iOS 26.2 is right around the corner — here are all the upgrades coming to Apple’s iPhone apps

home screen with transparent icons in iOS 26 — (Image credit: Future)

With several betas already out of the door, iOS 26.2 is fast approaching its finished state, with a final release likely to arrive in December.

You can get a granular look at what arrived in 26.2 beta 2 and 3 here, but today we’re concentrating on quality-of-life improvements to some of Apple’s best-loved first-party apps.

Apple Music

If you regularly find yourself mishearing the words of songs, the inclusion of scrolling real-time lyrics within Apple Music has been extremely helpful.

The catch is that you need an active internet connection for this to work. But not any more. With iOS 26.2, you’ll be able to read along with a track even if you’re in Airplane mode or otherwise without signal.

Presumably lyrics will be downloaded alongside any track you choose to make available for offline listening. It’s a small upgrade, but an extremely welcome one.

Apple Podcasts

For its Podcasts app, Apple will be leveraging its Apple Intelligence to make podcasts easier to follow with Chapters. This automatically divides podcasts into chapters, making finding the part you want to listen (or relisten) to far easier than just scrubbing along manually.

iOS 26.2 also introduces Podcast Mentions — which allows you to tap through to other shows or episodes mentioned in the recording without sourcing them yourself — and From This Episode, which organizes links found in the show notes in a more user-friendly way.

Apple Games

Apple Games is almost new, having debuted with iOS 26, meaning there’s much room for improvement. Here, there are three quick and easy additions that should improve things no end.

Firstly, there’s Library Filters. This lets you filter your game library for easy sorting, so you can easily find games with challenges or titles that are popular with your friends. Speaking of challenges, these are now updated in real time too.

Most importantly, there’s now controller support, making the Games app easier to navigate with a connected Bluetooth gamepad.

Apple News

Apple News’ improvements are in the form of a facelift to make the unwieldy amount of publications and new features a bit easier to manage.

Expect quick links to specific sections at the top, and improvements to the navigation tab bar. ‘Following’ is plucked from behind the Search button with its own new dedicated tab, while Search itself is improved with new quick link recommendations.

Reminders

Reminders gets an upgrade that turns it from a semi-useful to-do list into something far more essential.

With iOS 26.2, you’ll be able to mark tasks as ‘Urgent’ with a set due time. If a task is marked in this way, an alarm is attached to it that will go off when the deadline is hit, meaning you won’t be able to ignore those important jobs any more.

Like the regular wake-up alarms, these can be snoozed for nine minutes, giving you a little grace period without forgetting about them entirely. The alarm is also compatible with Live Activities giving it lock-screen prominence that can’t be ignored.

Freeform

Freeform is probably the most obscure of the apps getting some love from Apple this time around, but it’s a big improvement for those who use it.

Apple’s whiteboard app goes beyond text, images, files and links to introduce tables. Handy for adding some order to the chaos.

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Freelance contributor Alan has been writing about tech for over a decade, covering phones, drones and everything in between. Previously Deputy Editor of tech site Alphr, his words are found all over the web and in the occasional magazine too. When not weighing up the pros and cons of the latest smartwatch, you'll probably find him tackling his ever-growing games backlog. He also handles all the Wordle coverage on Tom's Guide and has been playing the addictive NYT game for the last several years in an effort to keep his streak forever intact.

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