Apple's iOS 18 Finally Brings T9 Dialing to Your iPhone

Apple released iOS 18 to the general public in September, a week after the company announced its new iPhone 16 lineup, Apple Watch Series 10 and more at its “Glowtime” event. The update brought many new features to your iPhone, like more ways to customize your home screen, lock screen and Control Center. The update also — finally — brought T9 dialing to your iPhone.

With T9 dialing, you can call someone just by typing their name into your iPhone. That means with iOS 18, you don’t have to search for a person’s name in your contacts to call them, or call them from Messages.

Here’s everything you need to know about T9 dialing and how to use it on your iPhone.

What is T9 dialing?

T9 stands for text on nine keys. Before cell phones had full keyboards, many phones had 12 keys. These were for the numbers zero to nine, star and the pound sign or hashtag — I felt old just writing that. To text someone, you mostly used the nine numbered keys.

The keyboard on an older cellphone — Getty Images

Each numbered key had either three or four corresponding letters attached to it, with the zero key being the spacebar and the one key blank. If you go into your Phone app and tap Keypad across the bottom of your screen, you can see the corresponding numbers and letters.

At first, if you wanted to type “Hello” you had to press 44(H)-33(E)-555(L)-555(L)-666(0). That’s a lot of typing for one fairly short word.

T9 texting was introduced later, and it’s an early form of predictive typing. It lets you press fewer keys and send messages faster. So for “Hello” you’d type 4-3-5-5-6. Much easier.

How to use T9 dialing on iPhone

With iOS 18, you can now use T9 dialing to make calls. Here’s how.

1. Open your Call app.
2. Tap Keypad across the bottom of your screen.

Dialing 3-2-3 in Phone to bring up the contact Dad — That’s not his real number.

Apple/Screenshot by CNET

From here, start typing the name of the person you want to call using the principles of T9. So if you want to call your dad, you’d type 3-2-3 into your keypad, and for your mom, you’d type 6-6-6 — nothing to be freaked out about there, promise. Their name should appear across the top of the screen. As you type, a backspace button will appear beneath the pound sign/hashtag if you make a mistake. Press that as many times as needed. Note that there is no space button.

Once you find the right person, tap their name and their phone number will automatically be entered. Then hit the green call button, and you’re set.

If there is more than one person in your Contacts by a given name, as you type you’ll see an option beneath the top result that says something like “3 more…” Tap that to open a new menu with all the corresponding contacts. Tap the call button next to the right contact and your call will immediately start. Be prepared to explain why you’re calling the other person and not just texting them.

For more on iOS 18, here’s my review of iOS 18, how to get rid of your flashlight from your lock screen and our iOS 18 cheat sheet. You can also check out what iOS 18.1 might bring to your iPhone.