Mat Smith heads up Engadget’s daily newsletter from London, UK. He has worked at Engadget for over a decade and has covered console gaming, flagship smartphones, the Apple Watch and fitness tech that promises to make him faster or stronger. He’s currently learning how to backflip.
At WWDC 2025, Apple revealed a major visual shake-up for iOS . This is the biggest change, aesthetically, since the shift away from the stitching, textures and skeuomorphic design of the iOS 4. It also comes with significantly fewer AI and Siri updates this time around. However, it’s the smaller touches that make iOS 26 seem like a notable improvement over its predecessor.
One noticeable change I'd been waiting for was the iOS search bar’s relocation to the bottom of the screen. I first noticed it within Settings, but it reappears in Music, Podcasts, Photos and pretty much everywhere you might need to find specific files or menu items now. If, like me, you’re an iPhone Pro or Plus user, you may have struggled to reach those search bars when they were at the top of the screen. It’s a welcome improvement.
Apple Intelligence’s Writing tools — which I mainly use for summarizing meetings, conference calls and even lengthy PDFs — doesn't choke with more substantial reading. On iOS 18, it would struggle with voice notes longer than 10 minutes, trying to detangle or structure the contents of a meeting. I haven’t had that issue with iOS 26 so far.Genmoji and Image Playground both offer up different results through the update. Image Playground can now generate pictures using ChatGPT.
Still, the ability to change a Genmoji’s expression, as well as add and remove glasses and facial hair through the new appearance customization options, is an improvement.Apple has revisited the camera app, returning to basics by stripping away most of the previously offered modes and settings — at least initially — to display only video and photo modes.You can swipe up from the bottom to see additional options, like flash, the timer, exposure, styles and more.
There’s also the ability to filter spam messages to their own little folder . Spam texts remain a nightmare, so I appreciate any potential weapons in the fight. Sadly, it hasn’t quite manage to deal with the TikTok marketing agencies and phone network customer services that continue to barrage my Messages. Still, hopefully Apple will continue to improve its detection algorithms.
Games is one of two new apps that will automatically join your home screen. . The other is Preview, which should be a familiar addition to any Mac user. It offers an easy way to view sent or downloaded files, like menus, ticket QR codes and more. During the developer beta, the app pulled in a handful of my documents that previously lived in the Files app. Navigation across both those apps is identical, although Preview is limited to files you can actually open, of course.of Apple’s headphones.
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