iOS 26 public beta now available with new design and more

The iOS 26 public beta is now available, the next major update for iPhone software. iOS 26 brings an all-new Liquid Glass design, updates to your favorite iPhone apps and features, and much more.

Yes, iOS 26

If you haven’t been paying attention, you might be a little confused when you see “iOS 26” pop up on your iPhone. After all, the last major software update for iPhone was iOS 18. What happened to the other numbers? Well, the gist is that Apple is unifying all of its software platforms with the “26” version number to align with the calendar year.

iOS 26 will be used primarily throughout 2026, hence the new “26” naming scheme. I’m personally a huge fan of this rebrand, as someone who has made countless typos over the years trying to keep track of the varying version numbers across each of Apple’s platforms.

iOS 26 device compatibility

Here are the devices compatible with iOS 26:

• iPhone 16e
• iPhone 16
• iPhone 16 Plus
• iPhone 16 Pro
• iPhone 16 Pro Max
• iPhone 15
• iPhone 15 Plus
• iPhone 15 Pro
• iPhone 15 Pro Max
• iPhone 14
• iPhone 14 Plus
• iPhone 14 Pro
• iPhone 14 Pro Max
• iPhone 13
• iPhone 13 mini
• iPhone 13 Pro
• iPhone 13 Pro Max
• iPhone 12
• iPhone 12 mini
• iPhone 12 Pro
• iPhone 12 Pro Max
• iPhone 11
• iPhone 11 Pro
• iPhone 11 Pro Max
• iPhone SE (2nd generation and later)

Liquid Glass redesign

iOS 26 is the biggest redesign to the iPhone’s software since iOS 13 debuted in 2013. Apple says that the new interface, which Apple calls Liquid Glass, is designed to bring “brings more focus to content and a new level of vitality while maintaining the familiarity of Apple’s software.”

Here’s Alan Dye, Apple’s vice president of Human Interface Design, describing Liquid Glass:

“This is our broadest software design update ever. Meticulously crafted by rethinking the fundamental elements that make up our software, the new design features an entirely new material called Liquid Glass. It combines the optical qualities of glass with a fluidity only Apple can achieve, as it transforms depending on your content or context. It lays the foundation for new experiences in the future and, ultimately, it makes even the simplest of interactions more fun and magical.”

The Liquid Glass redesign touches every aspect of the iPhone’s software experience. You’ll see new icons, new buttons, new menus, and much more.

Liquid Glass also extends to the animations throughout iOS. Animations are more fluid and responsive to your touch, bubbling up to the surface as you tap and scroll.

Phone app

iOS 26 is chock full of new features beyond the Liquid Glass redesign. It might sound boring, but the Phone app has been completely revamped in iOS 26.

First, there’s a new unified layout in the Phone app that combines Favorites, Recents, and Voicemails into a single interface. I’m a big fan of this new design, but Apple has also added an option to switch back to the old interface if the new one doesn’t click for you.

iOS 26 also brings a pair of new features to the Phone app. There’s a Call Screening feature that Apple says “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.” When an unknown number calls you, your iPhone will pick up the call and ask the person for their name and reason for calling. Based on the information they provide, you can decide whether to answer the call.

There’s also a new Hold Assist feature that kicks in when you’re placed on hold. It detects when a human has picked up the call on the other end, so you don’t have to sit and awkwardly listen to hold music.

More new features in the Phone app:

• A new interface to filter out unknown callers
• SharePlay support while on a phone call
• Voicemail summaries powered by Apple Intelligence

Messages

Messages is the most important app for many iPhone users, and it’s getting a wide array of new features as part of iOS 26. From a visual perspective, the flagship change is the ability to set custom backgrounds for conversations in the Messages app. You can choose backgrounds from a default collection of options or from your Photos library. You can also generate a completely unique background using the Image Playgrounds feature of Apple Intelligence.

iOS 26 also adds polls to the Messages app. You can use this for things like picking a restaurant for dinner, deciding which movie to see, and much more. Polls display votes in real-time, making it easy to follow along with people’s preferences. There’s also Apple Intelligence integration, which can detect when a poll could be useful and automatically generate options.

The new Messages app in iOS 26 also makes it easier to filter out spam and unknown senders. There’s a new filtering option in the upper-right corner with a handful of different settings designed to make it easier to combat the ever-increasing spam messages problem.

For group messages, iOS 26 has several notable upgrades, including typing indicators (finally!), support for Apple Cash, and the ability to quickly add new contacts in groups with a dedicated “Add Contact” button.”

More new features in the Messages app:

• Upgraded search with improved natural language and related results
• Improved text selection, allowing you to select only parts of a message’s bubble
• Redesigned conversation details interface so it’s easier to find photos, links, and more that have been shared in a thread

Camera app

The Camera app has received a dramatic overhaul as part of iOS 26. The new design aims to streamline your access to the most common features, like simply taking a photo or video. Apple, however, hasn’t removed the other features from the Camera app; you can access all of the same features as before by swiping left, right, up, and down on the interface.

More new features in the Camera app:

• Lens cleaning hint for when you should wipe off your iPhone’s lenses
• Take a photo or video by pressing the stem of your AirPods or AirPods Pro

Photos app

The Photos app underwent a significant redesign with iOS 18 last year, implementing a unique single-tab design. With iOS 26, Apple listened to user feedback and added a two-tabbed design to split up your “Library” and “Collections” into separate interfaces.

More new features in the Photos app:

• New options to customize the density and layout of the Collections view
• View your Photos with new depth effects as part of spatial scenes
• View details for events in the Photos app

Music app

Apple Music continues to leapfrog Spotify in iOS 26 with several new features. First, there’s a new AutoMix capability that uses AI to analyze the audio features of your music to seamlessly create transitions between songs, resulting in what Apple describes as a DJ-like listening experience for all Apple Music users.

The lyrics feature in iOS 26 is also even more powerful. When listening to a song in a foreign language, you’ll now see translations for the lyrics. Meanwhile, a Lyrics Pronunciation feature makes it easy to sing along to songs even if you don’t know the language.

Finally, you can now pin your favorite songs, playlists, albums, artists, and more to the top of your “Library” tab in the Music app. This makes it easier to have quick access to your favorites and ensures that nothing gets lost in the shuffle.

CarPlay

iOS 26 brings massive improvements to CarPlay. CarPlay gets the Liquid Glass redesign, with new icons, refreshed user interface elements, and more.

Most notably, iOS 26 adds support for widgets to CarPlay. You now have a dedicated screen on your CarPlay interface where you can add any widget from your iPhone, including things like the Home app, Calendar, Weather, and more. The number of widgets you can have will vary based on the size of your CarPlay display.

iOS 26 also brings Live Activities to CarPlay for the first time, so Live Activities will show up your CarPlay screen just like they do on iPhone.

More CarPlay changes in iOS 26:

• A new Smart Display Zoom option to increase the density of your CarPlay interface
• Tapback support for reading to Messages
• Incoming calls no longer take over your entire screen, but rather appear as a banner at the bottom.
• New “video in the car” feature, but it requires adoption from both developers and automakers
• Handoff support with AirPods

New Apple Games app

iOS 26 also adds a brand new app to your iPhone’s Home Screen: “Apple Games.” The new Apple Games app is meant to serve as a central location for all your App Store games, leaderboards, challenges, and more.

Here’s how Apple describes it:

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.

Apple Maps

Apple Maps is adding two big new features as part of iOS 26 this year:

• Preferred Routes: Your iPhone automatically picks up on your regular travel patterns, like the drive from home to work. The Maps widget gives you a snapshot of your usual route, helping you plan ahead. If there’s a major delay, you’ll get a commute notification with an alternate path, even if you haven’t started a route in Maps.
• Visited Places: Your iPhone can recognize places you go to, such as restaurants or stores. These spots are saved to your Maps places library, where you can view or share them with a single tap. Your visit history is private, and you can delete entries anytime with a quick swipe.

Apple Intelligence

Apple launched Apple Intelligence to the public last year, and this year’s release of iOS 26 continues the platform’s evolution. We have a full post on everything new with Apple Intelligence in this year’s Apple software updates, so check that out for more details on these features.

Visual Intelligence upgrades

Visual Intelligence is even more powerful in iOS 26, now with the ability to learn more about the content on your iPhone’s screen by taking a screenshot. When you take a screenshot, you’ll have the option to send it to Visual Intelligence to add events to your calendar, search Google and third-party apps, send it to ChatGPT, and more. You can also highlight something on your screen and specify that you want to search for it.

Apple explains:

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.

Live Translation

Live Translation is perhaps the most impressive new Apple Intelligence feature in iOS 26. The feature is enabled by Apple-built models that run entirely on your device, so your conversations stay private.

Live Translation is available in Messages, Phone, and FaceTime to help you communicate with others in different languages. Audio and text is translated in real-time.

In the Messages app, Live Translation will automatically translate incoming texts to your preferred language. Then, you can type your response in your preferred language and it is translated when it’s delivered to the other person. In FaceTime, Live Translation shows translated captions that appear on your screen, while you continue to hear the other person’s voice. In the Phone app, you can translate a phone call and hear the other person’s words translated and spoken in real time.

Shortcuts

Shortcuts is supercharged by Apple Intelligence in iOS 26. There’s a collection of new intelligent actions that let you create shortcuts with actions for Writing Tools and Image Playground. The most notable addition to Shortcuts, however, is a new “Use Model” action to communicate directly with Apple’s models as well as ChatGPT:

Users will be able to tap directly into Apple Intelligence models, either on-device or with Private Cloud Compute, to generate responses that feed into the rest of their shortcut, maintaining the privacy of information used in the shortcut. For example, a student can build a shortcut that uses the Apple Intelligence model to compare an audio transcription of a class lecture to the notes they took, and add any key points they may have missed. Users can also choose to tap into ChatGPT to provide responses that feed into their shortcut.

Upgrades to Genmoji and Image Playground

iOS 26 makes updates to two of the flagship Apple Intelligence features. With Genmoji, you can now combine multiple emoji to make new Genmoji, add expressions, and adjust personal attributes for your Genmoji creations.

Image Playground also now supports adding expressions and changing personal attributes like hairstyles and facial hair. Most notably, however, Image Playground now integrates with ChatGPT. This means you have multiple options when creating images:

• Use a new “Any Style” option to describe the image you want and create it with ChatGPT.
• Use Apple’s models to create images in Sketch, Illustration, and Animation styles.
• Use pre-selected styles from ChatGPT: Watercolor and Oil Painting

More Apple Intelligence changes

In addition to those flagship changes, you’ll find Apple Intelligence features sprinkled in throughout the rest of iOS 26:

• New order tracking capabilities in Apple Wallet
• Generate backgrounds and polls in Messages
• Automatic identification and categorization of items in Reminders

Much, much more

This is just the tip of the iceberg when ti comes to new features in iOS 26. The update is crammed full of updates to all your favorite Apple apps and features.

9to5Mac’s Take

Perhaps this year, more than any other year, I’m on the edge of my seat waiting to see the public’s reaction to iOS 26. It’s by far Apple’s most ambitious update to the iPhone’s software in years, headlined, of course, by the new Liquid Glass design.

Throughout the beta testing process with developers, it would be an understatement to say that Liquid Glass has been polarizing. Watching Apple respond to that feedback over the last 6 weeks has been fascinating.

I think Apple would be the first to admit that some aspects of the design in iOS 26 beta 1 were unusable. There were issues with text legibility, jarring and aggressive animations, and a complete mess of Control Center. Apple made several changes to the design with iOS 26 beta 2, honing in things like Control Center to improve usability.

With iOS 26 beta 3, Apple made drastic changes to the entire Liquid Glass interface. It swapped out transparent toolbars for a more frosted and opaque design. These changes were seemingly meant to address concerns around text legibility. The problem, however, at least in my opinion, was that beta 3 went too far. It strayed too far from the Liquid Glass vision that Apple debuted at WWDC. So much of the whimsy and joy of using iOS 26 was stripped away.

That brings us to where we are today. Apple shipped iOS 26 beta 4 to developers on Tuesday, and it tries to find a middle ground between beta 2 and beta 3. iOS 26 beta 4 also serves as the basis of today’s iOS 26 public beta, so it represents the first experience that many iPhone users will have with Liquid Glass.

The version of Liquid Glass in iOS 26 beta 4 is ambitious, fun, and whimsical. I’m actually surprised that Apple made such a course correction. I expected the interface to be closer to beta 3 than beta 2, and I imagine that might be where we ultimately land when iOS 26 ships to the public in September. For example, there are still text legibility issues that Apple needs to solve, specifically when you have navigation bars overlapping with text behind them.

I also think it’s important not to get caught up in the variations from one beta to the next, and instead zoom out and look at iOS 26 and Liquid Glass as a whole. Is this new design language strong enough to serve as the basis of the iPhone’s software experience for the next decade? I think the answer is a resounding yes. The iPhone hasn’t undergone a fundamental software redesign since iOS 7 was released in 2013. There have been gradual iterations and changes in the last twelve years, but there hasn’t been a drastic year-over-year change like what we saw from iOS 6 to iOS 7.

There is so much I love about Liquid Glass. It’s absolutely delightful to use, thanks to the transparency and vibrant animations. The way it reflects and refracts content is wonderful. The new spatial features and adaptive clcok design take the Lock Screen to the next level.

It’s incredibly ambitious for Apple. The iPhone install base is even bigger now than it was in 2013. The iPhone is a more mature platform with more features and intricacies than in 2013. Liquid Glass is a risk, but a risk that I think comes with enormous payoff in giving Apple the ability to set the design standard for the next decade.

Looking beyond Liquid Glass, iOS 26 has a number of features that stand out to me.

The CarPlay updates in iOS 26 are fantastic. I wrote earlier this year that I was worried about CarPlay becoming abandonware as Apple shifted its focus to CarPlay Ultra. With iOS 26, Apple has proven that it’s still invested in the version of CarPlay that’s available on millions of cars today, not just Aston Martins.

I think AutoMix in Apple Music has the legs to become a viral feature. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it throughout my time with iOS 26, and it does a great job at crafting unique and fun transitions from one song to the next.

There are also just a ton of small features that I’ve already come to appreciate in iOS 26. The new filtering options in Messages, Visited Places in Apple Maps, estimated charge times in the Lock Screen, and much more.

What are you most excited to try in iOS 26? Are you going to install the public beta? Let us know down in the comments.

My favorite iPhone accessories:

Follow Chance: Threads, Bluesky, Instagram, and Mastodon. 

Keep track of your essentials with the Apple AirTag 4 Pack, the ultimate tracking solution for your belongings. With over 5,972 ratings and a stellar 4.7-star average, this product has quickly become a customer favorite. Over 10,000 units were purchased in the past month, solidifying its status as a highly rated Amazon Choice product.

For just $79.98, you can enjoy peace of mind knowing your items are always within reach. Order now for only $79.98 at Amazon!

Help Power Techcratic’s Future – Scan To Support

If Techcratic’s content and insights have helped you, consider giving back by supporting the platform with crypto. Every contribution makes a difference, whether it’s for high-quality content, server maintenance, or future updates. Techcratic is constantly evolving, and your support helps drive that progress.

As a solo operator who wears all the hats, creating content, managing the tech, and running the site, your support allows me to stay focused on delivering valuable resources. Your support keeps everything running smoothly and enables me to continue creating the content you love. I’m deeply grateful for your support, it truly means the world to me! Thank you!