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Apple iOS 26 Spotlights Enhanced UI With Liquid Glass And Intelligent Features
Apple has built a reputation for its sleek, minimalist aesthetics, and its user interface (UI) design is at the front and centre of this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, or WWDC for short. Alongside a change in naming tradition, the Cupertino giant announced a slew of new updates and quality-of-life improvements to its software on the platform.
For starters, the operating system across its family of devices now known iOS 26 – numbered based on the year after their introduction – instead of iOS 19, which some may find easier to follow. It introduces the Liquid Glass redesign, featuring a new responsive, see-through look that extends to elements like buttons, switches, sliders, text, widgets, and media controls, and various system experiences including Home Screen, notifications, and more.
On the Home Screen, the size of the clock can be changed to fill more of the display, and an animation will activate when users swipe up to unlock. There's an emphasis on keeping things cleaner and more streamlined, with the Camera app hiding controls from sight, Safari lining its webpages from one edge to the other, and the tab bar floating over on-screen content.
Apple's in-car navigation system, CarPlay, is part of this facelift experience, so drivers can expect a compact view for incoming calls, Activities on their dashboard, and pinned conversations in Messages.
Much of the iOS 26 updates can be found in apps. A call screening tool is being added to the Phone app along with Hold Assist, which informs users when a live agent is available, while Messages allows them to create polls and customise a background image, either by adding their own photos or generate one via Image Playground. On-device spam detection is also on the way (nothing new for Android folks, though).
Elsewhere, Wallet will let you create a digital ID starting this fall, with a refresh of boarding passes offering real-time flight updates in Live Activities and an indoor map for airport navigation. Other notable features include a learned or preferred route system for Maps, an online order tracker for Apple Pay, and a dedicated Games app, reinforcing the company's continued push into the gaming space with big-name titles like Assassin's Creed Shadows , Cyberpunk 2077 , and more.
Apple Intelligence is also getting a handy addition in the form of Live Translation, coming to FaceTime and Messages with support for text and audio in phone calls. The real-time translation convenience extends to Apple Music, which includes a pronunciation guide for lyrics, a new AutoMix feature, and the ability to pin artists and playlists to the top of the app (Spotify says hi).
Taking a page out of Google's playbook, the tech juggernaut now brings Visual Intelligence beyond the camera. Users are now able to ask ChatGPT questions about any content displayed on the screen, take a screenshot to do an image search for products on supported apps like Google and Etsy, or add an event to Calendar when the software detects a time, date, and location in a screenshot.
iOS 26 marks the second major software update after the rollout of the Apple Intelligence last year. A public beta will be available in July before its official launch this fall. An exact date was not given, but it'll presumably be after the next big iPhone reveal event, typically scheduled for September.
Sherwin once held the Matrix of Leadership, but wisely passed it on to the rightful leader of the household.
