After using the iOS 26 beta for a few months, I found a lot of the new features to be fun and useful. The Liquid Glass redesign looks clean and is visually impressive. Call screening, a true game-changer, manages to protect you from robocalls while still allowing other folks to reach you. And iOS 26 brings other hidden upgrades to my iPhones that still manage to surprise me.
While most of these upgrades are good, iOS 26 takes half-measures at times. Some features are moving in the right direction but need work. The new Games app feels as though it hasn’t been fully built out yet, and Visual Intelligence’s ability to add information to your Calendar could use improvement.
Call screening and Liquid Glass are the biggest (but not only) improvements in iOS 26
Call screening is the one feature I didn’t know I needed
I’ve never heard someone say, “Oh boy, a spam call! I love these!” So when Apple announced call screening at WWDC, I was interested to see how effective this feature was. And let me tell you, it’s awesome. It might be my single favorite feature in iOS 26.
There are two options for call screening: Ask Reason for Calling and Silence.
Liquid Glass looks good after tweaks during the beta process
The most dramatic change iOS 26 brings to your iPhone is the new redesigned Liquid Glass visual interface. This is the biggest visual update to your iPhone since the company released iOS 7 in 2013… back when Henry Cavill first put on Superman’s iconic suit and cape, and I had just graduated from college with a twinkle in my eye.
People were divided over the Liquid Glass design when Apple announced it. Some liked it, while others — myself included — thought the glass effects made things hard to read. But after trial and error during the beta process, I think Apple found the right balance of glass and frosted effects to make this design work.
Apple also builds on the tinted app icons feature introduced in iOS 18, but now with clear icons. The clear option removes all color, giving your icons a translucent, ghostly look. While I was initially hesitant, the feature has grown on me. Some icons that are pretty busy still don’t play nice with this option, but I think Apple has struck a nice level of frostedness.
Many of the Liquid Glass changes are focused on aesthetics rather than function. So while menus look different and the controls in your Control Center have a polished look, almost everything should feel familiar when you use it.
I just wish Apple would address the transition between lock and home screens. When you unlock your iPhone and swipe up to get to your home screen, you can see the Liquid Glass layer move up the screen, but not the wallpaper beneath it. In past iOS versions, your lock screen wallpaper would roll up the screen as you switched to your home screen. With Liquid Glass, if your home screen wallpaper is different from your lock screen’s, it might look like your iPhone is glitching because your lock screen is seemingly not moving.
Otherwise, I like Liquid Glass in its current state. It appears that Apple took user feedback to heart in the beta process for iOS 26. If you still don’t like it, you can reduce the transparency in the Accessibility section of Settings.
Lock screen updates and big clock
Apple continues to make the lock screen more customizable and functional with iOS 26. The most significant change is the big clock. Note that “big clock” is not the official name of this feature, but it takes up almost half of your lock screen, so what else am I supposed to call it? As a visually impaired person, I really appreciate the big clock. Now, when I take my glasses off at night, I don’t have to bring my iPhone up to my face to check the time.
My one complaint about the big clock is that you can only use it with one clock font, and I’d like to spread the love to other fonts. Otherwise, you can change its color to match your background, make the numbers thicker or change its design between Glass (more transparent) and Solid (a more standard-looking clock).
I also appreciate being able to move my widget bar to a new home. You can house your widgets near the top of your screen, right underneath the clock, or you can move them to the bottom of the screen, just above your controls. This is partially an extension of the big clock option because if you enable that feature, your widgets automatically move to the bottom portion of your lock screen to accommodate the large numbers, though you can also move them around without it.
Just having the freedom to move widgets to another location on your lock screen is a huge plus for me. I’ve wanted the ability to move widgets and controls around the lock screen for years, and this change brings my iPhone one step closer to that reality.
iOS 26 has more upgrades below the surface
Apple has a lot of upgrades in iOS 26, some of which didn’t get a lot of airtime during the WWDC keynote. But that doesn’t make them any less important or helpful.
With iOS 26, you can adjust your alarm’s snooze length to anywhere from 1 to 15 minutes. This change makes me so happy. The old snooze length was 9 minutes — not 10 or even 5 minutes — which always irritated me because I think 9 is such an ugly number. So being able to adjust the snooze length is satisfying.
When you charge your iPhone with iOS 26, your lock screen will show how long it will take and whether your charger is working slowly or not. I have a charging pad that lets me charge two devices at once. When I had my phone on it with another device, my iPhone would say that it was plugged into a slow charger, and it would take at least an hour to charge fully.
I wish the Games app worked with other gaming apps, too. As of now, it works with games from mobile services, like Apple Arcade and Netflix Games, as well as any game you buy or download through Apple’s App Store, like Clash Royale or Roblox. But if you have the iOS Steam app, it won’t show up in Games. So it’s not a comprehensive hub for gaming on your mobile device.
I also want Apple to make it easier to connect a controller through the Games app. You can still connect an 8BitDo or Xbox controller through the Bluetooth menu, but it would be helpful if there was a shortcut button in the Games app that can search for connectable controllers nearby.
The Games app seems like a good start, but it leaves a lot to be desired. I hope Apple expands this app in the future and adds more functionality.
Visual Intelligence can be improved
Apple introduced Visual Intelligence with iOS 18 in the iPhone 16 lineup in 2024. It lets you do an image search with Google or start a prompt with ChatGPT about whatever your camera is pointed at. iOS 26 upgrades the feature to support screenshots. This is a nice touch, but the Google Search menu wouldn’t always immediately disappear when I wanted it to after searching for a screenshot online.
Adding events to Calendar from Visual Intelligence could also be frustrating if you’re using a picture or screenshot with multiple listings — while you can edit and customize calendar events, Visual Intelligence defaults to picking the first listed item. When you take a screenshot or use Visual Intelligence on a concert poster, a button appears to Add to Calendar. When you tap it, your iPhone creates an event based on the first entry in the list or on the poster which you can add to your Calendar by tapping Create Event. You can edit the information if it’s not correct by tapping Edit, but at that point, you might as well manually input it. Also, there didn’t appear to be a way to select a different date and location for Visual Intelligence if various options were available.
Final word on iOS 26
Overall, I like the changes Apple introduces with iOS 26. Call screening is super helpful, and the Liquid Glass design is aesthetically pleasing without being cumbersome. The update builds on aspects of iOS 18, in particular the ability to change app colors and customize your home and lock screen more. In that regard, iOS 26 feels like the natural next step after iOS 18. Just know that some new features feel incomplete, but maybe Apple will improve on these features in subsequent updates.
For more on iOS 26, here’s how to enable call screening and how to change your icons to clear in the update. You can also check out our iOS 26 cheat sheet.
04:31
Leave a Reply