Apple’s iOS 26: A Big Redesign and Much More
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As expected, the highlight of today’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote was an all-new design coming to Apple’s operating systems this year. This design won’t be solely for the iPhone and iPad; this year, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS are also joining the party.
Apple’s decision to give everything a fresh coat of paint isn’t just change for the sake of change. Sure, it’s been 12 years since the last time iOS saw such substantial changes, but we’ve also seen the company’s software diverging in odd ways. While iPadOS and iOS have always been joined at the hip — they weren’t even distinct operating systems until 2019 — Apple’s user experiences on its other platforms have always felt more loosely affiliated with the iPhone and iPad.
The most significant goal of the new design language this year, which Apple has dubbed “Liquid Glass,” is to unify its operating systems, bringing a familiar look and feel across the entire family. Mac users will feel more at home when picking up an iPhone, and vice-versa. Plus, the Vision Pro, which became an outlier with its more spatially oriented software, now blends properly into the family — or, maybe it’s more appropriate to say the rest of the family follows its lead.
Apple has also clearly signaled its desire for software unity this year by shaking up its version numbers to accompany the new design. As a late May rumor suggested, this year’s releases will be numbered “26” across the board: iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26, tvOS 26, visionOS 26, and watchOS 26. These are based on the upcoming release year; people will be using iOS 26 on their iPhones for more time in 2026 than in 2025 — and some may not even get there until next year.
Enter ‘Liquid Glass’
Rumors of an iOS redesign began circulating in early 2024, shortly after the Vision Pro was released. Some leakers predicted that Apple was planning to redesign iOS 18 to match the Vision Pro user interface; however, we’ll probably never know if that was ever on the drawing board inside Apple Park or if the leakers jumped the gun. Either way, the redesign is here now, and it’s both bigger and smaller than what we expected.
It’s bigger because it encompasses more than just the iPhone. In the same way that Apple Intelligence was the central theme of last year’s WWDC, all eyes were on the redesign this year. Tim Cook and Craig Federighi kicked off the keynote as usual, but the first standalone presentation was by Alan Dye, Apple’s vice president of Human Interface and one of the torch-bearers of Jony Ive’s legacy within Apple.
While Dye used iOS 7 on the iPhone as an example of Apple’s last major software redesign, his presentation on the new “Liquid Glass” design covered the entire spectrum of Apple’s products, setting the stage for the iOS 26 unveiling that would come next.
It’s the broadest design update Apple has ever undertaken, but while it’s based on visionOS, as many have predicted, it doesn’t go as far or deep as some of those predictions. Many believed the new design would mimic visionOS to the point of abandoning the longstanding square icons in favor of circles across the board.
Thankfully, that didn’t happen. Instead, we get a new user interface that looks remarkably like the one in iOS 18, just with more translucency and depth. At a glance, you’d be hard-pressed to think that the iOS 26 Home Screen looks that different, but the changes are apparent once you examine it more closely.
However, the design changes become even more evident once you delve into the individual apps. Menus, buttons, and text input fields now have a transparent look that mirrors the optical qualities of glass in a very natural and realistic way. They refract light and dynamically react to movement. That’s all thanks to the powerful A-series chips in Apple’s latest iPhones.
It also powers a new “Clear” look for the Home Screen. Last year, iOS 18 gave us the ability to set light, dark, or tinted app icons; iOS 26 will let you make them translucent, just like glass.
What Else is New in iOS 26?
While there’s little doubt that the new design stole the show — at least as far as Apple is concerned — it’s not all that’s coming in Apple’s next major iPhone software release.
Some features are inspired by the new design, while others are core enhancements with little or nothing to do with it. Here’s a quick rundown of everything Apple announced today.
Lock Screen
This is where the liquid glass motif inspires some interesting changes. For one thing, swiping up on the Lock Screen now provides a glass edge that makes it feel like you’re sliding away a pane of glass with an all-clear look.
Apple has also added more dynamic wallpapers into the mix to make the most of your Lock Screen photos. The clock will now dynamically scale its width and height to match your photo, avoiding blocking the subject while also not wasting any excessive space.
Along the same lines, the wallpaper will adapt to ensure the best part of the photo remains in view as notifications come in. Even though the new glassy design is translucent enough to see your wallpaper, this will ensure it’s not blocked. Wallpapers can also now take advantage of Spatial Scenes to provide stunning 3D effects against your normal 2D photos.
Another last-minute prediction that turned out to be true is that the Lock Screen will now support full-screen animated artwork, which looks even more natural against the glassy playback controls.
The Camera App
One of the earliest rumors of a redesign this year was centred around Apple’s Camera app, and it turned out to be largely on the mark.
There’s little argument that the Camera app has started to get cluttered. As Apple has added more features over the years that required new controls, it’s become downright overwhelming. Apple partially addressed this on the iPhone 16 lineup in iOS 18 by giving us the Camera Control and making everything go away when it was in use, but that doesn’t really solve the problem.
With iOS 26, Apple has gone with a more minimalist presentation that puts the two most-used controls — Photo and Video — at the bottom. You can swipe over to see the other usual suspects like Slo-Mo and Panorama, but they’re out of sight unless you want them.
Thanks to Apple’s newfound love for glass panels, swiping up and accessing other controls now presents all of them in a single view, so there’s no more swiping and hunting for the setting you want to change.
Photos
Apple made some significant changes to the Photos app last year that weren’t as eagerly embraced as some of its designers likely expected. While it’s not making a complete turnaround, it is walking some of those back in iOS 26, employing the new design to provide the best of both worlds.
Instead of swiping down to access an often-cluttered section of albums and other collections, Apple has placed three translucent glassy buttons at the bottom, providing quick access to Library, Collections, and Search.
The demonstration didn’t spend much more time on that, so it’s hard to say what the Collections view will look like. We’re guessing it will be similar to what we see now in iOS 18, just accessed more intuitively.
Safari
Apple is also using its new liquid glass design to provide a more edge-to-edge Safari experience. While all the familiar elements are there, they’ve been moved up into the glass layer so they hover above the web page and disappear when they’re not needed.
Facetime
In addition to the liquid glass treatment that keeps the controls out of the way, Apple has also redesigned the landing page to provide a more graphically rich view of your friends and family, complete with personalized contact posters.
Phone
The Phone app is getting a big redesign in iOS 26, not only adopting liquid glass but also moving to a more unified layout, kind of like the Photos app did last year.
Apple is borrowing a page from the Messages app, placing your favorites at the top in the same way pinned contacts appear in Messages, and combining recent calls and voicemails in a single list. It toyed with that in last year’s iOS 18 betas but pulled before the final release.
When we encountered it last summer, it seemed like a sensible layout, as it saves you a trip to a separate “Voicemail” tab. Not to mention the double badge count you end up with when you have both a missed call and a voicemail from that caller. The bottom tab bar has been removed in favor of glassy buttons for Contacts and Keypad, which still live in their own sections.
Apple will also use Apple Intelligence to summarize voicemails on this screen so you can see what the person was talking about at a glance.
Intelligence Call Screening and Hold Assist features are also finally coming to the iPhone. These have been available in the Android world for a while, most notably on Google’s Pixel phones, and from how Apple described it, we expect they’ll work in much the same way.
Call Screening will automatically answer calls from unknown numbers silently, asking the person what they’re calling about. Once they describe it, you’ll get a text to let you know what they want, and then you can choose to answer or decline the call.
Hold Assist will offer to take over when you’re placed on hold. It autodetects hold music and offers to fold the call into the background so you can move on with other things, automatically notifying you to pick back up when a live agent becomes available.
Messages
While Apple’s Messages app has pulled ahead of the competition in some areas, such as the ability to edit and unsend messages, it lags behind in others. This year, it’s coming in from behind again by adding backgrounds and polls for group chats.
These will be readily familiar to anyone who has used nearly any other messaging app on the planet. You can choose from a set of dynamic backgrounds, any photo from your library, or an Image Playground-generated image.
Polls work exactly how you’d expect, with the additional twist that Apple Intelligence-capable devices will also be able to suggest a poll when one is appropriate. As with Apple’s other AI features, this relies solely on on-device processing, so your chats aren’t sent to any AI clouds in the sky.
Apple is also adding Apple Cash support for Group Chats to make it easier to collect for joint ventures like gifts or to recoup the costs of a night out. Group Chats are also finally getting typing indicators, so you know when someone is about to say something.
Genmoji and Image Playground
Apple Intelligence wasn’t nearly as prominent at this year’s WWDC, and Apple didn’t really announce any groundbreaking new features. However, it made a point of talking about how many little AI-powered things had been baked in throughout its operating systems. It also announced two small but interesting enhancements to its AI image generation tools.
Genmoji will gain the ability to mix any two standard emojis to create a new one. You can use a default combination or refine it further with a description. You’ll also be able to easily change expressions when creating a Genmoji based on the picture of a friend or family member.
Image Playground will add support for ChatGPT to let you use the more advanced AI system to create new images. This will empower new styles, and while it will send your requests to ChatGPT to process these images, it won’t do so without your permission.
Live Translation
Perhaps the most prominent AI-powered feature in this year’s iOS 26 release is Live Translation. Apple is integrating translation features into Messages, FaceTime, and Phones to translate conversations on the fly — all entirely on-device.
Translation in Messages works much like you’d expect, although it can be done transparently. Messages you send will also be auto-translated into the other party’s language. We’re not sure how that will be determined, but presumably, it can rely on the default language of the sending and receiving devices or a language specified by the chat members.
For FaceTime, live captions will translate what the other person is saying into text-based subtitles. However, during Phone calls, it will actually be translated live into synthesized speech as you talk (and as the other person talks to you).
While this is similar to the AirPods “Universal Translator” feature we heard rumored over the past few months, Apple had nothing to say about translating real-world conversations. Either those rumors were off the mark, or Apple is holding that back for a fall announcement.
Music
Apple Music will be able to translate song lyrics and help you pronounce them. Plus, a new AutoMix feature will leverage AI to mix between songs more seamlessly, like a DJ, using time shifting and beat matching rather than relying on a fixed crossfade interval.
A new pinned section will let you pin your favorite artists, albums, and music to the top of your music library.
Maps
Apple Maps will now use on-device machine learning to keep track of your preferred routes — including any stops you regularly make along the way, such as hitting your favorite coffee shop on the way to work — and offer them up as default routes when navigating to those locations.
These will adapt if your routine changes, and the Apple Maps widget will also provide a quick view of your expected commute time based on your regular routes and notify you if there are problems on an expected route.
A new Visited Places feature will help you keep track of where you’ve been. You can browse or search from a collected library. This data is protected with end-to-end encryption, and individual locations can be deleted at any time.
Wallet
While Apple was the first to announce support for digital driver’s licenses years ago in iOS 15, last year Google beat it to the punch on supporting US passports in Google Wallet. Apple now matches that with its own digital ID expansion in iOS 26.
This fall, you’ll be able to store your US passport, but Apple made it clear this won’t be a replacement for carrying your physical passport during international travel. Like a digital driver’s license, it will be helpful for identification but not for most places where you’d need to prove you’re a valid passport holder.
Apple is also refreshing boarding passes to offer more features, including access to indoor airport mapping, a link to Find My to help track your baggage, and the ability to share your flight status right from the Wallet app.
Apple Pay will allow users to redeem points or pay with installments during in-person purchases. Apple Intelligence will scan for order confirmation emails from the Mail app and add them to the Orders section in Wallet.
Games App
Apple unveiled a new Games app that will provide a one-stop hub where you can see all the games you’re playing, with updates, recommendations, and in-game events, plus a dedicated Apple Arcade tab to download new titles from Apple’s subscription gaming service.
A Library tab will show a list of every game you’ve ever downloaded, and new Play Together and Challenges screens will encourage multiplayer gaming and competitions.
This doesn’t technically replace Game Center so much as provide a new unified interface. Years ago, Apple discontinued the standalone Game Center app in favor of letting each game developer provide its own gateway into the underlying system. With iOS 26, it’s basically bringing that standalone app back.
Visual Intelligence
Another AI advancement in iOS 26 will be the ability to use visual intelligence to identify anything on your screen rather than just what you can point your camera at.
This will be powered by new buttons that appear when you take a screenshot. In addition to the standard buttons for editing, sharing, and saving screenshots, a set of visual intelligence buttons at the bottom will let you Ask ChatGPT for more information about a photo or perform a Google Image Search on it. You’ll also be able to select a part of a photo to perform the search or query only on a specific item within a larger image.
As with the current camera-based visual intelligence, more specific buttons will be shown for images that contain relevant text information, such as an “Add to Calendar” button when a date is detected.
When’s It Coming?
One thing that hasn’t changed with the new design and big jump to iOS 26 is Apple’s release schedule. As usual, we can expect a public release this fall, likely alongside the new iPhone 17 lineup.
This will be preceded by a public beta sometime in July. The iOS 26 Developer Beta is available now but is limited to registered developers for use on devices dedicated to testing new apps.
