When iOS 26 shimmers into view this fall, the translucent new Liquid Glass interface overhaul will not be the one change to the iPhone. Introduced at Apple’s Worldwide Builders Convention, iOS 26 (named for 2026) will tackle a glance that Apple pioneered with the Imaginative and prescient Professional, with glassy, translucent panels that can echo all through the entire firm’s merchandise.
However this is not merely a beauty overhaul. The Digital camera and Photographs apps are gaining long-awaited purposeful redesigns; the Messages and Telephone apps are taking a firmer stand in opposition to undesirable texts and calls; and Apple Intelligence contributes some enhancements in a yr when Siri has been delayed. Listed here are the updates you may anticipate to see on the iPhone quickly.
The following model of the working system is because of ship within the fall (doubtless with new iPhone 17 fashions), however developer betas can be found now, with a public beta anticipated in July.
Clear new Liquid glass design
After greater than a decade of a flat, clear consumer interface — an overhaul launched in iOS 7 when former Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive took over the design of software program in addition to {hardware} — the iPhone is getting a brand new look. The brand new design extends all through the Apple product lineup, from iOS to WatchOS, TVOS and iPadOS.
The Liquid Glass interface additionally now permits a 3rd solution to view app icons on the iPhone residence display. Not content material with Gentle and Darkish modes, iOS 26 now options an All Clear look — each icon is evident glass with no colour. Lock screens may also have an enhanced 3D impact utilizing spatial scenes, which use machine studying to offer depth to your background images.
The brand new All Clear icon look in iOS 26 is a part of the Liquid Glass design.
Dynamic and adaptable lock display
Translucency is the defining attribute of Liquid Glass, behaving like glass in the actual world in the way in which it offers with gentle and colour of objects behind and close to controls. But it surely’s not only a glassy look: The “liquid” a part of Liquid Glass refers to how controls can merge and adapt — dynamically morphing, in Apple’s phrases. Within the instance Apple confirmed, the glassy time numerals on an iPhone lock display stretched to accommodate the picture of a canine and even shrunk because the picture shifted to accommodate incoming notifications. The dock and widgets at the moment are rounded, glassy panels that float above the background.
As notifications fill the underside of the display, the topic within the background picture is pushed up and the time numerals resize to accommodate.
Watch this: I am Impressed With iOS 26. Apple Simply Made iPhones Higher
Digital camera and Photographs apps go much more minimal
The Digital camera app is getting a brand new, simplified interface. You could possibly argue that the present Digital camera app is fairly minimal, designed to make it fast to border a shot and hit the large shutter button. However the second you get into the periphery, it turns into a bizarre mixture of hidden controls and unintuitive icons.
The Digital camera app has fewer distractions.
Now, the Digital camera app in iOS 26 includes a “new, extra intuitive design” that takes minimalism to the acute. The streamlined design reveals simply two controls: Video or Digital camera. Swipe left or proper to decide on modes. Swipe up for settings comparable to facet ratio and timers, and faucet for extra preferences.
With the up to date Photographs app, viewing the photographs you seize must be a greater expertise — a welcome change that clients have clamored for since iOS 18’s cluttered try. As an alternative of an extended, difficult-to-discover scrolling interface, Photographs regains a Liquid Glass menu on the backside of the display.
The Photographs app will get a welcome redesign.
The Telephone app will get a revamp
The Telephone app has saved extra intently to the look of its supply than others: a sparse interface with giant buttons as in the event you’re holding an old school headset or pre-smartphone cellular telephone. iOS 26 lastly updates that look not simply with the brand new general interface however in a unified structure that takes benefit of the bigger display actual property on immediately’s iPhone fashions.
The Telephone app’s unified structure ought to make for much less switching between screens when coping with calls.
It is not simply seems to be which can be completely different, although. The Telephone app is attempting to be extra helpful for coping with precise calls — those you wish to take. The Name Screening function robotically solutions calls from unknown numbers, and your cellphone rings solely when the caller shares their identify and purpose for calling.
Or what about on a regular basis wasted on maintain? Maintain Help robotically detects maintain music and may mute the music however preserve the decision related. As soon as a reside agent turns into obtainable, the cellphone rings and lets the agent know you will be obtainable shortly.
Messages updates
The Messages app might be one of the used apps on the iPhone, and for iOS 26, Apple is making it a extra colourful expertise. You’ll be able to add backgrounds to the chat window, together with dynamic backgrounds that showcase the brand new Liquid Glass interface.
Enliven your every day chats with backgrounds and extra group options.
Along with the brand new look, group texts in Messages can incorporate polls for everybody within the group to answer to — no extra scrolling again to seek out out which restaurant Brett advised for lunch that you just missed. Different members within the chat may also add their very own objects to a ballot.
A extra helpful function is a function to detect spam texts higher and display unknown numbers, so the messages you see within the app are those you wish to see and never those that distract you.
Safari will get out of its personal method
Within the Safari app, the Liquid Glass design floats the tab bar above the net web page (though that appears proper the place your thumb goes to be, so it will likely be attention-grabbing to see in the event you can transfer the bar to the highest of the display). As you scroll, the tab bar shrinks.
Net pages occupy the complete display and the tackle bar shrinks to get out of the way in which.
FaceTime focuses on calls, not controls
FaceTime additionally will get the minimal look, with controls within the lower-right nook that disappear through the name to get out of the way in which. On the FaceTime touchdown web page, posters of your contacts, together with video clips of earlier calls, are designed to make the app extra interesting.
FaceTime minimizes its controls into one nook.
New Music app options
Do you just like the sound of that track your good friend is enjoying however do not perceive the language the lyrics are in? The Music app features a new lyrics translation function that shows together with the lyrics because the track performs. And for whenever you wish to sing together with one in every of her favourite Okay-pop songs, for instance, however you do not converse or learn Korean, a lyrics pronunciation function spells out the suitable solution to kind the sounds.
AutoMix blends songs like a DJ, matching the beat and time-stretching for a seamless transition.
And if you end up obsessively listening to artists and albums many times, you may pin them to the highest of your music library for fast entry.
Preserve the beat going with intelligence-based track transitions utilizing AutoMix.
New Video games app is a reminder that sure, folks recreation on iPhone
The iPhone would not get the identical sort of gaming affection as Nintendo’s Swap or Valve’s Steam Deck, however the reality is that the iPhone and Android telephones are used extensively for gaming — Apple says half a billion folks play video games on iPhone.
Attempting to capitalize on that, a brand new Video games app acts as a selected portal to Apple Arcade and different video games. Sure, you may get to these from the App Retailer app, however the Video games app is designed to take away a layer of friction so you may get proper to the gaming motion.
The brand new Video games hub has a easy management display to allow you to navigate all your Apple video games on any system.
Stay translation enhances calls and texts
Though not particular to iOS, Apple’s new reside translation function is right on the iPhone whenever you’re speaking with others. It makes use of Apple Intelligence to dynamically allow you to speak to somebody who speaks a unique language in near-real time. It is obtainable within the Messages, FaceTime and Telephone apps and reveals reside translated captions throughout a dialog.
Stay translation throughout a voice name
Maps will get extra private
Updates to the Maps app typically contain including extra element to standard areas or restructuring the way in which you retailer areas. Now, the app takes be aware of routes you journey ceaselessly and may warn you of any delays earlier than you get on the highway.
A Maps widget reveals a frequently-used route.
It additionally features a welcome function for these of us who get our favourite eating places blended up: visited locations. The app notes what number of occasions you’ve got been to a spot, be {that a} native enterprise, eatery or vacationer vacation spot. It organizes them in classes or different standards comparable to by metropolis to make them simpler to seek out the following time.
New CarPlay options
Liquid Glass additionally makes its solution to CarPlay in your car, with a extra compact design when a name is available in that does not obscure different objects, comparable to a directional map. In Messages, you may apply tapbacks and pin conversations for straightforward entry.
Widgets at the moment are a part of the CarPlay expertise, so you may deal with simply the info you need, like the present climate circumstances. And Stay Actions seem on the CarPlay display, so you will know when that espresso you ordered shall be executed or when a good friend’s flight is about to reach.
The brand new CarPlay interface with Liquid Glass.
Pockets enhancements
The Pockets app is already residence for utilizing Apple Card, Apple Pay, digital automobile keys and for storing tickets and passes. In iOS 26, you may create a brand new Digital ID that acts like a passport for age and identification verification (although it doesn’t change a bodily passport) for home journey for TSA screening at airports.
The app may also allow you to use rewards and arrange installment funds whenever you buy objects in a retailer, not only for on-line orders. And with the assistance of Apple Intelligence, the Pockets app may also help you monitor product orders, even in the event you didn’t use Apple Pay to buy them. It may well pull particulars comparable to delivery numbers from emails and texts in order that info is multi functional place.
The Pockets app helps authorized state IDs and nationwide IDs for age and identification verification.
New options powered by Apple Intelligence
Though final yr’s WWDC featured Apple Intelligence options closely, enhancements to the AI tech had been much less outstanding this yr, folded into the bulletins through the WWDC keynote.
As an alternative choice to creating Genmoji from scratch, you may mix current emojis — “like a sloth and a light-weight bulb whenever you’re the final one within the group chat to get the joke,” to make use of Apple’s instance. You may also change expressions in Genmoji of individuals you understand that you’ve got used to create the picture.
Mix current emoji utilizing Apple Intelligence.
Picture Playground provides the power to faucet into ChatGPT’s picture technology instruments to transcend the app’s animation or sketch types.
Visible Intelligence can already use the digicam to attempt to decipher what’s in entrance of the lens. Now the expertise works on the content material on the iPhone’s display, too. It does this by taking a screenshot (press the sleep and quantity up buttons) after which together with a brand new Picture Search possibility in that interface to seek out outcomes throughout the net or in different apps comparable to Etsy.
That is additionally a method so as to add occasion particulars from photographs you come throughout, like posters for concert events or giant gatherings. (Maybe this might work for QR codes as properly?) Within the screenshot interface, Visible Intelligence can parse the textual content and create an occasion within the Calendar app.
Some iOS 26 updates Apple did not point out
Not every part suits right into a keynote presentation — even, or perhaps particularly, when it is all pre-recorded — however a few of the extra attention-grabbing new options in iOS 26 went unremarked through the massive reveal. For example:
- When you’ve got AirPods or AirPods Professional with the H2 chip, you should utilize AirPods Digital camera Distant to start out recording video in your iPhone by urgent and holding one of many AirPods.
- You’ll be able to select your individual snooze period of between 1 and quarter-hour for alarms.
- Audio recording choices have expanded, enabling high-quality recording throughout convention calls and high-definition recording within the Digital camera app with AirPods and AirPods Professional that comprise the H2 chip.
- Accessibility options embody an “all-new expertise designed with Braille customers in thoughts,” extra choices for the Automobile Movement Cues function to keep away from movement illness and “a extra customizable studying expertise.”
- Reminders makes use of Apple Intelligence to “counsel duties, grocery objects and follow-ups primarily based on emails or different textual content in your system.”
- The Journal app helps a number of journals, inline photographs and a map view that tracks the place journal entries had been made.
- Parental controls have been up to date in unspecified methods, together with “enhancements throughout Communication Limits, Communication Security and the App Retailer.”
iOS 26 availability
The completed model of iOS 26 shall be launched in September or October with new iPhone 17 fashions. Within the meantime, builders will get entry to the primary developer betas beginning on Monday, with an preliminary public beta arriving in July. (Remember to enter any beta software program with open eyes and clear expectations.)
Observe the WWDC 2025 reside weblog for particulars about Apple’s bulletins.
iPhone fashions suitable with iOS 26
iOS 26 will run on the iPhone 11 and later fashions, together with the iPhone SE (2nd technology and later). That features:
- iPhone 16e
- iPhone 16
- iPhone 16 Plus
- iPhone 16 Professional
- iPhone 16 Professional Max
- iPhone 15
- iPhone 15 Plus
- iPhone 15 Professional
- iPhone 15 Professional Max
- iPhone 14
- iPhone 14 Plus
- iPhone 14 Professional
- iPhone 14 Professional Max
- iPhone 13
- iPhone 13 mini
- iPhone 13 Professional
- iPhone 13 Professional Max
- iPhone 12
- iPhone 12 mini
- iPhone 12 Professional
- iPhone 12 Professional Max
- iPhone 11
- iPhone 11 Professional
- iPhone 11 Professional Max
- iPhone SE (2nd technology and later)
