iOS 26 beta is freezing FaceTime when it detects nudity — what we know so far

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That was supposed to protect child accounts — not penalize adults

An image of an iPhone home screen, partly showing the Phone app and FaceTime app, representing how to enable Voice Isolation on iPhone
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There are a lot of big changes coming to iPhones courtesy of iOS 26. And thanks to the release of the iOS 26 developer beta, people across the world have been uncovering things Apple didn't think to tell us about. As it turns out, FaceTime is now set to freeze anytime it notices someone on camera has started to undress.

Apple did announce this, sort of. iOS 26 comes with a bunch of new tools for child accounts, and one of them is designed to "intervene" whenever nudity is detected in FaceTime video calls — alongside a similar feature that blurs out any nudity detected in Shared Albums. But as it turns out, this feature is also affecting adult accounts.

What's happening here?

It's not clear whether this is a bug, since iOS 26 is still very firmly in beta, or if Apple is deliberately turning on sensitive content warnings without user input. Since the Sensitive Content warning is an option in FaceTime's app settings, but is switched off by default, I'm guessing it's the former.

For those worried about corporate snooping, Apple's support pages do claim that the Communication Safety uses on-device machine learning to analyze photo and video attachments and determine if a photo or video appears to contain nudity," while also noting that this is built for child accounts rather than everyone.

Apple also notes that "because the photos and videos are analyzed on your child’s device, Apple doesn’t receive an indication that nudity was detected and doesn’t get access to the photos or videos as a result." Meaning Apple doesn't actually see the contents of the call.

It's not clear what the threshold for the sensitive content warnings are, but since this is designed to protect children my guess is that they'll be pretty strict. Which is a shame if you're an adult caught up in the bug, trying to show off whatever body parts you feel the need to show. Even if it's something as relatively innocent as a new tattoo or flexing after the gym.

Hopefully this will be fixed in a future version of the iOS 26 beta, ahead of the official launch later this year. But in the meantime, if you're affected by this, maybe switch to another one of the best video chat apps.

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Tom Pritchard
Tom Pritchard
UK Phones Editor

Tom is the Tom's Guide's UK Phones Editor, tackling the latest smartphone news and vocally expressing his opinions about upcoming features or changes. It's long way from his days as editor of Gizmodo UK, when pretty much everything was on the table. He’s usually found trying to squeeze another giant Lego set onto the shelf, draining very large cups of coffee, or complaining about how terrible his Smart TV is.

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