We’ve come a great distance from the times whenever you needed to often plug your iPhone into your Mac to switch apps, music, knowledge, and pictures. It’s onerous to imagine on this cloud-based age, but it surely wasn’t till the appearance of iCloud in 2012 — 5 years after the unique iPhone was launched — that Apple’s smartphone really started to de-tether itself from dependency on a Mac or a PC.
Within the years since, that division has slowly widened. Apple eliminated the flexibility to make use of iTunes to handle apps in iTunes 12.7 in 2017. Apple killed off iTunes for Mac in 2019, but it surely retained many of the different syncing options for music, films, TV exhibits, podcasts, books, pictures, and different knowledge by shifting them into Finder.
These options stay current even with macOS Tahoe and iOS 26, but it surely’s honest to say that few customers even know wired choices can be found in a world the place all the things now syncs wirelessly. Some are additionally mutually unique; you gained’t be capable of sync Music, Images, or Contacts and Calendars if you happen to’re utilizing iCloud for these.
Equally, whereas it’s lengthy been doable to again up your iPhone to a Mac or PC over USB, it’s a cumbersome course of when you haven’t any different cause to plug in your gadget. Most folk depend on iCloud Backups or forego gadget backups fully in the event that they’re unwilling to pay for the mandatory cloud storage.
Nonetheless, regardless of the splendidly wi-fi world we reside in, there’s at all times been one space the place you’ll be compelled to show to a Mac or PC if you happen to’re having issues: restoring iOS onto your iPhone.
Though you possibly can reset your iPhone again to manufacturing unit settings with out ever getting wherever close to a pc, if you happen to’re having a extra critical problem that requires you to reload iOS fully, your solely choice has been to succeed in for a USB cable and discover the closest Mac, or a Home windows PC operating iTunes or Apple’s Units app for Home windows.
Nonetheless, this may very well be the 12 months that adjustments. Apple appears to be utilizing its huge leap to 26 to part out many older methods of doing issues. macOS is dropping FireWire and can quickly depart Intel Macs within the mud. Now, iOS 26 is adopting a brand new Restoration Assistant that can allow you to return your iPhone to a working state with out the necessity to plug it into a pc.
It’s not clear if it will allow you to do a whole reload of iOS 26, however it’ll enable you resolve any issues that may be stopping your iPhone from beginning up usually — issues that just about at all times required a Mac or PC to take care of correctly.
Information of the brand new device surfaced in Apple’s launch notes for the second iOS 26 developer beta:
Restoration Assistant is a brand new method to recuperate your gadget if it doesn’t begin up usually. It will probably search for issues and try and resolve them if discovered.
We already noticed hints of this final 12 months with the iPhone 16, which might now be restored wirelessly utilizing one other close by iPhone. This new iOS 26 mode seems to be one thing related, however extends the function to any iPhone operating iOS 26. The iOS 18 model was accessible solely for the iPhone 16. Nonetheless, it may use any close by iPhone or iPad operating iOS 18 or iPadOS 18 as a conduit to obtain and transmit the firmware.
The iOS 26 function will possible work in the same method, as one Reddit consumer has already discovered within the first developer beta. That is sensible, because it saves the headache of building a Wi-FI or mobile connection from an iPhone that may’t get previous the Apple brand.
Apple has been experimenting with iPhone and iPad restoration modes like this for at the very least 5 years. Proof of a brand new over-the-air restoration mode was first present in iOS 13.4 in early 2020, though it didn’t make it to the floor to turn into a user-facing function till final 12 months’s iPhone 16 launch.