Apple unveils iOS 26 with Liquid Glass redesign, CarPlay updates, Games app, much more

Apple has formally introduced iOS 26, the successor to iOS 18. The renamed software program replace begins with a brand new design.

iOS 26 follows iOS 18 as Apple shifts its model naming scheme to replicate the yr forward. This places iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, visionOS, and tvOS on model 26.

The obvious replace is a change to the design. In the course of the keynote, Apple referred to as again to iOS 7 in 2013 when it final launched a significant redesign to the iPhone software program. iOS 26 replaces the look with what Apple calls Liquid Glass, a extra subtle look with extra depth and realism. The brand new look is extra just like the Aqua design language utilized by the Mac in early variations of Mac OS X somewhat than the traditional skeuomorphic design of the unique iPhone software program by way of iOS 6.

When it comes to options, iOS 26 introduces updates to CarPlay, a brand new Video games app, extra Apple Intelligence instruments, and updates to Apple Music, Maps, and Pockets. Hit the press launch under to examine all the small print.

iOS 26 press launch:

PRESS RELEASE June 9, 2025

The discharge delivers a shocking new design, highly effective Apple Intelligence capabilities, new methods to remain linked within the Telephone and Messages apps, and thrilling updates to CarPlay, Apple Music, Maps, and Pockets

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA Apple at present previewed iOS 26, a significant replace that brings a ravishing new design, clever experiences, and enhancements to the apps customers depend on daily. The brand new design gives a extra expressive and pleasant expertise throughout the system whereas sustaining the moment familiarity of iOS. Built-in all through the system and constructed with privateness from the bottom up, Apple Intelligence will get much more succesful. Updates to the Telephone and Messages apps assist customers keep linked whereas eliminating distractions like undesirable calls. iOS 26 additionally introduces new options in CarPlay, Apple Music, Maps, and Pockets, in addition to Apple Video games, a brand-new app that offers gamers a single vacation spot for all their video games.

“iOS 26 shines with the attractive new design and significant enhancements to the options customers depend on daily, making iPhone much more useful,” mentioned Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice chairman of Software program Engineering. “Experiences are extra expressive and private, from the Lock Display screen and Residence Display screen, to new capabilities throughout Telephone and Messages that assist customers give attention to the connections that matter most. And with highly effective new Apple Intelligence capabilities built-in throughout the system, customers can get issues performed simpler than ever.”

A Lovely New Look

The brand new design makes apps and system experiences extra expressive and pleasant, whereas conserving iOS immediately acquainted. It’s crafted with Liquid Glass — a brand new translucent materials that displays and refracts its environment, bringing higher focus to content material, and delivering a brand new degree of vitality throughout controls, navigation, app icons, widgets, and extra. The brand new design extends to the Residence Display screen and Lock Display screen, making them extra private and expressive than ever. Liquid Glass additionally brings new customization choices to app icons and widgets, together with a shocking clear look.

On the Lock Display screen, the time fluidly adapts to the out there area in a picture, and spatial scenes deliver wallpapers to life with a 3D impact when customers transfer iPhone. Up to date design parts additionally ship contemporary experiences in apps. A simplified, streamlined Digital camera format helps customers hold their consideration on the second they’re capturing, and the Pictures app is up to date to function separate tabs for Library and Collections views. In Safari, internet pages movement from the highest edge to the underside of the display screen, enabling customers to see extra of the web page whereas sustaining entry to regularly used actions like refresh and search. In Apple Music, Information, and Podcasts, the tab bar is redesigned to drift above customers’ content material, dynamically shrink when customers are shopping to place content material entrance and heart, after which broaden once they scroll again up.

On the Lock Display screen, the time fluidly adapts to the out there area in a picture for a extra dynamic feeling.

An up to date set of APIs gives builders with entry to Liquid Glass supplies and parts to allow them to make their apps seem simply as dynamic and pleasant.

New Capabilities Powered by Apple Intelligence

Apple Intelligence elevates the iPhone expertise and helps customers get issues performed simpler than ever, whereas unlocking new methods to speak and do extra with what’s on their display screen. Reside Translation is built-in into Messages, FaceTime, and Telephone to assist customers talk throughout languages, translating textual content and audio on the fly.¹ Reside Translation is enabled by Apple-built fashions that run solely on gadget, so customers’ private conversations keep private.

Constructing on Apple Intelligence, visible intelligence extends to a consumer’s iPhone display screen to allow them to search and take motion on something they’re viewing throughout apps. Customers can ask ChatGPT questions on what they’re taking a look at onscreen to be taught extra, in addition to search Google, Etsy, or different supported apps to seek out comparable pictures and merchandise. Visible intelligence additionally acknowledges when a consumer is taking a look at an occasion and suggests including it to their calendar, repopulating key particulars like date, time, and site.²

Genmoji and Picture Playground present customers with much more methods to precise themselves, together with mixing their favourite emoji, Genmoji, and descriptions collectively to create one thing new.³

Shortcuts at the moment are extra highly effective and clever than ever. Customers can faucet into clever actions, a complete new set of shortcuts enabled by Apple Intelligence, and can see devoted actions for options like Writing Instruments and Picture Playground.

Apple Intelligence can now routinely determine and summarize order monitoring particulars from emails despatched from retailers and supply carriers, giving customers the power to see their full order particulars and progress notifications multi functional place — even for purchases not made with Apple Pay.

Moreover, a brand new Basis Fashions framework opens up entry for any app to faucet instantly into the on-device basis mannequin on the core of Apple Intelligence, giving builders direct entry to highly effective intelligence that’s quick, constructed with privateness at its core, and out there offline, utilizing AI inference that is freed from price.

Options for Staying Related and Eliminating Interruptions

Basic to the iPhone expertise, the Telephone app now gives a unified format that mixes Favorites, Recents, and Voicemails multi functional place. Name Screening builds on Reside Voicemail and helps get rid of interruptions by gathering info from the caller and giving customers the small print they should resolve in the event that they need to decide up or ignore the decision.⁴ And for the instances when a consumer is caught on maintain, Maintain Help notifies the consumer when a reside agent is offered.⁵

In Messages, customers can now display screen messages from unknown senders, giving them extra management over who seems of their dialog checklist. Messages from unknown senders will seem in a devoted folder the place customers can then mark the quantity as recognized, ask for extra info, or delete. These messages will stay silenced till a consumer accepts them.

iOS 26 additionally gives enhancements to conversations, together with customized backgrounds and the power to create polls. With Apple Intelligence, Messages can detect when a ballot would possibly turn out to be useful and recommend one, and customers can generate distinctive backgrounds that match their dialog with Picture Playground. Moreover, in group chats, customers can now see typing indicators, and request, ship, and obtain Apple Money.⁶

Enhancements to CarPlay

CarPlay — the smarter, safer manner to make use of iPhone whereas driving — is used over 600 million instances per day, and now with iOS 26, it receives updates that make it much more lovely and simple to make use of. The gorgeous design features a new compact view for incoming calls, permitting customers to see who’s calling with out lacking key info like upcoming instructions. iOS 26 additionally brings Tapbacks and pinned conversations to Messages in CarPlay, and with widgets and Reside Actions, customers can keep within the loop with out shedding give attention to the highway. These updates additionally come to CarPlay Extremely, which brings the very best of iPhone and the very best of the automotive collectively for a deeply built-in, unified expertise throughout each display screen.

Updates to Apple Music, Maps, and Pockets

In Apple Music, Lyrics Translation helps customers perceive the phrases to their favourite songs, whereas Lyrics Pronunciation permits everybody to sing alongside, no matter language. AutoMix makes use of intelligence to transition from one tune to the subsequent like a DJ, utilizing time stretching and beat matching to seamlessly transfer from one tune to the subsequent.

In Apple Maps, Visited Locations assist customers keep in mind the locations they’ve been. Customers can select to have iPhone detect once they’re at a spot like a restaurant or store, and think about all of their Visited Locations in Maps. Visited Locations are protected with end-to-end encryption and can’t be accessed by Apple. Moreover, iPhone can now use on-device intelligence to raised perceive a consumer’s day by day route, presenting them with their most popular route once they’re headed residence or to the workplace, together with notifying them of delays and providing alternate routes.

Updates in Apple Pockets assist make on a regular basis interactions with the bodily world simpler than ever. Customers can select to pay with installments or rewards once they make in-store purchases with Apple Pay utilizing iPhone. Refreshed boarding passes in Pockets provide the power to see and share Reside Actions for real-time updates on a flight. In addition they present handy entry to a traveler’s most related info, corresponding to Maps to navigate airports, Discover My to trace vital objects and report lacking baggage, and extra.

Further options in iOS 26:

Apple Video games is a brand new app that offers gamers an all-in-one vacation spot for his or her video games. It helps gamers soar again into titles they love, discover their subsequent favourite, and have much more enjoyable with buddies. They’ll discover out what’s occurring throughout all their video games, together with main occasions and updates, so that they by no means miss a second. The Video games app can be one of the best ways to expertise Apple Arcade, Apple’s sport subscription service with greater than 200 award-winning and extremely rated video games for the entire household.

AirPods are extra versatile than ever with new options for AirPods 4, AirPods 4 with Lively Noise Cancellation (ANC), and AirPods Professional 2. Constructing on the advantages of Voice Isolation, studio-quality audio recording permits iPhone, iPad, and Mac customers to file their content material with nice sound high quality and revel in even clearer calls. With digital camera distant, customers can press and maintain the AirPods stem to take a photograph or begin and cease a video recording on iPhone or iPad.

Dad and mom can now create or transfer youngsters into Youngster Accounts much more simply, making the most of a large set of parental controls designed to maintain kids secure. Enhancements throughout Communication Limits, Communication Security, and the App Retailer embody parental approvals for contact requests from youngsters, blurring out delicate content material in FaceTime calls and images in Shared Albums, and enabling mother and father to grant an exception for his or her youngster to obtain an app with an age score that exceeds the app content material restriction they set.

Shopping in Safari will get much more personal with superior fingerprinting safety extending to all shopping by default.

Highly effective accessibility options embody Accessibility Reader, which gives a personalized systemwide studying expertise, and Braille Entry, an all-new interface for iPhone gadgets with linked braille shows. Updates to Reside Pay attention, Background Sounds, Private Voice, and extra deliver a brand new degree of accessibility throughout the Apple ecosystem.

Liquid Glass design press launch:

PRESS RELEASE June 9, 2025

A common design throughout platforms brings extra focus to content material and a brand new degree of vitality whereas sustaining the familiarity of Apple’s software program

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA Apple at present previewed a ravishing new software program design that makes apps and system experiences extra expressive and pleasant whereas being immediately acquainted. It’s crafted with a brand new materials referred to as Liquid Glass. This translucent materials displays and refracts its environment, whereas dynamically reworking to assist deliver higher focus to content material, delivering a brand new degree of vitality throughout controls, navigation, app icons, widgets, and extra. For the very first time, the brand new design extends throughout platforms — iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26, and tvOS 26¹ — to determine much more concord whereas sustaining the distinct qualities that make every distinctive.

“At Apple, we’ve at all times believed within the deep integration of {hardware} and software program that makes interacting with expertise intuitive, lovely, and pleasant,” mentioned Alan Dye, Apple’s vice chairman of Human Interface Design. “That is our broadest software program design replace ever. Meticulously crafted by rethinking the elemental parts that make up our software program, the brand new design options a completely new materials referred to as Liquid Glass. It combines the optical qualities of glass with a fluidity solely Apple can obtain, because it transforms relying in your content material or context. It lays the inspiration for brand new experiences sooner or later and, finally, it makes even the best of interactions extra enjoyable and magical.”

Introducing Liquid Glass: A New and Expressive Materials

Impressed by the depth and dimensionality of visionOS, the brand new design takes benefit of Apple’s highly effective advances in {hardware}, silicon, and graphics applied sciences. The brand new materials, Liquid Glass, is translucent and behaves like glass in the true world. Its colour is knowledgeable by surrounding content material and intelligently adapts between gentle and darkish environments. Born out of an in depth collaboration between the design and engineering groups, Liquid Glass makes use of real-time rendering and dynamically reacts to motion with specular highlights. This creates a vigorous expertise that makes utilizing iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV much more pleasant.

This attractive new materials extends from the smallest parts customers work together with daily — like buttons, switches, sliders, textual content, and media controls — to bigger parts, together with tab bars and sidebars for navigating apps. It additionally shines in system experiences, such because the Lock Display screen, Residence Display screen, notifications, Management Middle, and extra.

Up to date App Designs

Pushed by the purpose of bringing higher focus to content material that’s immediately acquainted, Apple’s design crew thought-about each side of Apple’s platforms to determine enhancements that might be made throughout the board.

Controls, toolbars, and navigation inside apps have been redesigned. Beforehand configured for rectangular shows, they now match completely concentric with the rounded corners of recent {hardware} and app home windows — establishing higher concord between {hardware}, software program, and content material. Controls are crafted out of Liquid Glass and act as a definite practical layer that sits above apps. They offer strategy to content material and dynamically morph as customers want extra choices or transfer between completely different elements of an app. And with considerate groupings, it’s simpler for customers to seek out the controls they want.

Tab bars and sidebars have been redesigned with the identical method. In iOS 26, when customers scroll, tab bars shrink to deliver focus to the content material whereas conserving navigation immediately accessible. The second customers scroll again up, tab bars fluidly broaden. In iPadOS and macOS, up to date sidebars make apps like Apple TV much more immersive. They refract the content material behind them — whereas reflecting content material and the consumer’s wallpaper from round them — which ensures customers at all times have a way of their context.

These up to date design parts apply throughout contemporary new experiences in apps corresponding to Digital camera, Pictures, Safari, FaceTime, Apple Music, Apple Information, and Apple Podcasts.

The contemporary new design delivers a pleasant expertise in apps like Digital camera, Pictures, Safari, and FaceTime.

An Enhanced Expertise Throughout Platforms

The brand new design extends throughout iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS, with updates to system experiences just like the Lock Display screen, Residence Display screen, desktop, and Dock. To keep up the main focus with regards to picture wallpapers on the Lock Display screen, the time is now crafted out of Liquid Glass and fluidly adapts to suit elegantly behind the topic.

On the Residence Display screen and desktop, the Dock, app icons, and widgets have all been crafted from a number of layers of Liquid Glass. They give the impression of being gorgeous, with specular highlights, and permit for higher personalization choices whereas nonetheless sustaining the familiarity that customers depend on. For instance, in macOS Tahoe 26, customers can customise the desktop and Dock with widgets and app icons that come to life in gentle or darkish appearances, colourful new gentle and darkish tints, in addition to a chic new clear look. And it’s made even higher with a totally clear menu bar that makes the Mac show really feel even bigger.

Constructing Dynamic Apps

For builders utilizing SwiftUI, UIKit, and AppKit, an up to date set of APIs make it simple to undertake the brand new design. By utilizing Liquid Glass supplies and the brand new and up to date controls, builders have the chance to refresh the design of their apps to make each consumer interplay much more intuitive and pleasant.