Apple packed a bunch of major updates into its annual Worldwide Developer Conference keynote. During the event, the company showed off the sleek design refresh coming to its operating systems, as well as a mix of new features for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, AirPods, and more bundled in upcoming software updates.
Here’s a roundup of some of the most exciting changes Apple announced during Monday’s keynote.
As predicted, Apple has given each of its operating systems new version numbers that now align with the year after their release, rather than the version number. The new names are iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26, watchOS 26, tvOS 26, and visionOS 26. They’ll be coming out in late 2025, but still, it’s easier to remember that iOS 19, watchOS 12, and macOS 16.
The operating systems are available as developer betas starting today and will be available to all users this fall.
Image: Apple
Apple is revamping the design across its operating systems. Now iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26, watchOS 26, tvOS 26, visionOS 26, and CarPlay will have a new “liquid glass” theme that adds more transparency to buttons, switches, sliders, text, and media controls throughout their interfaces.
The date, time, notification previews on iOS 26’s lockscreen will also adopt the liquid glass look, allowing you to get a clear view of your wallpapper behind all the text.
New looks for the Camera, Safari, and Phone apps
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As part of its broader redesign, Apple revealed revamps for some of its core apps in iOS 26. Now, web pages in Safari will take up your entire screen. The Camera app also has a simplified layout that shows you two main options, photo and video, and you can swipe on the tool bar to reveal other modes, such as “Slow-Mo” and “Cinematic.”
The Phone app is getting an upgrade as well, as it will now have a layout that combines favorites, recents, and voicemails into one panel, while “calls,” “contacts,” and ”keypad” remain on the bottom of the app.
Image: Apple
Apple is bringing a major update to iPadOS 26 that should make multitasking easier. New windowing capabilities will let you resize app windows, place them around your display, and open more windows at once. It’s also adding a more precise mouse pointer and a new menu bar, allowing you to swipe down on an app to view various options and commands. It all looks a lot more Mac-like.
iPadOS 26 is also getting a version of the Mac’s Preview app to view and annotate image and files.
Messages gets custom backgrounds and new group chat features
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Apple is updating Messages to let you change the background of your chats and create polls in group conversations. Some other updates include typing indicators for group chats and the ability to screen messages from unknown senders, which will appear in a separate folder instead of your main list.
Image: Apple
Apple revealed a new Games app that will let you access all of your Apple Arcade games and discover new ones from a single spot. You can check out the “Library” tab to view the games you’ve downloaded from the App Store, as well as use the “Play Together” option to challenge friends.
Image: Apple
The next macOS software update will introduce an upgrade to Spotlight that will make your search results more relevant with personalization and filtering options to help you search for specific files, folders, apps, and messages. It also adds the ability to take actions like sending an email or creating a note.
Apple is also bringing the Phone and the newly-announced Games app to macOS 26, along with support for the iPhone’s Live Activities.
The Apple Vision Pro will support PlayStation’s VR2 Sense controllers in visionOS 26, which will let you play a wider variety of virtual-reality games. It’s also adding a new a new scrolling feature that lets users navigate apps by looking up or down, in addition to spatial widgets that integrate “seamlessly into a user’s space and reappearing every time they put on Apple Vision Pro.”
There’s a new Apple Intelligence feature coming to iOS 26 that lets you use the same buttons you would to take a screenshot to call upon the AI assistant. From there, you can ask additional questions about what you’re seeing on your screen with ChatGPT, or search for a particular object on Google or Etsy to find similar images.
Along with the Liquid Glass design language, Apple is bringing a new “wrist flick” gesture to watchOS 26 that you can use to dismiss notifications. The Apple Watch will have a new AI-powered “Workout Buddy” as well, which will generate personalized advice and encouragements.
Apple is building AI-powered live translation into the Messages, FaceTime, and Phone apps. You can use the integration to automatically translate texts in the Messages app, while you’ll hear speech translated aloud on the Phone app. In FaceTime, Apple will display translated live captions while you listen to your conversation partner.
Apple previewed an update that will let users take a photo with their iPhone or iPad by tapping the stem of their AirPods. It’s also working on a new feature that lets users record “studio-quality” vocals in noisy areas with voice isolation. The features will come to the AirPods 4, AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation, and AirPods Pro 2.
Apple opens its AI models to developers
Though Apple’s keynote was a bit light on AI news, the company announced that it will let third-party app developers access the on-device large language model used by Apple Intelligence, allowing them to create tools of their own.
