Apple’s iOS 26 update is packed with brilliant features that grab your attention and make your iPhone better. But beyond major changes like the Liquid Glass redesign, iOS 26 is full of lesser-known improvements that are easily overlooked.
Here, we’ve highlighted a few of our favorite hidden changes in the iOS 26 update. We’ll show you how they work and where you can find them, so you can get started right away and improve your iOS experience.
Customize camera control
Apple’s Camera Control is a quick way to open the Camera app and start taking photos. It comes with a set of quick controls accessible with a simple swipe or tap. But if you find that it doesn’t really work for you – or want to change how it works – then iOS 26 has made some welcome tweaks.
Apple
Now you can change the order in which camera control features appear, meaning you can make your most frequently used controls much easier to find. To do this, open the Settings application and navigate to Camera > Camera controlthen touch Personalize under the Controls heading. You can now rearrange the controls to your liking, disable light taps and swipes, and enable a cleaner preview screen when using the camera control.
Say goodbye to wasted photos
There’s nothing worse than capturing a unique moment with your camera, then coming home and realizing your photos are ruined because of a smudged camera lens. Given how often we use our iPhones, this type of risk is never far away. Fortunately, iOS 26 has a fix.
In the latest iOS update, you will now receive warnings if the software determines that your iPhone’s camera lens is oily or smudged. When this happens, you’ll see an on-screen alert suggesting you clean your lens to prevent unwanted effects from ruining your images. Simply find a soft cloth and gently wipe the lens to remove streaks before taking the photo.
Event details in photos
When you point your camera at a poster advertising a concert or sporting event, you can use visual intelligence to search for event details. But you can also do this from the Photos app and use it to find details about events you’ve already taken photos of.
Simply open an image in the Photos app, then tap the Info button or swipe up to reveal more details. You can check the date of the concert or find other upcoming shows, for example, or even find up-to-date scores for the sports match in question. You can even listen to songs from all the artists featured in the image.
Relieve the hassle of traveling
If you travel to and from work, there have probably been plenty of times when you’ve wanted to avoid traffic and find a better route. Thanks to a few choice upgrades to the Maps app in iOS 26, it’s now possible.
Apple
Maps offers several useful commuting improvements in the latest version of the iOS operating system. For example, your iPhone will now automatically learn your preferred routes to and from important locations, then send you notifications offering alternative routes if traffic looks bad before you leave. The Maps widget will display an overview of your trip from your home screen, while the Weather app can also intervene by sending severe weather warnings for your favorite locations. Everything is designed to help you avoid traffic and travel with peace of mind.
Mix it automatically
Have you always dreamed of being a DJ? Apple Music can’t make this a reality yet, but it can help you mix and match your tracks with a little more ease in iOS 26. With AutoMix in your arsenal, your tracks will seamlessly merge with each other with minimal effort on your part. Apple says the feature “seamlessly transitions from song to song, using time stretching and beat matching to deliver an even smoother listening experience.”
Apple
To use AutoMix, you must first be an Apple Music subscriber. If so, open the Settings application and navigate to Applications > Apple Music > Song transitionsmake sure the Song Transitions button is enabled, then select Automatic mixing. Next, open Apple Music, tap the MiniPlayer at the bottom of your screen, tap the Up Next button, then turn on the AutoMix toggle.
Note that AutoMix will not work if you listen to songs sequentially in an album, if the genres or tempos of the two tracks are too different, if the songs were manually downloaded from your music library, or if your songs were purchased and downloaded from the iTunes Store.
Hear podcast voices clearly
Sometimes it can be difficult to hear the dialogue in your favorite podcasts. If this sounds familiar, iOS 26’s Improve Dialogue feature will be music to your ears. It uses machine learning to differentiate speech from background sounds, ensuring words are never lost in noise again. Plus, you can even save this setting for each show in the Podcasts app.
Apple
To enable dialog enhancement, open the Podcasts app and start playing an episode of the show. Pull up Now playing window, press the 1x speed button, then press Improve dialogue in the menu that appears. Now you can enjoy clearer dialogue on every podcast you listen to.
Boost your reminders
One of the best things about Apple Intelligence is that it can make intelligent suggestions based on what you’re doing at any given time. This can be seen in the case of Smart Reminders: here, Apple Intelligence examines an email, website, note, or other text it encounters, then extracts relevant tasks or shopping list items. You can then share that text with Reminders to create a new task or shopping list, complete with smart formatting and ingredient suggestions.
There’s also a new Reminders control designed for the Control Center and Action button, giving you a quick way to create a new task without needing to open the app. And reminders can be automatically grouped into related topics, like work or errands, using Apple Intelligence.
