WWDC 2025: Apple Rolls Out iOS 26 With These Interesting Features

Apple has officially launched iOS 26, skipping ahead from iOS 18, and it brings a significant leap in design, intelligence, and utility. The update reimagines the iPhone experience with smarter features, refined visuals, and deeper personalisation, all while enhancing privacy and accessibility.

Liquid Glass Design: A Visual Makeover

A major highlight of iOS 26 is the Liquid Glass design—a new, dynamic interface layer that reflects ambient surroundings and reacts to light and motion. This translucent visual effect appears across the Lock Screen, Home Screen, app icons, and widgets. It brings a sleeker aesthetic and new customisation options, including 3D motion wallpapers and frosted elements, giving users more ways to personalise their iPhones.

Apple Intelligence: On-Device AI Power

Apple’s latest AI push, branded as Apple Intelligence, is deeply integrated into iOS 26. It enables Live Translation across Messages, FaceTime, and Phone apps, allowing real-time multilingual communication—securely processed on-device. A new Visual Intelligence feature lets users interact with screen content: identifying objects, summarising pages, and even creating calendar events from messages or photos.

Creative tools like Genmoji and Image Playground use text-to-image AI to generate custom emojis and graphics for messaging, offering a fun and expressive way to communicate.

Communication and Productivity Upgrades

The Phone app sees a unified interface combining Recents, Favorites, and Voicemail. New features like Call Screening filter spam, and Hold Assist alerts you when someone returns to the line after putting you on hold.

In Messages, unknown contacts are filtered into a separate tab. Users can now create polls in group chats, see typing indicators, and customise chat backgrounds. AI-driven suggestions make polling even easier.

Apps Get Smarter: Maps, Music, Wallet & CarPlay

Apple Music introduces real-time lyrics translation and a DJ-style AutoMix for smooth track transitions. Apple Maps adds Visited Places—a private history of your locations using end-to-end encryption.

CarPlay now supports widgets, pinned chats, Tapbacks, anSSSSSSSd less intrusive call notifications. The Wallet app offers installment payment tracking, live flight updates, and seamless Find My integration.

Extras: AirPods, Parental Controls, and Privacy

AirPods gain studio-quality audio recording and camera control features. Parental controls are expanded, offering new communication filters and easier setup for children. Safari receives advanced anti-fingerprinting protections, and a system-wide reading tool enhances accessibility, along with improved Braille support.

iOS 26 is Apple’s most ambitious iPhone update yet, combining a stunning visual overhaul with smart, on-device intelligence and improved everyday functionality—all while prioritising user privacy and accessibility.