Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is a peek into the close to way forward for the iPhone, and this 12 months, that view is thru a Liquid Glass lens. That is the title of a brand new look being utilized all through the Apple product line that takes on visible traits of glass just like the VisionOS interface on Imaginative and prescient Professional. Along with the brand new look, iOS 26 (numbered to coincide with 2026, the brand new naming conference for all of Apple’s system releases) brings enhancements to the Telephone app, redesigned Digital camera and Images apps, a sprinkling of Apple Intelligence and way more.
The subsequent model of the working system is because of ship within the fall (doubtless with new iPhone 17 models), however developer betas are available 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 allows a 3rd strategy 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 obvious glass with no shade. Lock screens may have an enhanced 3D impact utilizing spatial scenes, which use machine studying to provide depth to your background photographs.
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 shade of objects behind and close to controls. However it’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: Apple Unveils Liquid Glass, a New Design Language
Digital camera and Images apps go much more minimal
The Digital camera app is getting a brand new, simplified interface. You might 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 incorporates a “new, extra intuitive design” that takes minimalism to the intense. The streamlined design exhibits simply two controls: Video or Digital camera. Swipe left or proper to decide on modes. Swipe up for settings comparable to side ratio and timers, and faucet for extra preferences.
With the up to date Images app, viewing the images you seize needs to be a greater expertise — a welcome change that customers have clamored for since iOS 18’s cluttered try. As an alternative of an extended, difficult-to-discover scrolling interface, Images regains a Liquid Glass menu on the backside of the display.
The Images app will get a welcome redesign.
The Telephone app will get a revamp
The Telephone app has saved extra carefully to the look of its supply than others: a sparse interface with massive buttons as if you happen to’re holding an old style headset or pre-smartphone cellphone. iOS 26 lastly updates that look not simply with the brand new total interface however in a unified structure that takes benefit of the bigger display actual property on right this moment’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 appears to be like which are totally different, although. The Telephone app is making an attempt to be extra helpful for coping with precise calls — those you need to take. The Name Screening function robotically solutions calls from unknown numbers, and your telephone rings solely when the caller shares their title 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 stay agent turns into out there, the telephone rings and lets the agent know you will be out there shortly.
Messages updates
The Messages app might be some of the used apps on the iPhone, and for iOS 26, Apple is making it a extra colourful expertise. You possibly can add backgrounds to the chat window, together with dynamic backgrounds that exhibit the brand new Liquid Glass interface.
Enliven your each 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 search out out which restaurant Brett steered for lunch that you just missed. Different members within the chat may 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 need to see and never those that distract you.
Safari will get out of its personal approach
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 fascinating to see if you happen to can transfer the bar to the highest of the display). As you scroll, the tab bar shrinks.
Internet pages occupy your entire display and the handle 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 buddy 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 while you need to sing together with one in every of her favourite Okay-pop songs, for instance, however you do not communicate or learn Korean, a lyrics pronunciation function spells out the fitting strategy to type 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’ll be able to pin them to the highest of your music library for fast entry.
Maintain the beat going with intelligence-based track transitions utilizing AutoMix.
New Video games app is a reminder that sure, folks sport 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.
Making an attempt to capitalize on that, a brand new Video games app acts as a particular portal to Apple Arcade and different video games. Sure, you will get to these from the App Retailer app, however the Video games app is designed to take away a layer of friction so you will 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 gadget.
Stay translation enhances calls and texts
Though not particular to iOS, Apple’s new stay translation function is right on the iPhone while 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 out there within the Messages, FaceTime and Telephone apps and exhibits stay 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 fashionable areas or restructuring the way in which you retailer areas. Now, the app takes word of routes you journey continuously and may warn you of any delays earlier than you get on the street.
A Maps widget exhibits 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 search out the following time.
New CarPlay options
Liquid Glass additionally makes its strategy 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’ll be able to apply tapbacks and pin conversations for straightforward entry.
Widgets at the moment are a part of the CarPlay expertise, so you’ll be able to deal with simply the info you need, like the present climate situations. And Stay Actions seem on the CarPlay display, so you will know when that espresso you ordered will likely be accomplished or when a buddy’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 automotive keys and for storing tickets and passes. In iOS 26, you’ll be able to create a brand new Digital ID that acts like a passport for age and identification verification (although it doesn’t exchange a bodily passport) for home journey for TSA screening at airports.
The app may allow you to use rewards and arrange installment funds while you buy objects in a retailer, not only for on-line orders. And with the assistance of Apple Intelligence, the Pockets app might help you monitor product orders, even if you happen to didn’t use Apple Pay to buy them. It will probably pull particulars comparable to delivery numbers from emails and texts in order that data is multi function place.
The Pockets app helps authorized state IDs and nationwide IDs for age and identification verification.
New options powered by Apple Intelligence
Though final 12 months’s WWDC featured Apple Intelligence options closely, enhancements to the AI tech had been much less outstanding this 12 months, folded into the bulletins through the WWDC keynote.
As a substitute for creating Genmoji from scratch, you’ll be able to mix present emojis — “like a sloth and a lightweight bulb while you’re the final one within the group chat to get the joke,” to make use of Apple’s instance. You may as well change expressions in Genmoji of individuals that you’ve got used to create the picture.
Mix present emoji utilizing Apple Intelligence.
Image Playground provides the power to faucet into ChatGPT’s picture era instruments to transcend the app’s animation or sketch types.
Visible Intelligence can already use the digital camera to attempt to decipher what’s in entrance of the lens. Now the know-how 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 search out outcomes throughout the net or in different apps comparable to Etsy.
That is additionally a approach so as to add occasion particulars from pictures you come throughout, like posters for live shows or massive 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 little thing matches right into a keynote presentation — even, or perhaps particularly, when it is all pre-recorded — however among the extra fascinating new features in iOS 26 went unremarked through the massive reveal. For example:
- You probably have AirPods or AirPods Professional with the H2 chip, you should utilize AirPods Digital camera Distant to begin recording video in your iPhone by urgent and holding one of many AirPods.
- You possibly can select your individual snooze length 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 include the H2 chip.
- Accessibility options embrace 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 based mostly on emails or different textual content in your gadget.”
- The Journal app helps a number of journals, inline pictures 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 will likely be launched in September or October with new iPhone 17 models. 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 live blog 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 era and later). That features:
- iPhone 16e
- iPhone 16
- iPhone 16 Plus
- iPhone 16 Pro
- iPhone 16 Pro 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 era and later)
