iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 will let you format external drives on your iPhone and iPad

Apple previewed the iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 updates this month and one feature the company silently added is the ability to format external drives directly on your iPhone or iPad. Kaleb Cadle was the first to discover the feature on the iPadOS 18 developer beta, which is available on supported iPad models.

The feature is part of the Files app, where you can erase your connected external disk and reformat it using different options: APFS, ExFAT, and MS-DOS (FAT). These options appear when you right-click or long-press an external drive in the Files app and choose "Erase," according to Cadle.

He noted that the Disc Utility on macOS has the same format options, with the "exception of macOS extension formats which wouldn’t make much sense for this feature on iPadOS." Furthermore, MacRumors verified that the drive reformatting options are also coming to the Files app on iOS 18 (available on these models).

Cadle talked about the feature on its ByteBits substack and wrote:

This is a major improvement for iPad power users and it will be interesting to keep an eye out for new improvements to this functionality and others within the Files app over the course of the iPadOS 18 beta cycle.

 

It seems Apple may be taking a similar tact to the way they incorporated much of the functionality of the Preview app into the Files app via Quick Look, but now with functionality from Disc Utility.

The ability to format an external drive without needing a Mac comes in handy as Apple continues to add more features to its mobile operating systems. This includes the recently introduced Final Cut Pro for iPad update, which works together with the new Final Cut Camera app to record live multicam footage using your iPhone or iPad. Final Cut Camera lets you record a video directly to an external storage if you have an iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max.

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