Kerry Wan/ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways Apple has released the first public beta of iOS 26.1. The update adds new features and seems to fix at least one bug. iOS 26.1 is likely to launch around the end of October. Apple's iOS 26 is a little more than a week old, but the company has already released its first public beta of iOS 26.1. Now available for anyone to download and install, the first beta gives us a sign of what to expect when the final version is released. First up are new languages for Apple Intelligence. Currently, Apple's AI can handle requests and generate content across several major languages, including English, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese (Simplified). New to the mix with iOS 26.1 are Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish, and Vietnamese. Also on the language front, the latest update adds more languages to Live Translation, an improvement that Apple had promised. Currently, the feature supports English (UK, US), French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. With iOS 26.1, you'll be able to translate to and from Chinese (Mandarin, Simplified, and Traditional), Italian, Japanese, and Korean. Apple's Music player gets a small but helpful trick. When you're listening to an album, a small mini player appears at the bottom with the name of the current song. Currently, if you want to skip to the next track, you have to switch from the mini player to full-screen mode. With iOS 26.1, you can simply swipe left or right on the mini player, and you'll be taken to the next or previous track. Another small change centers around Liquid Glass, the new translucent design Apple introduced to the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch via its OS 26 updates. The keypad in the Phone app now adopts the Liquid Glass aesthetic, so the numbers blend into the background. If you don't like the new look, you can always tone it down. Here's a handy visual change for the Photos app. When you play a video through the app, a scrubber appears so you can quickly move forward or backward. Currently, the scrubber is hard to see as it has a faint appearance. With the latest update, the scrubber control receives a distinct background so you can more clearly see and control it. And for another visual enhancement, the Calendar now paints events with specific colors. Open the Calendar app and make sure it's in List view. Tap any event and you'll see it highlighted with a color based on its source. Finally, iOS 26.1 likely offers a number of bug and feature fixes. One reported fix addresses the Wi-Fi disconnect issues that many iPhone 17 owners have reported. Here, people say that the Wi-Fi cuts out and resumes only after the phone is unlocked. Some who have installed iOS 26.1 say that the problem has been resolved or at least is no longer reproducible. Along with iOS 26.1, Apple has also released the first public betas for iPadOS 26.1, MacOS Tahoe 26.1, and WatchOS 26.1. How to download iOS 26.1 If you want to try iOS 26.1 specifically, head to Settings, select General, and then tap Software Update. Change the setting for Beta Updates to iOS 26 Public Beta and allow the update to download and install. Since this is just the first beta, it's going to be rough around the edges. That means you shouldn't install this on your primary phone. Instead, use a spare iPhone if you own one. I have an older iPhone that I use specifically for beta testing. Since this is just the first public beta, expect more fixes and features as Apple continues to work on iOS 26.1. The company hasn't shared a specific release date for this point update. But previous releases, such as iOS 18.1, iOS 17.1, and iOS 16.1, all launched toward the end of October. If that schedule holds, we can expect iOS 18.1 in another month or so. Want to follow my work? Add ZDNET as a trusted source on Google. Featured