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Apple Is Bringing Back a Simple but Useful iPhone Feature After Two Years

Take back control over your iPhone’s Lock Screen.

iOS 18.2 new featuresPhoto by Tucker Bowe for Gear Patrol

By Tucker Bowe

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Apple is set to roll out iOS 18.2 — the next big software update coming to iPhone — this week. In fact, some reports say it could come as early as today.

If you have an iPhone 16 or iPhone 15 Pro/Max, this free software update will deliver several highly-anticipated Apple Intelligence features, including Image Playground, a new app that uses AI to create custom images based on your descriptions and prompts.

But even if you don’t have an iPhone that supports Apple Intelligence, iOS 18.2 will deliver a couple of cool features, such as the ability to set new default apps and a new way of organizing emails in the Mail app.

Additionally, iOS 18.2 is bringing back a simple but helpful feature that Apple took away with iOS 16 (released in September 2022) — the ability to add a volume slider to your Lock Screen.

It’s not a game-changing new feature, but being able to see and use a volume slider directly from your iPhone’s Lock Screen is useful. Not only does it give you a permanent visual of your music’s (or podcast’s) volume, but you can also adjust to without pressing the physical volume buttons.

How to add the volume slider to your iPhone’s Lock Screen

iOS 18.2 volume slider
It’s off by default, so you’ll have to adjust your iPhone’s settings to bring back the volume slider.
Photo by Tucker Bowe for Gear Patrol

When iOS 18.2 rolls out, you’ll have to change a setting to bring the volume slider back to your iPhone’s Lock Screen — here’s how.

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Select Accessibility.
  3. Select Audio and Visual.
  4. Toggle on the “Always Show Volume Control” option.

In other “volume” news, iOS 18.2 delivers another feature that will impact your iPhone’s volume control. Specifically, it’s introducing a new “Volume Limit” feature that allows you to set a volume limit for your iPhone’s built-in speaker.

The idea with Volume Limit is that it prevents you from accidentally turning up your iPhone’s speaker too loud. When on, it will affect the volume of things like songs, videos and other media, but not things like FaceTime calls, ringtones, alarms and other system sounds.

To turn Volume Limit on:

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Select Sounds & Haptics.
  3. Scroll down and select Volume Limit.
  4. Toggle Volume Limit on and select the Maximum Limit.

iOS 18.2 is expected to roll out to supported iPhones this week.

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