Apple has previewed iOS 26, a major update that brings a new design and improvements to many of the apps we rely on every day. Apple’s new Liquid Glass brings “a more expressive and delightful experience across the system while maintaining the instant familiarity of iOS” the company says.
Updates to almost every app will hit your iPhone later this eat in the public release. Developer and public beta versions will be available from today or next month respectively.
The Phone and Messages apps while eliminate distractions like unwanted call while new features in CarPlay, Apple Music, Maps, and Wallet are also introduced. And like macOS Tahoe 26, there’s an all new Apple Games app that gives players a single destination for all their games.
The new Liquid Glass design extends to the Home Screen and Lock Screen making them more personal and expressive than ever with new customisation options for app icons and widgets. The Lock Screen adapts images to take advantage of the available space in an image and spatial scenes give wallpapers with a 3D effect when users move iPhone.
The Camera and Photos app get facelifts and Apple Music, News, and Podcasts have a redesigned tab bar that floats above users’ content, dynamically shrink when users are browsing to put content front and center, and then expand when they scroll back up.
iOS developers get access to an updated set of APIs so they can take advantage of the new design options.
While Apple Inteligence has failed to live up to last year’s hype, Apple says its take on AI has been refined. Live Translation is integrated into Messages, FaceTime, and Phone to help users communicate across languages, translating text and audio on the fly. Visual intelligence extends to a user’s iPhone screen so they can search and take action on anything they’re viewing across apps and ask ChatGPT questions about what they’re looking at onscreen. Visual intelligence also recognizes when a user is looking at an event and suggests adding it to their calendar, repopulating key details like date, time, and location.
The Phone app now offers a unified layout that combines Favorites, Recents, and Voicemails in one place. Call Screening builds on Live Voicemail and helps eliminate interruptions by gathering information from the caller and giving users the details they need to decide if they want to pick up or ignore the call.
Messages can screen messages from unknown senders so you have more control over who appears in the conversation list. Messages from unknown senders will appear in a dedicated folder where users can then mark the number as known, ask for more information, or delete. These messages will remain silenced until a user accepts them. Given the number of spam messages being sent these days, this is a welcome change.
CarPlay has also been given a makeover. The new design includes a compact view for incoming calls allowing users to see who’s calling without missing key information like upcoming directions. iOS 26 also brings Tapbacks and pinned conversations to Messages in CarPlay, and with widgets and Live Activities, users can stay in the loop without losing focus on the road. These updates also come to CarPlay Ultra, which brings the best of iPhone and the best of the car together for a deeply integrated, unified experience across every screen.
Additional features in iOS 26:
- Apple Games is a new app that gives players an all-in-one destination for their games. It helps players jump back into titles they love, find their next favorite, and have even more fun with friends. They’ll find out what’s happening across all their games, including major events and updates, so they never miss a moment. The Games app is also the best way to experience Apple Arcade, Apple’s game subscription service with more than 200 award-winning and highly rated games for the whole family.
- AirPods are more versatile than ever with new features for AirPods 4, AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), and AirPods Pro 2. Building on the benefits of Voice Isolation, studio-quality audio recording allows iPhone, iPad, and Mac users to record their content with great sound quality and enjoy even clearer calls. With camera remote, users can press and hold the AirPods stem to take a photo or start and stop a video recording on iPhone or iPad.
- Parents can now create or move kids into Child Accounts even more easily, taking advantage of a wide set of parental controls designed to keep children safe. Enhancements across Communication Limits, Communication Safety, and the App Store include parental approvals for contact requests from kids, blurring out sensitive content in FaceTime calls and photos in Shared Albums, and enabling parents to grant an exception for their child to download an app with an age rating that exceeds the app content restriction they set.
- Browsing in Safari gets even more private with advanced fingerprinting protection extending to all browsing by default.
- Powerful accessibility features include Accessibility Reader, which provides a customized systemwide reading experience, and Braille Access, an all-new interface for iPhone devices with connected braille displays. Updates to Live Listen, Background Sounds, Personal Voice, and more bring a new level of accessibility across the Apple ecosystem.
Anthony is the founder of Australian Apple News. He is a long-time Apple user and former editor of Australian Macworld. He has contributed to many technology magazines and newspapers as well as appearing regularly on radio and occasionally on TV.