Apple’s next somewhat major iOS update is almost here.
The iPhone operating system will soon receive a notable update in iOS 26.1, as evidenced by the fact that beta testers were given access to the candidate version of that this week. We don’t know the exact day it will be released yet, but anyone who wants to would benefit from keeping an eye on their iPhone’s software update page.
In the meantime, we now have a pretty clear idea of what iOS 26.1 includes. Here are the four main new features of iOS 26.1.
The new Apple M5 products are fast, sexy and so iterative it hurts
An adjustment to liquid glass
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It may be loading or has been deleted.
Some people aren’t big fans of Liquid Glass, the new design language for iOS 26. It makes app icons and other UI elements more transparent, making them harder to distinguish at a glance. Apple fixed this problem in iOS 26.1, offering a new “tinted” version of the interface. Simply go to Settings, search for “Display & Brightness” and look for the new option once the update is installed on your phone.
It’s not quite the same as being able to disable Liquid Glass completely, but it’s better than nothing.
Crushable speed of light
Stop accidentally opening your camera
By default, on an iPhone running iOS 26, you can open your camera directly from the lock screen by swiping left from the right side of the screen. This is handy when you need to quickly take a photo without going through the process of unlocking your phone, but it also leads to many cases of accidentally opening the camera when you don’t want to.
After installing iOS 26.1, go to Settings, search for “Camera” and turn off the “Swipe lock screen to open camera” feature in the menu. This will make it so that you can no longer just swipe to open the camera, meaning you’ll be free to swipe left on your lock screen as you please.
Support for more languages
Adding increased language support for Apple Intelligence features isn’t necessarily flashy, but it’s important nonetheless. On the AI side, users now have access to these new languages:
-
Danish
-
Norwegian
-
Dutch
-
Chinese (traditional)
-
Portuguese
-
Swedish
-
Turkish
-
Vietnamese
But that’s not all! New languages are also added to Live Translate for AirPods:
This will definitely be useful to many people.
Slide to stop alarms
Finally, Apple is already rolling back a change made in iOS 26. With this update, Apple has made it so that you can ignore lock screen alarms by simply pressing a comically huge button at the bottom of the screen. Personally, I like this, but as some people have noted, it makes it easier to accidentally clear an alarm.
With iOS 26.1, you now have to swipe to dismiss a lock screen alarm, adding a degree of intentionality to the process of stopping your phone from screaming at you in the morning. Having to do this will also engage your brain a bit, so maybe it’s a good thing overall.
