Apple announced its newest update for iOS at WWDC 2025. The company most notably unveiled a new design language called “Liquid Glass” and changed the version number to 26 to unify all operating systems.
Other changes included a new gaming app and a new preview app, AI-powered translation for messages, and a virtual health coach.
Aside from that, there are several small changes that make the iPhone more usable. Here is a (non-exhaustive) list based on the early developer beta of iOS 26.
Utility
- iOS 26 brings customized alarm snoozing. This may seem like a small thing, but being able to define how long you want to snooze your alarm is game-changing. To change the snooze timing, you can tap on any alarm and tap on the “Snooze Duration” option to choose from 1 minute to 15 minutes.
- AI in Shortcuts. When you are building a shortcut, you can choose a local or cloud-based model to power AI features like summarization.
- New gesture for bookmarking in Safari. In the new Safari update, you can double-tap on the three-dot menu to bookmark the page you are on.
- The screenshot menu has a new layout. You can ask questions about a screenshot thanks to visual intelligence. If there’s content on the screen, the menu will automatically suggest summarizing it or reading it aloud.
- New volume sliders. You can directly adjust volume from the output source picker now.
Phone
- Call list filters: You can now filter the call list by Calls, Missed, Voicemails, Unknown callers, and Spam.
- Focus modes by SIM: You can continue to use different focus modes to silence a particular SIM.
- Call interface update: The call interface now has a new overflow menu to easily access call assist, recording, and live translation.
- Call History: You can look at the full call history for a contact by tapping that contact’s name and then tapping on the “Call History” option.
Battery
- The battery menu has a new performance view. Previously, it showed performance over the last 24 hours and 10 days through a toggle. Now there is a day and a week view on one screen. Plus, it also has a comparative indicator that tells you if you are using more or less battery on a day based on time.
- The battery menu overhaul also provides insights into per-app consumption with indicators to tell you if an app ran in the background for an unusually long time.
- The battery section now has an adaptive power mode. When you turn that on, iPhone might reduce brightness or slow down some apps to save battery at a time when there is higher battery consumption.
Reminders
- Automatically categorize different types of reminders in the Reminders app.
- You can share items to the Reminders app to have it create to-do items for you. For instance, when I shared a recipe from a site, the Reminder app suggested ingredients. Plus, you can use the action button or a shortcut from Control Center to create a new reminder.
- You can swipe on a phone call entry from the Phone app to create a reminder for a call back.
- Messages app now lets you select partial app text from a specific message.
Apple Music
- Apple Music on iOS 26 lets you create folders for playlists.
- You can now choose crossfade or automix (automatic song transition based on song tempo) as the song transition effect in Settings
- There is also a new album animation style for the Lock Screen.
Camera
- If your camera lens is dirty, iOS 26 will nudge you to clean it. You can turn this off in settings.
- You can now show or hide indicators for Flash, Live Photo, video formats, and Action Mode in the camera through the new Indicators settings.
- You can adjust or turn off camera controls through a new Camera Adjustments menu.
Language
- iPhone will now show you suggestions for languages when you consume and send content in a language other than your primary language. For Instance, if you text and consume content in Arabic while your primary language is English, the system will suggest that you add an Arabic keyboard and get content recommendations in Arabic.
- The company has also added a native Arabic transliteration keyboard and a 24-key Thai keyboard.
- iOS 26 supports bilingual suggestions for 10 languages. This means while you are typing in English, the keyboard will suggest both Latin and local script versions of that word.
Podcasts
- The new Podcasts app has playback speed options ranging from 0.5x to 3x.
- The Podcasts app also has an enhanced dialog feature to boost voices. You can enable this on per per-episode basis.
We will keep updating this list as we find more features in the new iOS 26 update.
