Apple’s operating systems are getting new names. If you’re confused by the jump from iOS 18 to iOS 26, that’s understandable. From now on, iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and the rest of Apple’s operating systems will be named by the year after their release. This is similar to how car companies assign model years to vehicles. For example, the version of iOS announced at WWDC is iOS 26, and the one coming out next fall will be iOS 27.
Apple will continue its naming tradition for macOS by choosing California locations — macOS 26 will be known as Tahoe.
Your iPhone is getting a sleek, transparent redesign. At its launch in 2007, the design of iOS took cues from physical objects: The YouTube icon, for instance, was an old-timey TV, the dock at the bottom of the screen looked like metal mesh, and materials such as woodgrain and brushed steel appeared throughout apps. iOS 7 in 2013 moved iPhones away from that skeuomorphic design toward a cleaner, flat-color design. With the launch of iOS 26, Apple bridges the gap between those styles with a design that has touchable physicality while still being clear and easy to understand. The company calls this new design language Liquid Glass.
iPhone menus will have a luminous, frosted-glass appearance with subtle touches of color. Many elements are more rounded and have a subtle sense of depth. And the “liquid” part is quite so: Menus and buttons will respond to your touch, sometimes breaking apart into new menus. The new look supports light and dark modes, as well as a new all-clear mode that applies a semitransparent appearance to your iPhone’s interface.
All of Apple’s devices are getting the Liquid Glass look: Macs, iPads, Apple TV, and Apple Watch will use the same design language and share features. Apple said that this was the first time it had done a total redesign across all of its devices.
Real-time call and text translation will make chatting easier. In Messages, texts will automatically be translated into the recipient’s preferred language. In FaceTime calls, you’ll hear the speaker’s language and see translations displayed as text. This will work in regular phone calls, as well: You and the caller will each hear your preferred spoken language, even if the person you’re calling doesn’t use an iPhone. (This feature will be available only for iPhones that can run Apple Intelligence, meaning the iPhone 15 Pro and later models.)
Real-time translation in Messages will support English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, and simplified Chinese. In FaceTime, translation is limited to English, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish.
Real-time translation is one of the most compelling applications of artificial intelligence, but executing it well is challenging. Google fumbled its own live translation demo onstage at its Google I/O developers conference in May. We’ll have to see if Apple is able to make this tricky feature work successfully.
Camera controls will be easier to use, and the Photos app brings back familiar features. When you open the iPhone Camera app, you’ll be able to choose between shooting video or taking still photos. You can access other options, such as panoramas, with a swipe. More advanced options are hidden but readily accessible.
iOS 18 introduced some confusing changes to the Photos app and made it more difficult to find your library. Good news: In iOS 26, Apple is bringing back tabs for your Library and Collections.
Messages group chats get upgraded with custom backgrounds and polls. Group chats are their own social networks, and now you’ll be able to personalize them even more. You can choose your own background to share in a group chat, or choose from Apple’s premade dynamic backgrounds. Backgrounds sync between devices, so when you open a conversation on your iPad or Mac, you’ll get the same experience.
If your group chat struggles to come to a consensus on, say, where to eat or the nature of existence, you can create a poll to settle disputes. Members can cast their votes and add their own options to the poll, too.
And typing indicators are coming to group chats to display when someone is responding, which might make the family discourse a little less chaotic. (Maybe.)
Spam messages get easier to dodge. The Messages app can now shunt texts from unknown numbers into their own place outside of your inbox. You can respond to them or ignore them. For calls from unknown numbers, your iPhone can now automatically answer and ask the caller for their name and the nature of the call. Only after the caller provides this information will your iPhone ring.
A new Hold Assist feature can save you from being on endless hold. iOS 26 can also detect that on-hold music is playing and offer to keep your place in line. If you accept, you can close the app and go about your business. When you’re taken off hold, iOS 26 will detect it, alert you, and tell the person that you’re on your way back.
Use your iPhone and Apple TV for at-home karaoke. You can now use iPhones as microphones to sing along with Apple Music on Apple TV. Your voice is amplified through the TV, and friends can respond with emoji reactions and pick the next track. On the iPhone, Apple Music supports new animated album art on the lock screen and displays lyric translations and pronunciations. (I’m personally excited to understand what my new favorite Korean folktronic album is actually about.)
CarPlay’s redesign lets you focus on driving. CarPlay, which turns your dashboard into a touchscreen interface, will now keep important information such as maps front and center even when you receive calls or notifications. (No more getting lost because you decided to answer a loved one’s call.) You can now use widgets and view live activities, such as flight status, on the display, too.
You can share flight updates from the Wallet app. Digital boarding passes are being refreshed with a new design. You can also view airport information and share flight status from within the Wallet app, so family or friends can see where you are.
You can take a screenshot to search what’s on your screen. Previously Apple’s Visual Intelligence could view the world through your camera, doing things such as identifying businesses and capturing event details from posters. With iOS 26, when you take a screenshot you’ll have added options along the bottom to access Visual Intelligence. If you screenshot an event announcement, for example, Apple Intelligence can record the details. On stage, Apple showed off using Visual Intelligence to find a lamp that had been discussed in a post on social media.
These features are similar to Google’s Circle to Search feature for Android, and they reflect a larger effort on Apple’s part to expand the context that Apple Intelligence tools can access.
Apple is launching a new all-in-one gaming app. The new Games app provides easy access to browse the games you already own and view titles available through the Apple Arcade subscription service. The app also attempts to streamline finding friends for multiplayer games and offers a centralized place for stats and leaderboards. In addition, Apple is creating a Challenge mode, so you can compete against your friends to get the top score in single-player games.
Like the updated Messages and Phone apps, the new Games app is cross-platform: You’ll be able to see stats and invite friends to play on macOS as well.
But the smarter Siri is still a ways off. At last year’s WWDC, Apple previewed a vision for Siri that used AI to understand both your personal context — who you know and what you do — and what you’re looking at on your phone. This year, Apple said that those features weren’t yet up to snuff, and that the company would have more to share on that later this year.
