Apple Invites you to use Invites, a new invitation app that lets you invite people with Invites

I think I like the idea of Apple's new Invites app.

It's designed to make events more memorable and sharable. It's a free download on iOS, but if you actually want to use it to send people invites, you need to be an iCloud+ customer, which costs a minimum of $1.49/month. So it's not really free.

Receiving invites and RSVPing don't actually require an iCloud account, fortunately.

While you can still use your calendar app to send a boring old invitation, Invites is designed as more of an event planner for family and friends.

“With Apple Invites, an event comes to life from the moment the invitation is created, and users can share lasting memories even after they get together,” said Brent Chiu-Watson, Apple’s senior director of Worldwide Product Marketing for Apps and iCloud. “Apple Invites brings together capabilities our users already know and love across iPhone, iCloud, and Apple Music, making it easy to plan special events.”

You design your invite with a photo or an image from Apple's library (or if you hate the people you're inviting, AI-generated images from Apple's Image Playgrounds),

Set the date and time and location, and you've basically created a standard invitation, that you can send out to people directly from the app. But Apple also added in the ability to create a shared photo album, so you can enjoy shared photos from the event, as well as a shared Apple Music Playlist.

This is what I wanted for my wedding back in 2008. I spent weeks chasing people for the photos they took on their cameras – smartphone cameras weren't anywhere near as popular back then – and having it all automatically synced for all attendees sounds brilliant.

You get the ability to share the invite publicly or privately, approve guests, and allow guests to add a +1 if you like. It all seems pretty comprehensive and well geared towards anyone planning a larger event.

First thoughts

It's not quite as good in practice though. A lot of that is the fact it's tied to iCloud.

Don't get me wrong – I have no issue with iCloud, and happily pay Apple to keep all my devices and photos backed up using the service.

But outside of my household, I have no control over whether people want or can use iCloud. And to take part in things like shared photo albums or playlists, they need to have an Apple Account.

This is a major obstacle, to be honest. If I were to use this to invite people to an event like a wedding in the hopes that I can enjoy a shared album of memories from all my guests, expecting them to sign up for an Apple Account seems like an overreach.

I also expected the sharing part to be a bit more than just a link. If you send an invite to a contact, they literally just receive an iCloud link. There's no fancy design or impressive personalisation until they click the link. You still have to do the heavy lifting when you compose the email, even if you spend time adding all that information into the invite itself.

Don't get me wrong, I can still see this being a popular way to organise events. I'll probably even use it myself if I ever organise an event for family or friends.

If you want to get a better idea of what the invites actually look like, you're all invited to my test event (which isn't actually an event) below:

You’re invited to “BTTR TEST EVENT”

Open the invitation to see details and reply.

Invites