iOS 26 - Every Big Feature Update!

0:00 Hi everyone, Aaron here for zolotete and today Apple released an allnew operating system for iOS, iPad OS, Mac OS, Vision OS, Watch OS, TV OS, and everything that they create. There's a whole new look to it called Liquid Glass. And so I thought we'd talk about all the big changes. You can see it on apple.com and it's a little bit buggy. It's still being set up on my iPhone, so just keep that in mind. It's currently in beta and it will get better over time once it releases this fall. Now, as far as compatibility, well, it dropped support for the iPhone XR, 10S, and XS Max, but it still supports things such as the iPhone 11. You can see one of the new designs there. We'll talk about in just a moment. But let's go ahead and take a look at the redesign. Apple is calling this liquid glass. So, you can see this here as I scroll. Watch this background

0:47 behind this folder where it changes as you move across the wallpaper. This is the standard iOS 26 wallpaper where Apple has changed all the names for the year. And so you can see it looks completely different. If I go into the app or the folder, you'll see it's glass there and it pops in and out just like that. If we go into the control center, you can see more of that here where everything has a glass look to it. And as we move things up and down, they respond like before, but they're just very fluid overall. If we press and hold, we can customize. So you'll see we have a pop out menu that's a little bit different. And if we go into customize, we have an allnew clear look if we want to use that. So, it takes a moment and it's a little bit buggy, but this is what clear looks like. So, it's much better than you would have expected. It

1:32 sort of affects everything right away. And if you want to use this clear look, you can. I think it looks really great, but then it's hard to differentiate different apps. For example, again, if we go back in and customize, they have some tint updates as well. And you can see the animations where they just sort of pop out, pop back in, and in general look really good. So, we'll keep it on this for now. So you can see the new icons that have been updated. They've updated phone and photos. And you can see they sort of put a different border or surround on each app to make it a little bit different. Mail looks completely different. And if we slide over, you can see some differences here with image playground for example, the developer app, the journal app. They all have a little bit different update to them. If we go back to the lock screen here, let's get rid of these overall

2:20 notifications. You can see that we have a clock that's a little bit expanded. And this is another customization to go along with it. So, if we go into customize here, you'll see what it looks like. We can expand this clock or shrink it down. So, you have the option to do that. And if you tap on it, you can change it with the slider here. So, if you want to change the overall thickness, you can do that. If we go in and select the others, some of them you can't change the overall size. You can't stretch it out. But again, this goes along with what you personally prefer. So, you'll see it's not working here. I can't move this now. There we go. So, it is a little bit buggy. It's an early beta, but pretty much expected at this point since it's the first beta. Menus also get a different look. For example, if we go into music, you can see down here at the bottom again, it's

3:07 liquid glass. It expands and contracts. If we go into it, we can tap on the menu and it expands out. So, you'll see what it looks like as we switch between library here or home. and it gives a different look. As we scroll up and down, you'll see that carries across the entire OS. Now, as far as anything else, we do have some changes here as well to things such as photos and much more. And the first thing though has to do with the battery. If we go into our settings, go into battery, you'll see it's got an all new screen. Give it just a moment to load here. And there are a few things where we're going to have estimated time to charge, but it looks like that may not be here or it may take a while for it to work. The phone gets extremely hot so far since it's still setting up in the background. And if we plug it in, you can see the animation there, of

3:52 course, for charging. It tells us that it's charging here. And it's also telling me that my AirPods battery are low. Batteries are low for the AirPods 4 active noise cancellation. So, if we go in here, it gives us information about the battery. And then as we scroll down, it says daily usage. You're using more battery today than you usually do by 4:28 p.m. So, it's a little more intelligent. And it has something called adaptive power. So if we go into charging, you'll see here we have our normal menu. And then if we go into power mode, we have the option for adaptive power. If we turn this on, it says when your battery usage is higher than usual, iPhone can make small performance adjustments to extend your battery life, including slightly lowering the display brightness or allowing some activities to take a little longer. Low power mode may turn

4:38 on at 20%. So that's really how you should be using low power mode anyway. And if you want to use adaptive power, you can. I'll use that a little later. Of course, we have different information updates as far as the overall battery. Battery health here as well. Same thing as you would expect. And battery usage looks a little different as well. I actually like this a lot more where it gives you how much battery you've used compared to the previous day with screen active time and screen idle time. It's a very nice update and I'm glad they've done this. Now, they've redesigned some apps as well. One of the most striking ones is camera. So, let's go ahead and unplug here and you can see camera is all different. So, we have iOS 18.5 here and you'll see the camera a little bit different here. If we go to photo, we've got our menus on the side. So, if we

5:24 rotate, they rotate like you would expect and then expand out in glass. So, we've got all of our different menu options here. We can switch between different things as far as raw photos, 48 megapixels. We can also switch to videos where we go into HEVC and change it to whatever we'd like. So, it's an all new look. Again, we can spin the camera around. Looks a little bit different. Of course, we have exposure, action, and everything else. So, everything just contained in a new look together. I think many people will be happy to hear that they've redesigned photos again. We now have the option for library or collections. Collections is sort of the layout we had before this, but now you can see here we can switch between library, collections, scroll through it, and we can customize this just like before. So, we have the option to do that. Go back to library and then

6:11 of course in the top right we have some menu options and again all fluid animations and hopefully this will really be much more performant oriented once we get closer to the final release. But you can see what it looks like there. If we go into maybe a splash screen I got on the podcast app, tap delete, you can see we have a little menu that pops up. We get the same thing down here. If we go into maybe optimize it or adjust it. Anything you want to do is completely different. If we go to share, for example, we've got a new share sheet that looks a little different. And they've just made changes all throughout to look a little different. They've also updated Safari. If we go into Safari, you can see what it looks like here. So again, that translucency where it disappears at the bottom and reappears as you slide. If we go to the menu, it pops out and then we

6:58 have the same things. Now, some of this could change by the time it releases, but you'll see what it looks like here where we have the option for bookmarks and new private tab. And then, of course, we can go back, go back again, and you'll see here's iOS 18. So, again, this is all new as far as the way it looks. They've updated it, and I think it looks great. The next thing they've updated has to do with the phone app. Within the phone app, we have an all new layout. In the upper right, we have an option just like we do in mail currently, and it's flickering here a little bit for some reason, but you'll see that we have calls, missed, voicemails, unknown callers, and spam. And we can manage filtering. We have some new spam filtering as well. So, under manage filtering, it goes down and it says move to unknown callers, screen incoming callers, and just makes it easier to use. Overall, you can also

7:44 update cards for different people and pin them here at the top. So, if we press and hold, we can message or just tap to call within settings. There's some updates for phone calls as well. We can screen incoming calls. This will actually answer the phone call for you if it doesn't recognize who it is and get more information for you before it then rings your phone. It will give you that information and help you decide whether or not you actually want to answer it. So, that's a great new feature. And it will also wait on hold for you if you call someone that you're trying to get a hold of and then they put you on hold. It can wait on hold and then notify you while you're in another app that you're on hold and then someone picked up so you can continue talking. So those are some great options. Those are things I definitely appreciate. And there's spam filtering as well for messages. The same sort of thing. Now if

8:30 we go into messages within messages we have all new backgrounds. We can set a background for each conversation. And you'll see it's actually a motion background. it's moving and it can also be Apple intelligence generated. It says you change the background. You can see that here and it will change across your devices as well. If we go to the top menu here, tap on the name. You'll see across the top, not only do we have info, but we now have a new backgrounds option. So, you could switch it maybe to Aurora. And it is a little bit buggy at this point. Like I mentioned before, set it like that. We can generate something from image playground or select from suggestions they have below. So again, you'll see that translucency here and I think it looks great. If we go back again, it will take a moment. Sometimes it takes a second to reset, but it says

9:16 you change the background and maybe if we exit out of it and go back in, it will work. But again, keep in mind this is an early beta and it does allow for this, but sometimes it just doesn't work great. So we'll swipe between styles. You'll see it there. That's the one I used before. And then it's set again. We also have similar spam options like we do in phone. So, if we go back to the main menu, you'll see in the upper right, we have a menu option here where we have transactions, promotions, spam, recently deleted, or we can manage the filtering as well. If we go under manage filtering, it switches over to the messages settings, and you'll see it says screen unknown senders, hide notifications and messages to the unknown senders. And then you have text message filter on, filter spam, and then of course you have options for those backgrounds as well if you'd like to use

10:02 those. So, some nice updates to messages with screening and more. And there's also typing indicators within groups. So, if you're messaging a huge amount of people, you can see who's actually typing that and it can sort of understand what that is and give you summaries as well. We also have a couple of new apps. If we slide over to the last screen here, you'll see we have an all new games app and we've got our games sort of focused in one specific area. We also have arcade. We have play together here as well. And then we have library. So you can play against people. If we go back home, you'll see as we scroll through this, you can see different people that are challenging you, how well you're doing, and all of the things your friends are playing as well. Sort of. So it sort of combines the App Store arcade along with Game Center. There will also be new

10:48 challenges for friends if you'd like to do that. Now, you may have already noticed we have a new preview app. If I go into preview, you can see the different things I was talking about earlier today. It will download them and then it will allow us to edit those, change those maybe into a different format. So you can see here. So we can use visual intelligence, adjust the size, remove the background if it's available, and then if we go into the information, you can see more information where it was taken from the Pro Display XDR. And then also we can share it, export it, and more. So this is pretty great that we now have this option here, and it will run all of the things that you would want from preview. So it's great to see that added to iOS. Now, as far as Apple intelligence, Apple made a big update for visual intelligence. Now you can search based on what's on your screen. So, if we go

11:33 into maybe Safari, take a screenshot, and the screenshot dialogue looks a little bit different. Now, we can now highlight to search, we can ask or do an image search. Maybe we'll highlight here to search. See what it recognizes as far as iOS 18. Give it just a moment here. And it says swipe up for image search. We have to tap continue. Give it just a second here. and it's getting results from Google and it finds the same thing. So, gives you an idea of what you can do with it. You can also ask continue to use chat GPT if you'd like and ask about details. What is this? And see what it says. So, again, this can go out and use chat GPT. You'll see it says working at the top and then it says this is the logo for iOS 18, Apple's mobile operating system. So, it understands

12:20 context, whether that's a photo or something else. you can highlight what you're looking at and then get information about it. Something else Apple has made a big push into for the whole OS is live translation. If we go into the phone app, you'll see I've already made a call to myself. And if I go to more down here, not only can we record it, but we now have live translation or hold assist like I mentioned before. If we go into live translation, you can see you can translate to English from French, German, Portuguese, or Spanish. So, you'll have to download those models. So, if someone's speaking Spanish to you, it will translate in real time and you'll hear it. You'll actually hear it first in their language and then you'll hear it spoken back to you in your language. This works in both directions and also works with things such as messages. So, this is built right in.

13:06 So, if someone's messaging you or talking to you or even in FaceTime, you can hear back and forth in real time. The design and updates also carry across to FaceTime. If we go into FaceTime, you can see it here. And in the future, there'll be real-time video in the background, maybe from your last conversation of the person you spoke with. So, you'll see an all new look here with some options in the upper right. So, if we go into the options, you'll see it says missed video, voicemail, and then spam and then again call filtering. So, you can reduce distractions from unknown callers and turn up or turn on call screening. So, that's something that I definitely appreciate. Go into call filtering and we can go into settings and set that up later as well. So, it's an update here with that. And you'll see the interface is different as well. So, it looks a little bit different. And that's what it

13:52 looks like. So, some buttons on the side with one at the top. Now, I briefly went into music earlier, but there's a couple new things in here as well. If we press and hold on a song, we can now pin the song. And if we go into it here, we've pinned the song. And now, if we go back out, so you'll see we go to our options here, go to home, and then maybe library. Go back to library. You'll see that it's pinned at the top. So, we have a list here at the top. Maybe I want to pin something else. Maybe we'll pin this one. Pin the album. And now it's at the top here as well. So, you can pin albums at the top that you regularly play. So, that's a nice update. Also, live translation comes across to this as well. Lyric pronunciation and live translation.

14:39 Also, since this just popped up on the screen, we have automix. it will seamlessly transition from one song into the next, more like a DJ. So, that's something I look forward to trying out. Also, CarPlay gets an update as far as the way it looks. So, you can see briefly what CarPlay looks like in my car. I'll go into this in more depth in a future video. And then, when it comes to AirPods, there's a couple updates here as well. So, if we go into AirPods, we'll make sure they're connected here. We'll go back into our settings. You'll see they're connected. Let's scroll up here. Then we'll go back into our AirPods and within AirPods, you can see this here. We have an alert for beta software update, which is great if we want some pre-release updates. Now, I'll have to do this in a minute, but anything with an H2 chip, AirPods or AirPods Pro, you

15:26 can start recording video in the camera by pressing on the stem of the AirPods. They're also bringing the option to capture highquality audio during video conference calls and record in high definition with the camera with AirPods and AirPods Pro with the H2 chipset. So, those are features that I'm really looking forward to and I'll definitely be trying them out. But, I do need to update these to the beta and get that going. But, you'll see here if we go to learn more, we have airpods beta updates and then data analytics. So, it says enable pre-release beta firmware updates. So, we can use that as well. So, that's something that's a little bit new, at least for the option to let you know about it as well. Now, there are many more updates to talk about with iOS 26, but those are the major ones. an overhaul with the overall design, a redesign, a nice little update to the

16:12 way things animate and pop out based on the overall look of what's behind it. And I think I really like the overall look of this with the glass or maybe just in dark mode. But I think this is a great update, one of the best in years, if not the best I've seen in many, many years. And the iPad gets some huge updates as well that I'll cover in a separate video. Let me know what you think of iOS 26, though, in the comments below. And of course, I'll link this wallpaper in the description like I normally do. If you haven't subscribed already though, please subscribe. And if you enjoyed the video, please give it a like. As always, thanks for watching. This is Aaron. I'll see you next time. [Music]