These camera apps give you more control over the iPhone 18 Pro’s aperture

Apple's default Camera app on the iPhone 18 Pro limits the main sensor's variable aperture to four discrete values: f/1.48, f/1.8, f/2.8 and f/4, whether set manually or adjusted automatically. However, Apple’s developer toolkit does not enforce that same restriction for third-party camera apps, allowing independent developers to expose more granular control over the iris. One of the earliest third-party adopters, Blackmagic Design's Blackmagic Camera app for iOS, added support for the iPhone 18 Pro's adjustable aperture and offers 10 preset stops instead of only four. The app was tested in version 3.5 by the iPhoneographers YouTube channel, which called the release "pretty buggy," and Blackmagic subsequently issued a 3.5.1 update citing general performance and stability improvements. Moment has also updated its Moment Pro Camera II app to take advantage of the phone's variable aperture. The $12.99 app lets users change the aperture between f/1.48 and f/4.0 in 1/3-stop increments, matching the approach commonly used by many digital cameras and providing a total of 10 presets across the aperture range. Observers note that because the iPhone 18 Pro uses a small sensor compared with dedicated cameras, the practical difference in background blur and depth of field between adjacent 1/3-stop settings may be subtle. Still, the availability of finer aperture control through third-party apps gives users and mobile photographers more precise options for shaping exposure and focus than the native Camera app's four-step scheme permits.