One of the joys and frustrations of traveling in a different country than your own is learning how to quickly convert a foreign currency to one whose value you understand. Unless you are a math genius, you may find yourself doing on-the-spot division or wasting precious international data when you get a meal receipt or see a cool gift at a store. I know I certainly have.
When I was recently in Mexico City, Mexico, I was scrambling to convert the local pesos to U.S. dollars when, suddenly, my friend quickly shared exactly what our dinner would cost, down to the cent.
My friend had used the built-in Calculator app on her iPhone to do the math, and it’s a game-changing feature that saved me so much time on the rest of my vacation. I am now a Calculator app evangelist, and I want to share how easy it is to use:
First, you need to know that this feature requires iOS 18 and above in order to convert currencies in your Calculator app. Calculator is also available on iPad with iPadOS 18.
But if you’ve done this update, go to the Calculator app, then select the calculator icon at the bottom left of the screen. From there, toggle on the “Convert” option. You will then be able to choose which currencies you want to convert, from Albanian lek to Yemeni rial, or in my case, from U.S. dollars to Mexican pesos. They will appear as top and bottom values on your calculator, and you can tap each input field to write in numbers. The white font represents the original currency field.
