Apple’s New “Invites” App Is Coming to the Party
On Tuesday, Apple announced Apple Invites , a new iPhone app that creates custom event invitations “for any occasion.” If it looks a lot like popular party planning apps like Partiful, that’s because it is—only this app integrates with iOS’s broader capabilities, which is probably bad news for third-party competitors.
This is not surprising to those who closely follow Apple rumors. As Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported , Apple is working on an invitation system for iOS, called “Confetti” internally. It’s unclear whether these plans will come as a standalone app or rather as options built into existing apps like Calendar and iMessage. Of course, we now know it’s the latter.
If you’ve used an event planning app before, Apple Invites will probably be a no-brainer. When you fire an event, you have a number of customizable options: you can add a custom background for the event, similar to the iOS wallpaper picker (though here Apple forces Apple Intelligence to generate background images); give the event a name; and set the date, time and location of your event. These are pretty standard features for an app like this.
What makes Apple Invites interesting are the Apple-centric features. You can create a shared album for the event so that everyone at the party can add the photos and videos they take in one centralized location, eliminating the need for someone to coordinate a shared album with all the guests during or after the event. You can also create a shared party playlist if you trust your guests to add their own music to your event.
Once your invitation is ready, you will have a choice of how to send it. You can simply send out a public invitation link to any channel you want, or send invitations to a specific list of guests. You can choose whether you’d like to approve every guest’s response or be happy to automatically add anyone who says they’ll go to the guest list, as well as whether invitees are allowed to host additional guests, from plus to bottom. up to plus fives. There’s a lot of control here, but there’s one catch: you need to be subscribed to iCloud+. If you pay for additional iCloud storage , you’re already subscribed, but otherwise you won’t be able to create invitations.
However, you don’t need iCloud+ to RSVP. Anyone can accept or decline an event invitation from Apple Invites through the site—no iCloud or Apple account required.
While I don’t care for the AI-generated backgrounds, I do like the overall presentation. However, the built-in shared albums and playlists are what I really like, and I imagine they will appeal to a lot of people planning parties. Whether this is enough to beat popular options like Partiful will have to wait and see.
You can try Apple Invites now in the App Store or at icloud.com/invites .