iOS 26 beta is freezing FaceTime when it detects nudity — what we know so far
Apple did announce this, sort of. iOS 26 comes with a bunch of new tools for child accounts, and one of them is designed to "intervene" whenever nudity is detected in FaceTime video calls — alongside a similar feature that blurs out any nudity detected in Shared Albums. But as it turns out, this feature is also affecting adult accounts.
As discovered by iDeviceHelp on X, FaceTime will freeze all video and audio if it detects any kind of nudity. This is followed by a warning message stating that "Audio and Video are paused because you may be showing something sensitive. If you feel uncomfortable, you should end the call."
Users are then given the option to hang up, or resume the audio and video feed.
It's not clear whether this is a bug, since iOS 26 is still very firmly in beta, or if Apple is deliberately turning on sensitive content warnings without user input. Since the Sensitive Content warning is an option in FaceTime's app settings, but is switched off by default, I'm guessing it's the former.
For those worried about corporate snooping, Apple's support pages do claim that the Communication Safety uses on-device machine learning to analyze photo and video attachments and determine if a photo or video appears to contain nudity," while also noting that this is built for child accounts rather than everyone.
Apple also notes that "because the photos and videos are analyzed on your child's device, Apple doesn't receive an indication that nudity was detected and doesn't get access to the photos or videos as a result." Meaning Apple doesn't actually see the contents of the call.
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It's not clear what the threshold for the sensitive content warnings are, but since this is designed to protect children my guess is that they'll be pretty strict. Which is a shame if you're an adult caught up in the bug, trying to show off whatever body parts you feel the need to show. Even if it's something as relatively innocent as a new tattoo or flexing after the gym.
Hopefully this will be fixed in a future version of the iOS 26 beta, ahead of the official launch later this year. But in the meantime, if you're affected by this, maybe switch to another one of the best video chat apps.
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