Three months since its announcement at the Worldwide Developers Conference, the wait for iOS 26 is finally over. You can download the free iPhone update right away.
There are a bunch of new features for the iPhone, the most talked about being Apple’s Liquid Glass redesign, which introduces translucent buttons, sliders, tabs, and other navigational elements across the iPhone’s interface.
iOS 26 includes Live Translation, an AI-powered feature that automatically translates texts in Messages, displays live captions on FaceTime, and offers spoken translations during phone calls or through your AirPods.
There are several other updates. For example, the Phone app can automatically screen calls from unknown numbers, with the iPhone answering and asking for their name and reason for calling before alerting you. The Phone app can also wait on hold for you until a customer service agent picks up.
The update also presents a new Games app, which is now home to everything related to gaming in the Apple universe. It contains your games library, highlights what your friends are playing, and replaces Game Centre for tracking achievements and more.
Smaller updates include a lock screen that’s more customisable. You can play around with the clock’s font and change its colour to match the background.
With iOS 26, you can adjust your alarm’s snooze length to anywhere between one and 15 minutes; the old snooze length was nine minutes.
iOS 26 also brings a new adaptive power feature that’s helpful. It can detect when your iPhone is using more power than usual. That way, it can make performance adjustments to extend your battery life.
To download, open the Settings app on an iPhone. Navigate to General > Software Update. Tap install if available to download, verify, and then reboot to finish.