Apple elevates the iPhone experience with iOS 26

Apple today previewed iOS 26, a major update that brings a
beautiful new design, intelligent experiences, and improvements to the apps
users rely on every day. The new design provides a more expressive and
delightful experience across the system while maintaining the instant
familiarity of iOS. Integrated throughout the system and built with privacy
from the ground up, Apple Intelligence gets even more capable. Updates to the
Phone and Messages apps help users stay connected while eliminating distractions
like unwanted calls. iOS 26 also introduces new features in CarPlay, Apple
Music, Maps, and Wallet, as well as Apple Games, a brand-new app that gives
players a single destination for all their games.

“iOS 26 shines with the gorgeous new design and meaningful
improvements to the features users rely on every day, making iPhone even more
helpful,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software
Engineering. “Experiences are more expressive and personal, from the Lock
Screen and Home Screen, to new capabilities across Phone and Messages that help
users focus on the connections that matter most. And with powerful new Apple
Intelligence capabilities integrated across the system, users can get things
done easier than ever.”

A Beautiful New Look

The new design makes apps and system experiences more
expressive and delightful, while keeping iOS instantly familiar. It’s crafted
with Liquid Glass — a new translucent material that reflects and refracts its
surroundings, bringing greater focus to content, and delivering a new level of
vitality across controls, navigation, app icons, widgets, and more. The new
design extends to the Home Screen and Lock Screen, making them more personal
and expressive than ever. Liquid Glass also brings new customization options to
app icons and widgets, including a stunning clear look.

On the Lock Screen, the time fluidly adapts to the available
space in an image, and spatial scenes bring wallpapers to life with a 3D effect
when users move iPhone. Updated design elements also deliver fresh experiences
in apps. A simplified, streamlined Camera layout helps users keep their
attention on the moment they’re capturing, and the Photos app is updated to
feature separate tabs for Library and Collections views. In Safari, web pages
flow from the top edge to the bottom of the screen, enabling users to see more
of the page while maintaining access to frequently used actions like refresh
and search. In Apple Music, News, and Podcasts, the tab bar is redesigned to
float above users’ content, dynamically shrink when users are browsing to put
content front and center, and then expand when they scroll back up.

An updated set of APIs provides developers with access to
Liquid Glass materials and components so they can make their apps appear just
as dynamic and delightful.

New Capabilities Powered by Apple Intelligence

Apple Intelligence elevates the iPhone experience and helps
users get things done easier than ever, while unlocking new ways to communicate
and do more with what’s on their screen. Live Translation is integrated into
Messages, FaceTime, and Phone to help users communicate across languages,
translating text and audio on the fly.¹ Live Translation is
enabled by Apple-built models that run entirely on device, so users’ personal
conversations stay personal.

Building on Apple Intelligence, visual intelligence extends
to a user’s iPhone screen so they can search and take action on anything
they’re viewing across apps. Users can ask ChatGPT questions about what they’re
looking at onscreen to learn more, as well as search Google, Etsy, or other
supported apps to find similar images and products. 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.

Genmoji and Image Playground provide users with even more
ways to express themselves, including mixing their favorite emoji, Genmoji, and
descriptions together to create something new.

Shortcuts are now more powerful and intelligent than ever.
Users can tap into intelligent actions, a whole new set of shortcuts enabled by
Apple Intelligence, and will see dedicated actions for features like Writing
Tools and Image Playground.

Apple Intelligence can now automatically identify and
summarize order tracking details from emails sent from merchants and delivery
carriers, giving users the ability to see their full order details and progress
notifications all in one place — even for purchases not made with Apple Pay.

Additionally, a new Foundation Models framework opens up
access for any app to tap directly into the on-device foundation model at the
core of Apple Intelligence, giving developers direct access to powerful
intelligence that’s fast, built with privacy at its core, and available
offline, using AI inference that is free of cost.

Features for Staying Connected and Eliminating
Interruptions

Fundamental to the iPhone experience, the Phone app now
offers a unified layout that combines Favorites, Recents, and Voicemails all 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. And
for the times when a user is stuck on hold, Hold Assist notifies the user when
a live agent is available.

In Messages, users can now 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 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.

iOS 26 also offers enhancements to conversations, including
custom backgrounds and the ability to create polls. With Apple Intelligence,
Messages can detect when a poll might come in handy and suggest one, and users
can generate unique backgrounds that fit their conversation with Image
Playground. Additionally, in group chats, users can now see typing indicators,
and request, send, and receive Apple Cash.

Enhancements to CarPlay

CarPlay — the smarter, safer way to use iPhone while driving
— is used over 600 million times per day, and now with iOS 26, it receives
updates that make it even more beautiful and easy to use. The stunning design
includes a new 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.

Updates to Apple Music, Maps, and Wallet

In Apple Music, Lyrics Translation helps users understand
the words to their favorite songs, while Lyrics Pronunciation allows everyone
to sing along, regardless of language. AutoMix uses intelligence to transition
from one song to the next like a DJ, using time stretching and beat matching to
seamlessly move from one song to the next.

In Apple Maps, Visited Places help users remember the places
they’ve been. Users can choose to have iPhone detect when they’re at a place
like a restaurant or shop, and view all of their Visited Places in Maps.
Visited Places are protected with end-to-end encryption and cannot be accessed
by Apple. Additionally, iPhone can now use on-device intelligence to better
understand a user’s daily route, presenting them with their preferred route
when they’re headed home or to the office, along with notifying them of delays
and offering alternate routes.

Updates in Apple Wallet help make everyday interactions with
the physical world easier than ever. Users can choose to pay with installments
or rewards when they make in-store purchases with Apple Pay using iPhone.
Refreshed boarding passes in Wallet offer the ability to see and share Live
Activities for real-time updates on a flight. They also provide convenient
access to a traveler’s most relevant information, such as Maps to navigate
airports, Find My to track important items and report missing bags, and more.

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.