buyers, this is cool news. Spatial Photos can be viewed in 3D on Vision Pro, with a depth effect that turns regular photos into tiny 3D experiences. For everyone else…well, it may still be worth taking them in some special moments, because you might get the Vision Pro or a similar device in the future.

Note that you can also convert regular photos taken with the iPhone 15 Pro into Spatial Photos, but the quality is a little lower (check out 9to5Mac’s excellent overview of how that looks).

All of this will be available on the iPhone 16 Pro models as well, but those aren’t yet widely available (official launch date is Sept. 20).

Spatial Photos aren’t the only new feature in iOS 18.1 beta 4, though some of the new features won’t be available in every market. These include suggestions in the Type to Siri interface, the ability to wirelessly recover a bricked iPhone by using an iPhone 16 placed nearby, and a slightly reorganized connectivity page layout in the phone’s Control Center.

The iOS 18.1 beta 4 is freely available for download, but you must be registered as a developer to do so. As always, running a beta version of iOS on your phone without backing it up first is unwise.