Begin Your SEO Journey with the iOS 26 Public Beta

With the iOS 26 Public Beta, a new dawn is what is coming for iOS, a new iOS experience with a brand-new look that focused on the user's ability to be more customized for what they do in their everyday tasks, along with a fresh approach to user interaction, and enhanced everyday-use features. While the much-anticipated AI-enabled Siri is not in this version, this is still a good minor update that shows how Apple is trying to rethink how users engage with their devices, while remaining true to their product ecosystem but evolving.

The Liquid Glass Revolution

The iOS 26 Public Beta is unveiling the Liquid Glass idea, transitioning traditional buttons, sliders and folders into rolling, semi-transparent surfaces. This new design is consistent across the iPhone, iPad and Mac experience giving developers the opportunity to develop with multi-layered menus and tinted themes. The effects of custom transparent effects are prominently seen create interesting and different iconic looks, while Apple is still working out some of the initial user-visible transparency issues to achieve equilibrium.

Enhanced User Engagement

With the iOS 26 Public Beta release, the way we interact with our devices has been completely transformed with new two-stage popover actions, and cumbersome scrolling menus (pop-ups) are gone forever! Now, when you simply tap-and-hold, the most frequently used options show quickly, and if you want more options, it expands out from an arrow, allowing us to get effectively from point A to B. Additionally, the swipe-to-go back action now works on any edge of the screen, making it easier for users to understand and use!

Unlocking the Lock Screen

It has blown up the lock screen. Check it out! The clock changes size and placement depending on the background, with the widgets now placed below the clock, just above the notifications - so if you have a lot of notifications you can scroll to them. Spatial Scenes bring depth to the photos, and animated album art integrates with Apple Music+, but we made some tweaks to the customizations that we added like the rainbow clock, to make sure we can still customize widgets, and have flexible placement if needed.

Camera and Photos: Streamlined and Intelligent

The Camera app has had a complete overhaul, substantially reduced the number of gestures from the prior version of the app. Now, we only have to remember Photo & Video, and can swipe to expand to include Panorama or Portrait modes. Complete with the shutter button on the Touch Bar: Advanced settings are no longer taking up real estate on the toolbar, but can be accessed on the tool screen! Oh, and AirPods can also trigger photo-takes now, courtesy of the app! The Photos app restoration into a tabbed interface again, and improving user experience, thanks to Visual Intelligence tagging and identifying events such as concerts within the photos!

The Evolved Phone App

The iOS 26 Public Beta brings together Favorites, Recents, and Voicemails into one place in the iOS Phone app, adds a Spam component (for filtering out unwanted calls), and adds AI-driven call screening for evaluating unknown callers. It also includes Hold Assist that detects hold music, and is still in development to improve its accuracy.

Safari: Streamlined with More Functionality

iOS 26 Public Beta further simplifies Safari by combining its elements into a more minimal layout with a location bar, back button, and More menu. There are also enhancements to support web extensions, with the ability to save websites as full-screen apps. They have also incorporated more options for sharing, supporting the various user experiences.

Visual Intelligence: Broader Capabilities

The iOS 26 Public Beta has expanded the capabilities of Visual Intelligence, to screenshots, including the capabilities of ChatGPT and Google Image search. AI will identify URL's or events to give users instant actions. This enhancement enables screenshots to move from a snapshot memory to significant research tool. This is a huge increase in the functionality of screenshots.

More Updates in the iOS 26 Public Beta

There are a suite of updates within the iOS 26 Public Beta. As well as these headline features, this version offers listed battery usage graph, daily patterns of use, local audio recording for voice memos, note with markdown export for compatibility, a Passwords app for login history, AutoMix to improve music transitions, Maps locations by category, a Clock app with variable snooze time settings, and allowing selection of specific text within Messages – all improvements to make for a better and more convenient daily experience.

CarPlay Improvements and Apple Intelligence Features

The iOS 26 Public Beta brings the addition of a Liquid Glass UI to CarPlay, showing current call statuses, message tapbacks, and widgets based on size. Apple Intelligence introduces a new set of capabilities including Image Playground for creative editing, Genmoji for tailored emoji combinations, and summarized voicenotes - all subtle, intelligent improvements that enrich the experience.

Accessibility and Performance Improvements

As well as the headline features, the iOS 26 Public Beta offers improvements to accessibility for users who are visually impaired. This is particularly important to ensure the new Liquid Glass design is compatible with screen readers like voiceover, as well as enhancing speech functionality. Performance improvements are delivering much faster app launch times - in early tests, a 15% improvement was measured on various supported devices, while background app refresh now works more efficiently through improved practices that save battery life when multitasking.

Should You Install the iOS 26 Public Beta?

The installation of the iOS 26 Public Beta gives you a stable experience if you are a tester, featuring most of the accessibility options that were showcased at WWDC, though some minor bugs have me leaning towards waiting for the formal release this fall. The experience is seamless and the program is clean/minimalistic in several ways and has immediate benefits that I can attest to on a day to day basis, making it a great option for early adopters that are willing to deal with inconvenience.

Improvements to Security and Privacy

The iOS 26 Public Beta adds several new security features including end-to-end encryption for your iCloud backup, a new privacy dashboard where users can monitor permissions of apps, and an improved reliability of Face ID in low light situations, etc. These updates show Apple is making strides to protect user data, which bodes well for consumers concerned with data privacy.

Last Thoughts

The iOS 26 Public Beta does not change the way your iPhone performs his core functions but it changes the way it performs visually and tactilely. This combination of style with intelligence is best to leave for others to explore but as someone who loves to explore Apple's design aesthetic, it is definitely worth considering and I recommend it to anyone who wants to experience the thoughts behind Apple's new design ethos.