Apple announced the released of a preview of iOS 26. The OS will be available for developer testing through the Apple Developer Program on June 10, 2025. A public beta will be available next month through the Apple Beta Software Program. The new software features will be available for iPhone 11 and later models as a free software update this fall.
Apple iOS 26 is a major update that takes the iPhone experience to the next level. iOS 26 delivers beautiful new design and intelligent features to power the apps customers use every day. The new design maintains the intuitive familiarity of iOS while delivering a more expressive and delightful experience across the system.
Beautiful new design
The new design in iOS 26 makes apps and system experiences even more expressive and delightful. It’s built with a new translucent material called “Liquid Glass.” Liquid Glass reflects and refracts the light around it, drawing attention to content and bringing new vibrancy to controls, navigation, app icons and widgets. The new design also applies to the Home and Lock screen, making those screens more personal and expressive. Liquid Glass also delivers new customization options, including a clear look, for app icons and widgets.
On the Lock Screen, the time display adapts fluidly to the available space in the image, and spatial scenes bring the wallpaper to life with a 3D effect as you move your iPhone. Updated design elements bring fresh experiences to the apps. The simple, uncluttered Camera layout helps users focus on the moment they’re capturing. The Photos app has also been updated to introduce separate tabs for your library and collections. Safari seamlessly displays web pages from the top to the bottom of the screen, so users can see more and maintain access to frequently used actions like reload and search. Apple Music, News, and Podcasts have a redesigned tab bar that floats above the user’s content, dynamically shrinking when users center it and expanding as they scroll.
Updated APIs give developers access to Liquid Glass materials and elements, enabling them to create dynamic and stunning looks for their apps.
New features powered by Apple Intelligence
Apple Intelligence takes the iPhone experience to the next level, helping users do things more easily than ever before and providing new ways to communicate and interact with on-screen content. Live Translation is built into Messages, FaceTime and Phone to provide instant text and speech translation to help communicate across different languages. Live Translation is made possible by an all-on-device model pioneered by Apple, keeping users’ private conversations private.
Powered by Apple Intelligence, visual intelligence extends to the iPhone screen, allowing users to explore and interact with what they see on screen across any app. Users can ask ChatGPT questions about what they see on screen to get more information, or search supported apps like Google or Etsy to find similar images or products. Visual intelligence also recognizes when users are viewing an event and suggests re-entering key details like date, time and location to add it to their calendar.
Genmoji and Image Playground offer users more ways to express themselves, such as combining their favorite emojis, genmoji, and descriptions to create something new.
Shortcuts are more powerful and intelligent than ever before, with Intelligent Actions, an all-new set of shortcuts powered by Apple Intelligence, providing dedicated actions for features like Composition, Image Playground and more.
Apple Intelligence will now be able to automatically identify and summarize order tracking details from emails sent by stores and carriers, allowing users to see all order details and progress notifications all in one place, even for purchases that don’t use Apple Pay.
Additionally, access to the new foundational model framework means any app can directly leverage the on-device foundational models at the core of Apple Intelligence, giving developers direct access to powerful intelligence that is fast, designed with privacy at its core and available offline, with free AI inferencing.
Features to help you stay connected and remove distractions
The foundational iPhone experience, the Phone app offers a unified layout with Favorites, History and Voicemail all in one place. Call Screening enhances Live Voicemail by collecting caller information to help filter out the unwanted calls and provide the details users need to decide whether to answer or ignore the call. Additionally, Hold Assist will notify users if they are left on hold and when a live agent answers the phone.
Messages now allows users to screen messages from unknown senders, giving them more control over who appears in their conversation list. Messages from unknown senders will appear in a dedicated folder and users can mark the number as known, ask for more information or delete it. Such messages will not be notified to users until they approve the sender.
iOS 26 also brings enhancements to Conversations, including the ability to create custom backgrounds and polls. With Apple Intelligence, Messages can detect and suggest situations where polls might be helpful, and users can use Image Playground to create unique backgrounds for their conversations. Plus, in group chats, users will now be able to see a typing indicator and request, send, and receive Apple Cash.
CarPlay Enhancements
CarPlay, a smarter and safer way to use iPhone while driving, is used more than 600 million times a day. Updates in iOS 26 make CarPlay even more beautiful and easier to use. A beautiful design features a new, compact incoming call view so users can see who’s calling without missing important information, like their next route. iOS 26 also introduces Tapbacks and pinned chats to Messages in CarPlay, and widgets and live activity help users stay up to date on the road without losing focus. These updates also come to CarPlay Ultra, combining the best of iPhone with the best of your car for a tightly integrated, unified experience across all screens.
Apple Music, Maps, and Apple Wallet updates
Apple Music offers lyric translation to help you understand the words to your favorite songs and lyric pronunciation guides so everyone can sing along, regardless of language, and AutoMix uses intelligence to transition from one song to the next like a DJ, using time stretching and beat matching to make song transitions seamless.
In Apple Maps, Visited Places helps users remember places they’ve been. Users can choose to have their iPhone detect when they’re in a location, like a restaurant or store, and Maps will display all of their visited places. Places visited are protected with end-to-end encryption and are not accessed by Apple. Additionally, iPhone uses on-device intelligence to better understand a user’s daily routes, presenting preferred routes for trips home or to work and providing delay notifications and alternative routes accordingly.
Updates to Apple Wallet make everyday interactions with the real world easier than ever. Users can make in-store purchases on their iPhone with Apple Pay and choose to pay in installments or with points. The updated Boarding Pass in Wallet lets users see and share real-time flight updates with Live Activity, and provides convenient access to the information most relevant to travelers, including airport navigation in Maps and the ability to track important items or report lost luggage with Find My.
Other Features in iOS 26
Apple Games is a new app in iOS 26 that gives players everything gaming in one place. It helps players quickly get back to their favorite titles, find their next favorite, and have more fun with friends. It keeps you up to date on what’s happening across all your games, including important events and updates, so you never miss a moment. The Games app is also the perfect way to experience Apple Arcade, Apple’s games subscription service, with more than 200 award-winning, highly-rated games for the whole family.
AirPods become more capable than ever with new features for AirPods 4, AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), and AirPods Pro 2. Taking advantage of Voice Isolation, studio-quality voice recording lets iPhone, iPad, and Mac users record content in superior quality and enjoy clearer phone calls. Camera Remote lets you take photos or start and stop video recording on your iPhone or iPad by pressing and holding the stem of your AirPods.
Parents can now more easily create or move their children into Kids accounts and benefit from a wide range of parental controls designed to keep their kids safe. Communication Limits, Safety and App Store enhancements include the ability for parents to approve contact requests from their kids, blur sensitive content in FaceTime calls and Shared Albums photos and go beyond app content restrictions set by parents to provide permission to download age-restricted apps specifically for their kids.
When browsing with Safari, advanced fingerprinting protection is extended by default to all browsing, further protecting your privacy.
Powerful accessibility features include Accessibility Reader, a customized system-wide reading experience, and Braille Access, an all-new interface for iPhone with a connected Braille display. Updates to Live Listen, Background Sounds, Personal Voice and more take accessibility across the Apple ecosystem to the next level.
