What these changes mean for you is that your technology experience may differ drastically depending on which type of phone you buy in the coming years.

As part of iOS 26's interface changes, your iPhone lock screen can take on a new look with spatial photos available as the background image for your phone and an adaptive time feature that adjusts the look of the on-screen clock to fit with the other visual elements. We go through all the iOS 26 lock screen changes.

Visual Intelligence is getting a new screenshot search feature in iOS 26, giving the iPhone it's own version of Google's Circle to Search.

Before Apple turns all its attention to iOS 26, there’s another iPhone update on the horizon, and it’s very nearly here.

Looking at the home screens, the primary difference you'll find is that in iOS 26 the background of the dock and the search option that sits in between the dock and the home screen icons are more transparent and have a sheen to the edges, whereas in iOS 18, these are slightly darker.

It's worth noting that Safari also generates a privacy report while you are browsing generally, informing you how many trackers it has prevented on sites, etc. And iOS 26 will introduce Advanced Fingerprint Protection for all Safari users, to stop sites using multiple identifiers to generate a picture of you as a user as you hop from site to site.

As with every iOS update, iOS 26 will bring with it some changes for the CarPlay interface that appears when your iPhone is connected to your vehicle – and Apple has now quietly confirmed that one of those changes will be support for video playback.

In the Settings app, go to Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap and choose one of two options: double tap or triple tap. You should see a list of actions you can run by tapping the back of your iPhone, like opening your camera, turning on the flashlight and scrolling up and down. Tap an action or shortcut to enable it with Back Tap.