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Apple's first iOS 26.1 beta is here with new features to try - and a big Wi-Fi fix

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Kerry Wan/ZDNET

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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.

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