On Tuesday, Apple announced Apple Invites, a new app for iPhones that creates custom event invitations "for any occasion." If that sounds a lot like popular party planning apps like Partiful, that's because, well, it is—only, this app integrates with the greater iOS experience, which is likely bad news for third-party competitors.
This isn't a surprise to anyone follow Apple rumors closely. As reported by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple has been working on an invite system for iOS, internally referred to as "Confetti." It wasn't clear whether those plans would manifest 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 is probably going to be straightforward. When you start an event, you have a series of customizable options: You can add a custom background for the event, similar to iOS's wallpaper selector (although, here, Apple is pushing Apple Intelligence to generate the background images); give the event a name; and set a date, time, and location for your event. These are pretty standard features for an app like this.
What gives Apple Invites an interesting spin is the Apple-centric features. You can create a shared album for this event, so that all partygoers can add the pictures and videos they took in one centralized location—eliminating the need for someone to coordinated a shared album with all the guests during or after the fact. In addition, you can create a shared playlist for the party, if you trust your guests to add their music to your event.
When your invitation is finished, you have your choice in how to send it out. You can simply send out a public link to the invite via any channel you wish, or you can send invites to a specific list of guests. You can choose whether you want to approve each guests' RSVP, or whether you're happy to automatically add anyone to the guest list who says they're going, as well as whether invitees are allowed additional guests—from plus ones all the way to plus fives. There's a lot of control here, but there is a catch: You need to be subscribed to iCloud+. If you pay for extra iCloud storage, you're already subscribed, but otherwise, you won't be able to create invitations.
You don't need iCloud+ to RSVP, though. Anyone can accept or reject an event invitation from Apple Invites through the site—no iCloud or Apple Account needed.
While I don't care for the AI-generated backgrounds, I do like the overall presentation here. Built-in shared albums and playlists are what's really selling it to me, though, and I imagine they're going to appeal to a lot of party-planning people. Whether that's enough to overtake popular options like Partiful, we'll have to wait and see.
You can try Apple Invites right now, either from the App Store or from icloud.com/invites.
