iOS 26 preview — I've been testing Apple’s biggest update in over a decade

iOS updates typically make news for the features they add and the apps they introduce or enhance. With iOS 26, though, the story largely centers around the new look the software brings to your iPhone.

It's not that iOS 26 doesn't introduce its share of new features, and there's even a new app or two that arrives thanks to this update. But this year's version of Apple's iPhone software, now available as an iOS 26 public beta that you can download on any compatible device, puts the focus on an interface overhaul — the biggest one since iOS 7 arrived a dozen years ago.

Apple has dubbed the new look Liquid Glass, and it's not just a part of the iPhone software update. The software for iPads, Macs, Apple Watches and even Apple TV boxes is going to adopt a similar look as Apple aims to deliver a unified experience across its different platforms.

The effect is something that's definitely different looking from the iOS updates of previous years, with on-screen elements adding a glassy, layered look that helps them stand out in some instances and blend into the background in others. Apple has also streamlined menus, combining a lot of on-screen commands that used to have their own icon.

As a result, there's going to be a steeper learning curve than usual with iOS 26. I like to say that software updates are like room redesigns where the goal is to change things just enough to have an impact but not so much that you wind up tripping over the furniture. At this stage, the iOS 26 beta increases the likelihood of those trip-ups — though that's not necessarily a bad thing if the end result is an easier-to-use experience.

My first look at the iOS 26 public beta, based on my experience using versions 3 and 4 of the developer beta, looks at how close we are to reaching that point.

iOS 26 compatible devices

Before we dive into iOS 26, let's talk about which devices will be able to run the new software update. Any iPhone 11, iPhone 12, iPhone 13, iPhone 14, iPhone 15 or iPhone 16 supports iOS 26, as do iPhone SE models from the 2020 version forward. If you wait until the fall to get a new iPhone, any iPhone 17 models that launch will come with iOS 26 preinstalled. (Apple hasn't said as much, but come on, we know the drill by now.)

If you're contrasting that list of compatible devices with the ones that could run iOS 18, you'll see that the iPhone XR, iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max have lost support. Those phones debuted in 2018, which means they'll be 7 years old come the fall, which is consistent with the seven years of software and security support Google currently provides its Pixel phones. Put it another way, iPhone XR and XS owners shouldn't feel shortchanged here.

Just because you have an iOS 26-compatible iPhone, you won't be able to enjoy all the new features that the software delivers. Any Apple Intelligence-powered capabilities still require an iPhone with an A17 Pro chipset or later — that's the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and any iPhone 16 model at this point. And a handful of features, such as the spatial photo effect, we'll discuss in the next section require at least an iPhone 12.

iOS 26: Liquid Glass interface

There's no debate over the biggest change introduced by iOS 26 — it's the Liquid Glass interface that Apple previewed with much fanfare at WWDC 2025. In a sense, that makes evaluating iOS 26 a challenge, as beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, and one person's improved new look is another person's affront to the eyes.

Me, I don't mind most of the changes, and if that sounds like faint praise for Liquid Glass, it's really not. When I move from one iOS version to the next, I don't want a jarring transition, and while there's certainly no mistaking which OS you're running after your upgrade, you can find your way around after some trial and error.

Liquid Glass is at its most successful with the changes it brings to your iPhone's lock screen. Wallpapers now benefit from a spatial photo effect inspired by the visionOS from Apple's Vision Pro headset that gives images 3D-like depth and shifting perspective. That's even true of your own photos, which can be given the spatial treatment with just a tap of a button.

The lock screen on my iOS 26 test device now features a spatial photo of my daughter where she pops out of the background, which tilts and shifts when I change my viewing perspective. I'm also impressed by how Apple has changed the time display on the lock screen to expand and contract to better fill in blank spaces on your wallpaper. This can be particularly charming when you use your own photos for your lock screen background, and the person that's the focus of the photo hovers in front of the clock, giving the whole scene a sense of depth.

Unlocking your phone exposes you to more Liquid Glass elements, such as the translucent menus that appear when you press and hold on an app icon. Text fields and other on-screen elements like the dock and search bar are translucent, too, which lends the interface a nice layered effect.

Not all the changes are visually pleasing. The translucent look for the Control Center doesn't look good with all backgrounds, particularly if you've got a lighter wallpaper on your home screen like I have. There's a workaround — in the Accessibility section of Settings, you can turn on Reduce Transparency to make the control panels a bit more visible. It's an all-or-nothing approach, though, that kind of defeats the purpose of having an interface overhaul to begin with.

Translucent interface elements aren't particularly flattering if you like to stash similar apps into folders. Because the folder itself is clear, the apps themselves don't really standout and can feel lost in the background.

A similar thing happens if you opt for the new clear option for icons that Apple has added in iOS 26. Darker wallpapers make the contrast a little more apparent so the effect can be quite striking. But if your home screen has a lighter or busier wallpaper — or you have home screen widgets that show off things like photos — you're not going to like the look very much.

Fortunately, this is just another option alongside the dark and tinted icon views that you're not necessarily obligated to use.

Speaking of icons, they get a little bit of tweak in iOS 26 with a shifting gradient and a few changes to visual elements. (The Camera app's icon is now a camera lens, while the Calendar app uses different fonts.) The changes to icons are pretty gradual, though, which I'd argue is a good thing.

iOS 26: Streamlined controls for apps

Liquid Glass isn't just about ushering in a new look for the iPhone. Apple has also focused on new controls with this update, and in the case of the iPhone, that means streamlining things considerably.

The Camera app offers the best instance of Apple's more minimal look. Besides the shutter button and an icon for flipping between the front and back cameras, the only controls on the bottom of the screen let you toggle between photo and video. That's quite a contrast from the side-scrolling menu in previous iOS versions where you selected modes like Portrait, Slo-Mo and Pano.

Now, you find those additional modes by swiping left (for additional photo modes) or right (for different video styles), and the menu expands to show off the additional options. Swiping up produces a panel — translucent, of course — that summons additional camera controls like exposure, styles and the Live Photos option.

This approach certainly frees up space in the view finder of the Camera app so that you can better frame whatever it is you're capturing. But initially, it's going to take a lot of hunting and swiping to find the controls that used to be closer at hand. I imagine that's a trade-off people will be willing to make.

Safari gets the streamlined treatment in iOS 26, too, with the browser's new Compact layout shrinking down your controls to the back button, an address/search field, and a more menu where you can access controls to share links, add bookmarks and open new tabs.

While I appreciate the way the menu bar shrinks down out of the way as you scroll down a page — the effect looks more prominent to my eyes than it does in iOS 18 — the Compact look is a little too compact for my tastes. Fortunately, iOS 26 Safari also offers an expanded Bottom view that displays the sharing, bookmark and tab links more prominently. And yes, you can move those controls to the top of your screen if you prefer.

There's another interface change that appears to be limited to Apple Intelligence-capable iPhones that I'm less enamored of, and it involves screenshots. As part of an expanded Visual Intelligence feature when you take a screenshot, a new screen with AI-powered search features now pops up. That's a good addition, as I'll discuss below.

The problem is that your screenshots no longer get saved by default. Instead, you have to tap a checkmark, and then tap again to either save your screenshot to Photos, Files or a Quick Note. In other words, something that used to happen automatically now requires two separate taps, which strikes me as the opposite of streamlining that Apple is focusing on elsewhere in the app.

As noted, I believe this quirk only appears on Apple Intelligence-compatible phones, as the test iPhone 15 model I'm using still saves screenshots automatically; the iPhone 15 Pro test device does not.

iOS 26: Apple Intelligence

A year after Apple Intelligence made such a splash in iOS 18 — at least with what Apple was willing to hype — the suite of AI tools takes a backseat to Liquid Glass improvements in iOS 26. Promising and failing to deliver sweeping Siri changes will make you a bit more reticent to push out the boat on new AI tools, I suppose.

But there are some new Apple Intelligence capabilities to be found in iOS 26, at least if you have a phone that's capable of supporting them. The Shortcuts app now incorporates AI-powered automations involving Writing Tools and Image Playground. Speaking of that image generation tool, it gains the ability to change the expressions of people in the animations you create and there's now ChatGPT-integration to expand the visual styles that result from your prompts. Genmoji gains new powers too, letting you combine existing emoji into new creations; as with Image Playground, you can tweak the look of genmoji you've created featuring family and friends.

Your mileage may vary, but none of those additions really get my heart racing. I'm not the kind of Shortcuts power user that's going to benefit from Apple Intelligence support, though the folks that are will surely appreciate this addition. As for Image Playground and Genmoji, I have yet to find a practical use for either tool, and nothing I've seen so far in iOS 26 is going to force me to revise that opinion.

But there is a very important Apple Intelligence improvement in iOS 26, and it comes to the Visual Intelligence feature Apple introduced with last year's iPhone 16 launch. As you may recall, Visual Intelligence lets you use your iPhone's camera as a search tool to look up more information on what you capture, translate text or create calendar entries using the dates and times on images. In iOS 26, that same functionality extends to screenshots.

Take a screenshot in iOS 26, and on-screen commands let you run Google Image searches, create calendar entries, run text translations and even ask ChatGPT for more information. I've used the feature to block out time on my calendar to watch upcoming soccer matches when I've come across the schedule online or find out more information about a particular meme that's popped up in my social media.

Just as the original Visual Intelligence felt like Apple's answer to Google Lens, the ability to search screenshots in iOS 26 replicates features like Circle to Search found on Android. But that doesn't make it any less useful to have on your iPhone, and I see this as an Apple Intelligence feature I'll turn to again and again, since capturing a screenshot feels more natural to me than firing up a camera.

iOS 26: Translation features

There's another Apple Intelligence addition in iOS 26 that's significant enough to earn its own section, since it brings new powers to three existing apps. If you've got an iPhone 15 Pro or later, you can now access on-the-fly translation for phone calls, FaceTime video chats and texts in Messages.

Translation is relatively seamless, to a point. For instance, text messages in another language are translated automatically, as are your replies to those messages. In phone calls, you've got to turn on the translation feature, which is easy enough to do from the More menu on the call screen. You'll also need to select which language you're translating in a call. (I haven't had a chance to test FaceTime's Translation feature yet — the folks I would video chat with aren't on the iOS 26 beta at this time, but I'll update once I've had a chance to see how the feature works in FaceTime.)

I've found that translation works best with a little prep beforehand. When I tried the feature during a phone call with a Spanish-speaking friend, I was prompted to first download a Spanish vocabulary file before I could turn the Translation feature on. The download stalled out three-quarters of the way through, so I jumped into the Translate app and grabbed the Spanish download there.

Stung by that experience, I pre-downloaded the Italian vocabulary from the Translate app. That way, when a colleague texted me in Italian, the process was a lot more seamless. Be prepared is the motto of the translation feature, I suppose.

As for the translations themselves, the process is fairly polished for a beta. On phone calls, an AI voice jumps in to tell the person on the other line that they're hearing a translation. You can hear the other person speaking, but the volume drops down so that the live translation is more audible. (A transcript of the translation also appears on your iPhone screen.)

According to my Spanish-speaking colleague, the English translation of his words seemed fairly accurate. Ditto for the texts I received in Italian, though like any translation tool, things like local idioms can get lost. I texted that "I know a guy," and I'm told in Italian, that usually translates to "I know a boy." That's hardly an Apple Intelligence-specific limitation, though — just the reality that AI-powered translation tools aren't bullet-proof.

Oh, and the teenage boy that lives inside all of us will be delighted to know that Apple's translation feature doesn't filter out any saltier words that might come up in conversation. To test that out, my colleague texted me an R-rated version of "What are you doing?" and I can assure you that nothing was lost in the translation.

Note that supported languages are limited for the translation tools right now. Phone calls and FaceTime chats work with English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish. Translation support in Messages is slightly more extensive, adding Italian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean to those other languages.

iOS 26: The Phone app's new screening tools

While Apple's focus may be on the look of its software, it has added some new tools to iOS 26, and one of the most exciting is the new call screening feature added to the Phone app. It's not that this is a particularly unique capability — Google's Pixel phones have offered call screening for a while now — but if it means any relief from the daily deluge of robocalls on my iPhone, I'll welcome this addition.

Enable Screen Incoming Calls in the Phone app's settings in iOS 26, and any unknown caller will be greeted by a recording asking them to state their name and business. Your phone won't even ring — instead, you'll receive a notification with a transcript of that message. In my testing, the message popped up in the Dynamic Island on my iPhone 15 Pro, and I could tap to pick up the call. The recorded message also shows up in your voice mail in case you miss the call or don't answer.

I've only tried out call screening with a few incoming calls, and it works out pretty well. I'll be interested to see how robocallers will respond to the feature — will they just launch into their pitch when asked to identify themselves or will the call screening feature be able to recognize there's not a real person on the other end of the line and simply hang up? Either way, I'm hoping this means I'll no longer involuntarily flinch the next time my phone rings, as I brace myself for another unsolicited call.

The Phone app picks up some other smarts, too, in the form of Hold Assist. When you're placed on hold, the Phone app should detect that after a bit and offer to wait on the line for you. I confess that I got a bit antsy waiting for that to happen and launched Hold Assist on my own through the More menu in the Phone app.

However you launch Hold Assist, the feature detects when a live person jumps on the call, sending you an on-screen alert to return to the call. Using Hold Assist, I was able to go about my business while waiting on hold with Amazon's customer service department, with a notification appearing once I was taken off hold.

While call screening and Hold Assist tap into some on-device smarts, they're not Apple Intelligence features, meaning older phones should be able to benefit from the new Phone app features as well. There will be restrictions on supported languages, though.

Changes in the Phone app also include what Apple bills as a unified look to combine recent calls with favorites and voicemails. If you don't like the layout, you can always switch back to the old look, similar to how last year's iOS 18 update gave you a choice between unified and traditional layouts for the Mail app. The unified look in Phones feels a little squished for my tastes, but I'm willing to give it some time to grow on me.

iOS 26: Messages additions

Among existing apps on the iPhone, Messages sees the biggest changes as part of iOS 26, with most of the additions aimed at improving your group chats.

Specifically, you can now conduct polls in group chats, helpful for things like trying to decide where to eat, planning weekend activities or — if you're me in my family text chain — picking something to stream on movie night. The polls feature is also available in individual chats for those times when you want to make a multiple choice decision as clear as possible, but really, the benefit here is providing different people with a way to easily sound off on their preferences.

You can now send Apple Cash payments in group chats, just like you could to individuals. Group chats gain typing indicators, too, which Apple calls a much-requested feature, even if it's not much of a game-changer from my perspective.

More significant in my opinion is the ability to filter out unknown senders similar to the call screening capabilities added to the Phone app. In the settings for Messages, you can now enable a Screen Unknown Senders toggle that will route messages from anyone not in your contacts to a separate section of the app. You won't be notified of these incoming messages, sparring your from interruptions from delivery services with packages you've never ordered or shady job recruiters making spammy offers.

The trick is whether one-time text alerts — say, those containing sign-in credentials from two-factor authentication or notifications that your table is ready at a restaurant — will make it through. Apple suggests this won't happen, but I can't confirm, as I haven't been testing iOS 26 on my regular iPhone, which has limited the kinds of texts I've been receiving on my test models. Once I upgrade my daily phone to iOS 26 — which will happen now that the public beta is out — I'll be able to add my own experience with this feature.

One final addition to Messages allows you to put images in the background of your message screens — for instance, a photo of Hawaii for a group chat I have with the people I work with on a "Magnum, PI" podcast. It's not a big addition, but it's fully in line with Apple's increasing interest in letting you put your own stamp on its iPhone software.

iOS 26: Another Photos app interface tweak

For iOS 18 last year, Apple implemented a massive Photos redesign that condensed the app into a single screen divided into Photos and Collections. I certainly grew to appreciate the redesign, but I must have been in the minority, because Apple has given Photos another tweak for iOS 26.

Now there are two tabs in the bottom of the screen — Library and Collections — that you use to jump back and forth between the two sections. Scroll through your library, and those tabs give way to Years, Months and All views for drilling deeper into your photos. The new tabs save some scrolling, though the transparent Liquid Glass look can make them hard to spot if they're hovering over photos with darker colors.

Still, I was using a phone that was still running iOS 18 the other day, having drilled deep into my photo library, when I realized I needed to find something housed in the Collections area of the app. After lots of scrolling — and still more scrolling — I found myself thinking, "I could really use a Collections tab like the one in iOS 26 right now." So score one for Apple on its design decisions.

That said, I think the more significant changes to photos are a bunch of tools Apple is adding that help you get more out of the app. New layout tools customize the look of your collections tab, joining the iOS 18 tools that let you personalize the order that Memories, Albums, Pinned Photos and other sections appear in. For photos at concerts and sporting events, Photos will now pull in other information like links to music for the artist at the concert you attended. The feature feels like a work in progress, particularly for sporting events — why not include stats of the games, say? — but I think it adds value to photo collections built around events you've attended.

The Photos addition I appreciate the most is the ability to create spatial photos like the kind you can use to augment the images appearing on your iPhone lock screen. If you've got an iPhone 12 or later, select any photo in your library, and then tap the Spatial Scene button to give the image a 3D-like effect. You're still able to toggle between the standard and spatial shots, though at this point, it doesn't seem like you're able to share the spatial version with other people. Perhaps, that can be added in a future update.

iOS 26: New apps for your iPhone

iOS 26 brings a pair of new apps to your iPhone. Preview takes the PDF reader and markup tool from your Mac and puts it on your iPhone. I suspect this will be a far more welcome addition to iPadOS 26 upgraders, but if you need to mark up or sign documents on the go, and the iPhone is the device you have on hand, Preview will make it a lot easier to handle your business without turning to a third-party app.

Games is easily the more heralded addition in iOS 26. It brings Apple's long-neglected Game Center feature to the forefront in a dedicated app designed to help you discover new games, take on your friends in head-to-head challenges and (definitely not coincidentally) push new subscribers to the Apple Arcade gaming service.

You can launch games directly from the Games app, including ones you haven't played in a long-time. (Games lists every app you've ever downloaded from Apple's store, and if it's not currently on your iPhone, tapping on a long-forgotten game will let you download it anew.) You'll also find gaming recommendations, presumably informed by games you've downloaded and played in the past.

The true value of the Games app will emerge once developers have had a chance to take Apple's developer tools and build out challenges that you and your friends can access through the Play Together tab in Games. If this app encourages more interaction between you and your pals over a little friendly competition, it will turn out to be a welcome iPhone addition; otherwise, it'll be a nice idea that's too easily ignored.

iOS 26: Improvements to existing apps

Every iOS update brings new features to existing apps, and iOS 26 is no exception even with its primary focus being on interface changes. Here are some of the highlights I've come across in my time with the beta.

Reminders: iPhones that support Apple Intelligence will get a boost for the Reminders app, as it can now find relevant tasks and to-dos in emails, texts and web pages to create new reminders for you. I'm an Apple News Plus subscriber, for instance, so I can share a recipe in that app with Reminders to auto-generate a grocery list for the ingredients I'll need.

A more widely available tool in iOS 26 is a new Add Reminder icon for the Control Center. You're also now able to select time zones for individual reminders — helpful if you do a lot of traveling or you have a far-flung team working in different time zones.

Maps: A feature I hope to try more in Maps as I move iOS 26 off my test devices and on to my regular phone is Visited Places. It's designed to automatically log the restaurants, shops and other points of interest you stop by so that you can refer to them later, filling in any blanks in your memory when you try to recall that great taco spot you ate at. Apple says that info is encrypted on your device to allay any privacy concerns.

Another Maps addition, preferred routes, logs the routes you normally take on things like commutes and school drop-offs, so that it can alert you if there are any traffic issues. I work at home myself, but I imagine regular commuters will appreciate this capability if it works as advertised.

Music: Apple Music subscribers who enjoy the sing-along Apple Music Sings feature will be able to get translations of songs in iOS 26. As for the rest of us, we can now pin our favorite artists, songs, albums and playlists to the top of the Library tab for easy access as well as turn on an AutoMix feature for more seamless transitions between one song and the next.

CarPlay: My colleague John Velasco has given CarPlay in iOS 26 a going-over, and he appreciates the addition of widgets and their ability to convey critical info at a glance in the redesign interface. Notifications also look more visible thanks to the Liquid Glass makeover, and tapback support in Messages lets you respond quickly while keeping your eyes on the road.

AirPods: John's also been testing the new AirPods control features that Apple has introduced, such as capturing video or photos by pressing the stem of an H2-based pair of Apple's wireless earbuds. That's a handy addition for content creators who shoot with their iPhone on an out-of-reach tripod.

iOS 26: What's still to come

There are a lot more iOS 26 features I haven't had a chance to test yet, either because there just hasn't been enough time or because they're not yet built into the iOS 26 betas that Apple has put out. Chalk up FaceTime additions to the former category — the video chat app has a new landing page with a tiled design, but I haven't really explored it. Like I said earlier, the people I chat with have yet to upgrade to the iOS 26 beta.

Other big iOS 26 features are still to come. The Wallet app is going to let you create a Digital ID using your US passport for TSA checkpoints on domestic flights — you'll still need a physical passport to go overseas — but that's not coming until later this year. Similarly, the Wallet app is supposed to include things like flight boarding passes with more airport info and the ability to share Live Activities like arrival times with people — I'll weigh in on those additions the next time I take to the friendly skies.

And of course, we're still waiting for the smarter version of Siri that was supposed to arrive in iOS 18, with Apple's digital assistant being able to take action based on the content of your screen. Apple's been clear that this addition needs more time and won't be part of the initial iOS 26 release in the fall. Instead, we'll need to check in on this in 2026.

That said, one Apple Intelligence feature makes a return with the iOS 26 beta. You may remember last year that Apple introduced AI-powered notification summaries. While the ones summarizing your incoming text messages worked more or less, the ones for news and entertainment alerts were less helpful, to the point where Apple disabled the feature. You can turn it back on when you upgrade to iOS 26 on an Apple Intelligence-compatible device, though you can also choose to opt out entirely.

iOS 26: Should you upgrade?

The question of whether to try out software that's still in beta generally boils down to how willing you are to have your workflow thrown for a loop. With iOS 26, the answer better be "extremely willing."

From a practical standpoint, iOS 26 hasn't proven to be particularly buggy in my use, though occasionally, I'll have to quit out of an app and start again if things aren't acting quite like they should. The most persistent problem seems to be dropped sound from older games I've rediscovered through the Games app, which is hardly a show-stopping problem.

You may experience a hit on battery life if you download the iOS 26 beta, though that's a pretty common issue with early releases. Generally, as more updates come out — and they'll be plenty dropping this summer — battery performance improves over time. Still, if you're not prepared for your iPhone to need a charge a little sooner than usual, maybe give the iOS 26 beta a pass for now.

The biggest argument for shrugging and installing the beta on your phone right now is that you get an early start familiarizing yourself with that Liquid Glass look so that you'll be accustomed to all the changes in advance of the full iOS 26 release this fall. And if you do take issue with the change Apple's made, you can turn to the Feedback app included with the beta to let Apple know what's not working. That's the entire point of a public beta, after all.

That said, some people are going to rightly conclude they don't have the patience to learn a new interface right now and put off installing iOS 26. And that's a perfectly rational response — there will be other betas providing other opportunities to get the lay of the iPhone land.

iOS 26 outlook

I'm not totally settled on what I think of iOS 26 at this point, as I'm using the beta process to do exactly what I've told others to do — get used to the layout. There are certainly some additions I'm happy to see, like call screening and Photos improvements, and others that I'm looking forward to trying, like the translation features.

But ultimately, this update is going to rise or fall on how people end up feeling about the new look. And right now, that's very much a work in progress.