With iOS 18, Apple is adding Game Mode to iPhone. A similar Game Mode was added to macOS Sonoma last year, and the same performance-enhancing features apply, according to Apple.
When enabled, Game Mode optimizes the gaming experience by giving the game the highest priority access to your iPhone's processor, while lowering usage for background tasks.
Apple says Game Mode also improves the responsiveness of connected AirPods and game controllers by reducing input latency and audio latency.
There's nothing to set up with Game Mode – it turns on automatically when you launch a game or an app associated with a game, as indicated by a brief notification.
The feature is designed for AAA titles like Assassin's Creed Mirage and Resident Evil Village. Capcom announced on Monday that Resident Evil 7 is coming to iPhone, iPad, and Macs on July 2, providing another opportunity to see how the new Game Mode performs in iOS 18 and iPadOS 18.
Friday October 24, 2025 2:30 pm PDT by Juli Clover
In the fourth iOS 26.1 beta, Apple added a "Tinted" option that reduces the translucency of Liquid Glass for those who prefer a more opaque look. I saw some comments wondering whether the setting might preserve battery life, so I thought I'd do some testing.
Test Settings
I did four separate tests using the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and I kept the parameters as similar as possible. Here are the...
Apple Maps could feature integrated ads as soon as next year, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports.
In his latest "Power On" newsletter, Gurman said that Apple's plan to bring more ads to iOS is moving "gaining traction," with the Maps app being next in line. The project will apparently give restaurants and other businesses the option to pay to have their details featured more prominently in...
Monday October 27, 2025 7:55 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a handful of new features and changes for iPhones, including a toggle for changing the appearance of the Liquid Glass design, "slide to stop" for alarms in the Clock app, and more.
Below, we outline key details about iOS 26.1.
Release Date
Given that Apple has yet to seed an iOS 26.1 Release Candidate, which is typically the final beta version, the...
Wednesday October 22, 2025 6:15 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a handful of new features and changes for iPhones, including a toggle for changing the appearance of the Liquid Glass design, "slide to stop" for alarms in the Clock app, and more.
iOS 26.1 is currently in beta testing. The update will likely be released in the first half of November, and it is compatible with the iPhone 11 series and newer, but some...
Monday October 27, 2025 12:51 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple is designing an updated version of the Apple TV 4K, and rumors suggest that it could come out sometime in the next couple of months. We're not expecting a major overhaul with design changes, but even a simple chip upgrade will bring major improvements to Apple's set-top box.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
We've rounded up all the latest Apple TV rumors.
...
Apple's upcoming iPhone 18 could feature 50% more memory than its predecessor, according to Korea's The Bell.
With its latest iPhone lineup, the iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max feature 12GB of memory. This is a significant increase of 4GB more their predecessors, largely driven by the demands of on-device artificial intelligence processing.
The iPhone 17 is the only new...
Monday October 27, 2025 9:15 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple this month refreshed the 14-inch MacBook Pro base model with its new M5 chip, and higher-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips are expected to follow in early 2026. However, these machines will represent the final update to the current design, with Apple reportedly developing a completely new version of the MacBook Pro packed with next-generation hardware...
The first preview release of the Swift SDK for Android was published this week, allowing developers to build Android apps in Swift with official tooling and making it easier to share code across iOS and Android.
The SDK enables Android apps to be built in Swift using officially supported tooling rather than community workarounds. In June, it was announced that Apple's Swift programming...
Friday October 24, 2025 7:18 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
At least some new iPhone models launching next year may support full 5G satellite internet, according to a report this week from The Information.
"Apple plans to add support in upcoming iPhones as early as next year for 5G networks that aren't tethered to Earth's surface, which includes satellites," the report said. "That would give the iPhone full internet access over satellite," it added.
...
I would love to be able to trigger it manually to make other apps faster
Exactly.
Why not make everything faster?
It reminds me of an old Seinfeld joke about airplane speed:
"So I'm on the plane, we left late. Pilot says we're going to be making up some time in the air. I thought, well isn't that interesting? We'll just make up time. Of course, when they say they're making up time, obviously they're increasing the speed of the aircraft. Now, my question is if you can go faster, why don't you just go as fast as you can all the time? C'mon, there's no cops up here. Nail it. Give it some gas! We're flying."
Gaming on Apple is just weird. There is clearly a focus on performance, but the games aren’t there, it’s done half heartedly and the devices are just not designed for AAA gaming. They are designed for bursty processors usage. That’s where mobile Apple silicon excels most. It’s super efficient for normal consumer use.
Gaming is a whole other beast. It requires bigger batteries, better cooling and a 100 percent solid backing from the platform.
As if performance was the problem in first place...
No, Apple... it was your stupid requirements for games to pass App-Store approval. There is a reason why there are 99% casual games on the app-store...
With SteamDeck and similar gaming handhelds now on the market I'm afraid the ship sailed for anything beyond casual...
I just tried it for two days. At least on betas, it's not improving gaming performance and the games lags more. I expect it to improve on actual public release.
There would be YouTubers making in depth analysis as well
That's a shame. I feel like AAA gaming on the iPhone 15 Pro has largely been a PR excercise. From all the YouTube analyses I've seen (Digital Foundry, Andrew Tsai, MrMacRight) games like Resident Evil, Assassin's Creed and Death Stranding really struggle to reach 30 fps on the iPhone Pro and even on the iPad it seems like M2 is needed to get consistent 30 fps out of these games (the minimum that is really needed).
Perhaps the A18 chip will be the M2 iPad equivalent so a consistent 30 fps becomes possible on iPhone.
A bigger problem with AAA on iPhone/iPad, imo, is the control. The devs don't put a lot of thoughts on adapting the UI and controls to a mobile game, it's just not worth it for them.
If I am buying a PS5 controller, why not just buy a PS5 as well? It's 1/3 of the cost of an iPhone Pro, that's now required to run the new AAA games.
On some sense, a lot of Gacha mobile games are better designed for mobile (not the business model, but the actual controls)
