iOS 26 features: Liquid Glass and everything else that’s new

iOS 26 is a major new update that brings the biggest visual redesign in 12 years — on top of more than 70 new features. It’s easy to overlook the new goodies that Apple sprinkled throughout the operating system because the shiny Liquid Glass user interface takes center stage.

But iOS 26 brings loads of great enhancements to Apple’s major apps. Group chats in Messages become much more useful. The Phone app gets a fresh design and plenty of smart new features. Other great enhancements level up Safari, Passwords, Maps, Photos, Journal and other Apple apps. And just like previous years, Apple added an expansive list of useful accessibility features you should check out.

iOS 26 is out now. Here’s where to find the good stuff — keep reading or watch our video.

iOS 26 new features: Liquid Glass and tons more

New hardware is great and all, but the iPhone’s real power flows from iOS. Nearly two decades after Apple CEO Steve Jobs walked onstage and demoed the original iPhone, showcasing innovative features like Multi-Touch and the “rubber band” effect, Apple’s mobile operating system continues to surprise and delight.

That evolution continues with iOS 26, a massive upgrade that brings an entirely new look to the iPhone. It is compatible with iPhone 11 and later, dropping support for the iPhone XS and iPhone XR.

Also, you may have noticed that Apple skipped from iOS 18 to iOS 26 this year. That’s so all Apple’s annual OS releases will use the same number going forward.

Table of contents: iOS 26 new features

1. Liquid Glass and customizability
2. Messages
3. Phone
4. Other new features in apps
5. Apple Intelligence
6. Accessibility
7. Miscellaneous
8. Other major updates

Liquid Glass and customizability

1. Liquid Glass is the new glassy look used throughout the system. It features transparent floating buttons, toolbars and panels that are perfectly rounded and nested within the corners of the screen and beautiful animated effects. While it can cause some legibility problems — and it’s still a little buggy — it brings an exciting and fresh new look to Apple’s own apps. Hopefully, third-party apps will be updated to use the new design.

Liquid Glass also extends to the Lock Screen, with a few new customization options:

2. Get a tall Lock Screen clock. When editing your Lock Screen, you’ll see a small grabber at the bottom right of the clock. Drag it to make it really tall. It’s a really cool look — although it’s not available on all styles.
3. You can move widgets to the bottom by dragging the widget area down. This gives you room for widgets in addition to fun customizations (like the aforementioned tall clock).
4. A new Liquid Glass clock uses the Liquid Glass effect on the time, blending it naturally with the wallpaper, adding live reflection effects. Tap on the clock to customize it, then choose either “Glass” or “Solid” at the bottom of the panel.
5. Spatial Scenes turn your pictures into 3D renderings, that change perspective when you tilt your phone around. It’s really cool. (This is also available in the Photos app.)

And the Home Screen, too

6. Choose a new clear icon style for all your icons to be rendered in transparent Liquid Glass, refracting the wallpaper beneath it. You can have light or dark glass.
7. You can also have light tinted icons, to complement your wallpaper with an accent color of your choosing. Previously, in iOS 18, tinted icons were only available in dark. I like the light tinted style much more.

As cool as the clear and tinted icons can look, I don’t use them personally. It makes the App Library very hard to use. I install a lot of apps, and I don’t have a very good memory of what they all are — so a big screen of uniform-looking icons makes it hard to navigate.

Messages

Messages continues to get excellent new features this year, mostly improving the experience of group chats:

8. You can create a poll that the group can vote on. It’s a pretty simple system, without any settings. You enter in as many options as you want, and other people in the group can add their own items. (You can’t lock it down.) You also only get one vote, there’s no multiple choice setting.
9. Set a background image for the group and it’ll be changed for everyone, just like the group name and group icon. You can choose from Apple’s built-in options, generate one with Image Playground or choose from your own photos.
10. You can request group payments using Apple Cash.
11. You’ll see typing indicators from other members in the group who have updated to iOS 26. However, there are still no group read receipts.
12. Messages automatically hides texts from unknown numbers. From the Messages list, you can tap the Filter button in the upper right to see Unknown Senders and Spam. You can also see Transactions and Promotions, for updates on orders and sales. There are also filters for Unread and Drafts, for those messages you still need to reply to.
13. Messages are automatically translated if they’re sent in another language.

Phone

14. The app has a new simplified design that you can opt in to. The Favorites, Recents and Voicemail tabs are condensed into one “Calls” tab, so there’s less switching around between the three. Search is more prominent at the bottom of the screen. Tap the Filter button in the upper right to switch between the “Classic” or “Unified” layouts.
15. Also from the Filter button, you can hide unknown callers from the call list, for simplicity.
16. Call Screening is an intelligent feature that blocks unimportant calls from unknown numbers. People who call you will be asked by a robot to give the reason for their call, and if your phone thinks it sounds important, then it’ll ring you — and show what they said.
17. Hold Assist lets you hang up the phone when you’re put on hold. Your phone will detect the music, wait for a human to pick up, and ring you again. However, Hold Assist can be fooled by systems that interrupt the music with an automated voice.

Other new features in apps

18. Safari has a minimal new toolbar with a back/forward button, address bar and More button. You can find the Page menu to the left of the URL, where you can manage your extensions, find on page, hide distracting items and more. The ⋯ button lets you share and browse bookmarks. As before, you can swipe up on the address bar to bring up the tab viewer. And you can switch to the old style toolbar in Settings > Apps > Safari.
19. FaceTime is redesigned with a new layout that puts buttons on the bottom of the screen for easier one-handed use.
20. Camera has simplified controls centered around a minimal new mode picker at the bottom. It shows just Photo / Video, but you can swipe to see all the other special modes. Tap it to see settings for Flash, Live, Timer, Exposure, Photographic Styles, Aspect ratio and Night mode. Choose a format and resolution in the upper left.
21. Camera will tell you if your lens is smudged so you can clean it and get a clear shot, if you have an iPhone 15 Pro and later.
22. Photos has a Library / Collections tab bar to switch between the two.
23. Customize the Collections view to show its tiles in a Mixed Grid, Small Grid or Large Grid.
24. You can look up concert and sports event details by swiping up on a photo.
25. Preview comes to the iPhone, for viewing and editing PDFs, scanning documents, filling out forms and more.
26. Passwords will show your password history if you need to refer to an old one, or if your password is accidentally overwritten.
27. Maps will learn your preferred routes and show them to you. Maybe you know a better way to work that avoids the busy roads, or you take a scenic route to your extended family. If you take that route often, it’ll alert you of delays before you even take off.
28. Maps will show you placed you’ve visited. It’s helpful if you don’t remember the name of that restaurant you went to last week. It’s a little buried, as it’s a beta feature. Tap your icon, tap “Places,” then tap “Visited Places.” You can browse by category, city or recents.

Apple Music must-haves

29. Apple Music finally shows Apple Music Replay in-app, so you don’t have to open Safari and sign in again to see your #1 hits.
30. Apple Music now has automatic lyric translation, so you can finally get the meaning of those K-pop lyrics.
31. Apple Music can also mix songs together in a playlist, so you never miss a beat while you’re jamming out. It blends the end of one song with the next, adjusting for tempo and key changes, like a DJ.
32. The Games app is an all-in-one destination for your Game Center profile, achievements, friends and more.
33. You can keep multiple journals in the Journal app, for separating different parts of your life.
34. Reminders can automatically suggest items when you share items to the app, and sort them into different sections.
35. In the Clock app, you can set a custom snooze length between 1 – 15 minutes. It’s a little annoying to me that you can’t set a 20-minute snooze, which is my preferred length.
36. Notes can import and export Markdown formatted text.
37. The redesigned Fitness app can track workouts without an Apple Watch. And if you have AirPods Pro 3, it can measure your heart rate and calories burned.

Apple Intelligence

38. Shortcuts can freely prompt Apple Intelligence in a Shortcut. You can ask it to summarize text, generate text, ask it questions and much more. It’ll even format its output however you need it. Or, you can create a simple Shortcut that generates text and saves it to a new note. You even have a choice of the on-device model, more powerful Private Cloud Compute model, or ChatGPT.
39. With AirPods 4, AirPods Pro 2 or Pro 3, get real-time translation in your ear when speaking to someone in French, German, Portuguese or Spanish.
40. Genmoji lets you combine two emoji into one, like cat and phone, pineapple and sunglasses, or any other combination.
41. You can choose the expression of a person when creating a Genmoji of them.
42. Visual intelligence can look up things on your screen when you take a screenshot. Circle part of the screen to do a visual search, tap to add items to your calendar, and more.
43. Wallet reads your email to find order tracking information, so you can see packages on the way in the app, on devices with Apple Intelligence.
44. In Image Playground, you can make images using ChatGPT instead of Apple’s somewhat inferior model. A variety of styles are available: Any Style (which makes photorealistic images), Oil Painting, Watercolor, Vector, Anime and Print. You’re limited to only a few options per day without connecting to a paid account.
45. Also in Image Playground, you can customize the appearance of a person if it gets a few things wrong. Edit your hairstyle, facial hair, eyewear, or type in something specific.

Accessibility features

Apple pre-announced a bunch of accessibility features earlier this year, and now they’re available in iOS 26:

46. The App Store now has accessibility disclosures so you can see which features are supported before installing an app.
47. You can now share accessibility settings between devices, so you can more easily use/borrow someone else’s device.
48. Braille Access allows you to launch apps, take notes and do math using braille input, as well as use braille displays.
49. Accessibility Reader is a system-wide way to have articles, web content, messages, emails and more read to you. It’s integrated with the Magnifier, so you can even point your camera at a book or restaurant menu to have it read to you.
50. Live Captions on Apple Watch lets you control the live subtitling feature from your wrist.
51. Name Recognition alerts you when your name is called.
52. Background Sounds has new EQ settings, auto-stop timer options and Shortcuts integration to make this focus-enhancing feature more customizable.
53. Personal Voice is faster set up and more natural-sounding. It creates synthetic voices in under one minute with just 10 recorded phrases. It also supports Spanish (Mexico).
54. Vehicle Motion Cues have many more settings. You can adjust the pattern, color, size and quantity of the on-screen dots.
55. Eye Tracking has more customization features available for switch/dwell options.
56. Head Tracking is now available on iPhone and iPad, with support for brain-computer interfaces (BCIs).
57. Assistive Access, a simplified interface for those with lower cognitive needs, gains the Apple TV app — and a comprehensive API for third-party developers.
58. Music Haptics has additional settings for reducing haptic feedback to vocals only, with adjustable intensity.
59. CarPlay now supports Large Text and Sound Recognition, for crying babies, sirens and other noises.

Miscellaneous

60. When charging your phone, you’ll see a charging estimate on the Lock Screen of how much time it’ll take to get fully charged.
61. On a conference call or podcast recording, you can capture local video and audio recordings.
62. From Control Center, you can choose which microphone to use for recording.
63. With the Camera app open, you can press your AirPods to start recording if you have a model with the H2 chip (AirPods Pro 2, Pro 3 and AirPods 4).

A handful of child safety features:

64. Child accounts can send communication requests if there’s someone they’d like to be able to text.
65. You can convert an existing account to a child account to use all of the child protection features.
66. Age-appropriate experiences lets a parent give an age range for their child, so apps can tailor content for their age.
67. FaceTime and shared albums in Photos use communication safety to censor nudity.

Also, a few additions to CarPlay:

68. You can see widgets and Live Activities on your Dashboard. 
69. Incoming calls appear compact along the bottom of the screen.
70. You can see pinned conversations in Messages.
71. You can reply with a tapback to a message.

Other major updates

Check out the other major updates Apple released today: