I’ve been using iOS 26 since the first developer beta, and now that the public beta is out, it seems a good time to share my early views of the biggest shake-up to the look and feel of the iPhone user interface for a great many years.
Of course, betas will beta, and there have been a few glitches along the way, but I have to say that only one of my apps won’t run, so I’ve been able to get a pretty good feel for everyday use ..
The one app that crashes on opening for me is the email client Spark, so I’ve temporarily reverted to the stock Mail app.
The Liquid Glass look
Back in the days when we expected iOS 18 to be followed by iOS 19, I said I expected the new look to have a bigger impact on people than Siri improvements. Little did I know just how true that was going to be, because we’re still waiting for most of the new Siri features.
I also predicted that the new look in what turned out to be iOS 26 would prove controversial, and that too has very much been the case. However, I must say that, overall, I’m a big fan!
Frankly, in recent years one generation of iPhone has looked much like the last, and the same has been largely true of iOS. I was just a bit bored with seeing the same old thing, so was ready for something new, even if it would inevitably have some rough edges in the beta phases.
Some have been critical of inconsistencies in the look. For example, Apple responded to Control Panel legibility complaints by making those controls frosted glass while most of the UI comprises clear(ish) glass. However, to me both are, uh, clearly glass-based, and I don’t see it as an issue to have a variety of glass looks.
One big question was to what degree Apple was going to return to the skeuomorphism of pre-iOS 7. The answer is … not really. The Camera app icon is perhaps the closest we get to it, but even that isn’t attempting to look anything like a real camera, just a somewhat more realistic-looking lens. Most app icons retain their original symbols, and have a rather subtle 3D glass effect.
I’m a very big fan of this look. Indeed, my only criticism would be that it doesn’t go far enough. I’d like to see Apple be bolder, and dial up both the glass effect and 3D impression by 30% or so.
Camera app
Speaking of the Camera app, this also gets one of the most dramatic UI changes. The bottom slider has been ‘replaced’ with two buttons: Video and Photo.
I do think this makes perfect sense. Probably 98% of iPhone owners only ever use these two functions, and most of the 2% likely mostly do so.
I put ‘replaced’ in inverted commas because the slider is still present. If you slide across these buttons, then all the previous options (timelapse, slo-mo, and so on) appear in the same way as they did before.
The new UI can certainly be criticized on the grounds that it’s not particularly intuitive. There’s no visual clue that you can slide for more options, nor that you can tap somewhere within the surrounding area to bring up more options:
But once you know where everything is, it is actually a very efficient UI, and I’ve come to like it a lot. It gets out of your way when you don’t need it, but all the controls can be accessed quickly and easily.
Photos app
The changes to the Photos have come in for a lot of flack, but for me the core problem is that the app has grown progressively more powerful, complicating what was once a very simple UI.
Once Apple separated out the Library and Collections into separate tabs, and I used the Reorder button to arrange the Collections into a sensible order for me, I’ve actually found that the new UI works really well.
I’d say if you hate it at first, try re-ordering things to suit your own needs and then give it a little time to grow on you.
Smarter Phone app
The most appealing new feature is Call Screening, which works like a live visual voicemail feature. This answers calls from unknown numbers and asks them who they are and what they want (probably phrased a little more politely). It then shows you a text version of their response, and you can then choose whether or not to answer the call.
Sadly, while the feature can be enabled in the UK, it has never worked for me. Instead, it just silently rejects calls from unknown numbers.
There’s also Hold Assist. When you find yourself on hold, you just tap to engage the feature and it announces when the call has been answered.
However, I’ve found this is almost useless due to the extremely annoying way most companies manage their hold queues – which is to switch between music and a voice message to the effect “We apologise for the delay, which we pretend is due to unusual call volumes but is in fact because we don’t want to pay for enough staff to answer the perfectly normal call volumes we are experiencing.” Apple’s system hears the voice, thinks the call has been connected, and disables the hold.
To work properly, the system needs to distinguish between short “Thanks for calling X, my name is Y, how can I help you?” type speech and lengthy “Your call is important to us, though not important enough to properly staff our phones, and really we hope you’ll give up and try our website instead” recorded messages.
There’s also a new unified UI which reduces the number of tabs, but I’m not a fan; I switched back to the normal view.
Messages
The headline news for me in the Messages app is the anti-spam feature similar to the Phone one, where texts from unknown numbers are not displayed on the main screen, but in a secondary one you have to tap to view.
I’m a fan of this, though it’s easy to forget to check it for genuine messages, so I’d prefer a prompt at the end of the day.
This is one case where Apple Intelligence summaries might perhaps come in handy, with something like “You have three texts from unknown numbers. Two are scams claiming to offer you jobs with TikTok and Meta, one says that your flight to Boston tomorrow has been delayed.”
I like the polls feature, which I use a lot in WhatsApp for things like finding dates for group dinners, and hate the ability to change the background as this happens for everyone.
Safari’s compact tabs
Apple long since addressed the controversial iOS 15 move of the unified bar from the top of the screen to the bottom by allowing people the choice. Personally, I was a strong convert to having it at the bottom of the screen.
But iOS 26 introduces a new option, called Compact. This hides all but the back button, so that we get more usable screen space. It also shrinks vertically and contracts horizontally when you’re not actively using it:
I immediately adopted this and haven’t looked back.
Apple Intelligence
The key Apple Intelligence capability I’m waiting for is a Siri that can interact with my apps. I’d really like to be able to tell Siri what it is I’m trying to achieve (eg. “Arrange dinner with Sam, Clara, and Bill”) and have it do the rest – check my free evenings, create a poll, message them, invite restaurant suggestions, create a poll for that, and then make the booking.
That kind of intelligent agent capability still seems to be a very long way off. What we’ve got for now are a few baby steps, like the ability to identify dates in event screengrabs and offer to add them to your calendar. In my limited testing, this only picks up the first date for multi-day events, and doesn’t do a good job of identifying its name. So fairly useless for now, but I’m happy at least to see some steps in the right direction.
Similarly the ability to spell names when dictating text.
But there is one new Apple intelligence feature which appears to work far better than any of the competition I’ve seen to date: live translation.
Many companies have promised this, but the reality never lives up to the expectations. I’ve so far only been able to test this against conversational Spanish videos, but certainly for those, it has been phenomenally accurate.
I will be testing it in live conversation and will report back in a future post.
Wrap up
So far, then, I really like the new look – and would like to see Apple take it further.
Feature-wise, there’s a lot of work to be done to make it all effective and reliable, but I do think the company is headed in the right direction, and I’m impatiently awaiting improvements.
What I’m really waiting for is the new Siri, and it’s clear that I’m going to have a continued lengthy wait. This is frustrating to say the least, especially given what else is out there from other tech companies. I very much hope that the end result will justify the wait.