Apple’s Invites invites you to send invitations
Apple on Tuesday took the wraps off a rare brand-new app: Invites. And it’s more like an Evite competitor, not something designed for business meetings. Invites lets you create events to which you can — yes, you guessed it — invite guests, complete with a playlist and a shared photo album. Events can be customized with a background photo.
Apple today introduced Apple Invites, a new app for iPhone that helps users create custom invitations to gather friends and family for any occasion. With Apple Invites, users can create and easily share invitations, RSVP, contribute to Shared Albums, and engage with Apple Music playlists. Starting today, users can download Apple Invites from the App Store, or access it on the web through icloud.com/invites. iCloud+ subscribers can create invitations, and anyone can RSVP, regardless of whether they have an Apple Account or Apple device.
It’s interesting to note that this app is limited to iCloud+ subscribers—in other words, anyone who is paying Apple at least a little extra for cloud storage.
Invitations come in the form of an iCloud link, sent via Messages, Mail, or by copying the link onto your clipboard. You’ll need to tap through each individual person and choose a format and then send them an invitation manually via a slide-up sheet—it’s a lot more laborious than I expected. Invitations can be accepted by anyone on any platform, and don’t require people to use iCloud or be in the Apple ecosystem.
The app seems perfectly nice, though I do wonder how many people will choose to use a bespoke app over the many other options out there. Also, Apple’s long-term track record with “fun” one-off apps is a little spotty; is this just Clips again? Maybe I’ll send you an invitation for 2028 and we can all meet up then to find out.