June 9, 2025
PRESS RELEASE
Apple enhances the iPhone experience with iOS 26
This update introduces a breathtaking new design, advanced Apple Intelligence features, improved connectivity options in the Phone and Messages apps, plus exciting enhancements to CarPlay, Apple Music, Maps, and Wallet.
CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA — Apple today revealed iOS 26, a significant upgrade delivering a stunning new design, smart experiences, and better functionality across the apps used daily. The refreshed design offers a more expressive, enjoyable experience while retaining the intuitive feel of iOS. Built with privacy at its core, Apple Intelligence is more capable than ever, integrated system-wide. Upgrades to Phone and Messages help users stay connected and minimize interruptions from unwanted calls. iOS 26 also launches new features for CarPlay, Apple Music, Maps, and Wallet, as well as Apple Games, a brand-new app offering a centralized hub for all gaming activities.
“iOS 26 stands out with its beautiful new design and meaningful feature enhancements that users depend on every day, making the iPhone more helpful than ever,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “From the Lock Screen and Home Screen to powerful updates in Phone and Messages, the experiences are more personal and expressive. With Apple Intelligence deeply integrated throughout, users can achieve more with ease.”
Striking New Design
The redesign brings more expression and delight to apps and the overall system while keeping iOS immediately recognizable. Featuring Liquid Glass — a novel translucent material that reflects and bends light to highlight content — it adds vitality across controls, navigation, app icons, widgets, and more. This design refresh extends to the Home Screen and Lock Screen, creating a more personal and expressive experience. Liquid Glass provides fresh customization options for app icons and widgets, including a striking clear aesthetic.
The Lock Screen’s time display dynamically adjusts to fit the image, and spatial scenes animate wallpapers in 3D as users tilt the iPhone. App updates include a simplified Camera interface to focus on capturing moments, and the Photos app now separates Library and Collections into distinct tabs. Safari pages seamlessly extend edge-to-edge, showing more content while keeping frequent actions like refresh and search accessible. Apple Music, News, and Podcasts feature a floating tab bar that shrinks during scrolling to prioritize content and expands on upward scrolls.
A new API set enables developers to incorporate Liquid Glass materials and components, making their apps equally dynamic and engaging.
Enhanced Features Driven by Apple Intelligence
Apple Intelligence advances the iPhone experience by simplifying tasks and introducing fresh communication tools that harness on-screen content. Live Translation is integrated into Messages, FaceTime, and Phone, facilitating real-time text and audio translation across multiple languages.1 These translations are powered by Apple-designed models running fully on-device, ensuring privacy for conversations.
Visual intelligence now analyzes what’s on the user’s screen, allowing them to perform actions or ask ChatGPT questions about on-screen content. Users can also search Google, Etsy, or other supported apps for related images and products. Additionally, visual intelligence identifies event details on-screen and suggests adding them to the calendar with key info filled in.2
Genmoji and Image Playground offer new creative ways to mix emojis, Genmoji, and descriptions to craft unique expressions.3
The Shortcuts app gains smarter, AI-powered actions, including dedicated functionality for Writing Tools and Image Playground.
Apple Intelligence now detects and summarizes order tracking info from merchant and delivery emails, consolidating order details and shipment status notifications — even for purchases outside Apple Pay.
A new Foundation Models framework makes Apple’s core on-device AI available directly to developers, offering fast, private, offline AI inference at no cost.
Better Connectivity and Reduced Interruptions
The Phone app now features a unified layout combining Favorites, Recents, and Voicemails into one view. Call Screening expands on Live Voicemail by collecting caller info to help users decide whether to answer or ignore calls.4 Hold Assist alerts users when a live agent becomes available during wait times.5
Messages gains the ability to filter unknown senders into a separate folder, allowing users to mark numbers as known, request more info, or delete messages. Unknown sender messages remain muted until accepted.
Conversation enhancements include custom backgrounds and polls, which Apple Intelligence can suggest when useful. Users can create custom backgrounds using Image Playground for chats. Group chats now show typing indicators and support requesting, sending, and receiving Apple Cash.6
CarPlay Improvements
CarPlay, used over 600 million times daily, is now more beautiful and user-friendly in iOS 26, with a compact view for incoming calls that avoids obscuring navigation directions. Messages in CarPlay supports Tapbacks and pinned chats. Widgets and Live Activities keep users informed without distracting from driving. These updates also enhance CarPlay Ultra, delivering a seamless integration of iPhone and car displays.
Updates to Apple Music, Maps, and Wallet
Apple Music introduces Lyrics Translation for better understanding and Lyrics Pronunciation for sing-alongs in any language. AutoMix uses AI to DJ transitions by synchronizing tempo and beats smoothly between songs.
Maps adds Visited Places, letting users track and review locations like restaurants and stores. This data is encrypted end-to-end and inaccessible by Apple. Maps also uses on-device AI to identify preferred routes for home or work trips, offering delay alerts and alternate paths.
Wallet improvements ease real-world payments with options for installments or rewards on in-store Apple Pay purchases. Updated boarding passes feature Live Activities for real-time flight updates, plus quick access to airport navigation, Find My tracking for items, lost baggage reporting, and more.
Additional iOS 26 Highlights:
- Apple Games launches as a new app offering a hub for all games, helping players return to favorites, discover new titles, and enjoy social gaming. It also showcases Apple Arcade, Apple’s subscription service with over 200 acclaimed family-friendly games.
- AirPods receive new features for AirPods 4, AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation, and AirPods Pro 2. Studio-quality audio recording supports clear content creation, and a camera remote feature lets users press and hold the AirPods stem to snap photos or record videos on iPhone and iPad.
- Simplified management for Child Accounts offers more extensive parental controls, including approvals for contact requests, content blurring in FaceTime and Shared Albums, and exceptions for app downloads exceeding content restrictions.
- Safari boosts privacy with enhanced fingerprinting protection enabled by default for all browsing.
- Powerful accessibility updates feature Accessibility Reader for a tailored reading experience and Braille Access, a fresh interface for braille displays. Improvements to Live Listen, Background Sounds, Personal Voice, and others enhance accessibility across Apple devices.
Availability
All features are available for testing starting today via the Apple Developer Program at developer.apple.com, with a public beta launching next month through the Apple Beta Software Program at beta.apple.com. The official free update rolls out this fall for iPhone 11 and newer models. Apple Intelligence features require supported devices, including all iPhone 16 models, iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, iPad mini (A17 Pro), and M1 or later iPad and Mac models with Apple Intelligence enabled and Siri/device languages aligned: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese. Additional languages will arrive by year-end: Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese (Portugal), Swedish, Turkish, Traditional Chinese, and Vietnamese. For details, visit apple.com/apple-intelligence. Features may change, vary by language or region, and be limited by local laws. More info at apple.com.
About Apple
Since introducing the Macintosh in 1984, Apple has led innovation in personal technology. Today, Apple’s product lineup includes iPhone, iPad, Mac, AirPods, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. Its six software platforms — iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, visionOS, and tvOS — deliver seamless experiences and services such as the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, iCloud, and Apple TV+. Apple employs over 150,000 people dedicated to creating the world’s best products and leaving a positive impact on the planet.
- Live Translation in Messages supports English (U.S., UK), French (France), German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Spain), and Simplified Chinese. Live Translation in Phone and FaceTime supports one-on-one calls in English (U.S., UK), French (France), German, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish (Spain).
- Calendar event addition via visual intelligence is available in English on iPhone 16 models, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
- Genmoji and Image Playground support English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, and Japanese.
- Call Screening supports Cantonese (China mainland, Hong Kong, Macao), English (U.S., Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Singapore, South Africa, UK), French (Canada, France), German (Germany), Japanese (Japan), Korean (Korea), Mandarin Chinese (China mainland, Taiwan, Macao), Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish (U.S., Mexico, Puerto Rico, Spain).
- Hold Assist supports English (U.S., Australia, Canada, India, Singapore, UK), French (France), Spanish (U.S., Mexico, Spain), German (Germany), Portuguese (Brazil), Japanese (Japan), and Mandarin Chinese (Mainland China).
- Apple Cash services are provided by Green Dot Bank, Member FDIC. Apple Payments Services LLC, a subsidiary of Apple Inc., acts as service provider for Apple Cash accounts. Apple Inc. and Apple Payments Services LLC are not banks. Terms apply. Available only in the U.S. on eligible devices.
Press Contacts
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Apple
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Apple
Apple Media Helpline