Apple Unveils iOS 26 Beta 4 with Enhanced Design and Apple Intelligence Features

Apple has released iOS 26 beta 4 for iPhone, focusing on a "stunning new design, powerful Apple Intelligence capabilities, and updates to CarPlay, Apple Music, Maps, and Wallet." The release comes after iOS 26 beta 3, which introduced opaqueness to some transparent tab bars and new wallpaper colors. The public beta is expected to arrive soon, with the final release scheduled for September.

Title: Apple Unveils iOS 26 Beta 4 with Stunning Design and Enhanced Capabilities

Apple has released the iOS 26 beta 4 for iPhone, focusing on a "stunning new design, powerful Apple Intelligence capabilities, and updates to CarPlay, Apple Music, Maps, and Wallet." The release comes after iOS 26 beta 3, which introduced opaqueness to some transparent tab bars and new wallpaper colors. The public beta is expected to arrive soon, with the final release scheduled for September.

The new design features a more expressive and delightful experience across the system, while maintaining the instant familiarity of iOS. Liquid Glass, a new translucent material, reflects and refracts its surroundings, bringing greater focus to content and delivering a new level of vitality across controls, navigation, app icons, and widgets. The Home Screen and Lock Screen have been updated to be more personal and expressive, with customization options for app icons and widgets. The Camera layout has been simplified, and the Photos app has been updated to feature separate tabs for Library and Collections views. Safari web pages now flow from the top edge to the bottom of the screen, enabling users to see more of the page while maintaining access to frequently used actions like refresh and search. Apple Music, News, and Podcasts have a redesigned tab bar that floats above users' content, dynamically shrinks when browsing, and expands when scrolling back up.

Apple Intelligence, a key feature of iOS 26, elevates the iPhone experience by integrating powerful on-device capabilities. Live Translation is now available in Messages, FaceTime, and Phone, helping users communicate across languages. Visual intelligence extends to the iPhone screen, allowing users to search and take action on anything they’re viewing across apps. Users can ask ChatGPT questions about what they’re looking at onscreen to learn more, and search Google, Etsy, or other supported apps to find similar images and products. Visual intelligence also recognizes when a user is looking at an event and suggests adding it to their calendar. Genmoji and Image Playground provide users with more ways to express themselves.

The Phone app now offers a unified layout that combines Favorites, Recents, and Voicemails all in one place. Call Screening helps eliminate interruptions by gathering information from the caller and giving users the details they need to decide if they want to pick up or ignore the call. Hold Assist notifies users when a live agent is available. In Messages, users can now screen messages from unknown senders, giving them more control over who appears in their conversation list. Messages from unknown senders will appear in a dedicated folder where users can mark the number as known, ask for more information, or delete. These messages will remain silenced until a user accepts them.

CarPlay, the smarter, safer way to use iPhone while driving, is used over 600 million times per day. With iOS 26, it receives updates that make it even more beautiful and easy to use. The stunning design includes a new compact view for incoming calls, allowing users to see who’s calling without missing key information like upcoming directions. Tapbacks and pinned conversations are now available in Messages in CarPlay, and widgets and Live Activities help users stay in the loop without losing focus on the road. These updates also come to CarPlay Ultra, which brings the best of iPhone and the best of the car together for a deeply integrated, unified experience across every screen.

Updates to Apple Music, Maps, and Wallet also include new features. Lyrics Translation helps users understand the words to their favorite songs, while Lyrics Pronunciation allows everyone to sing along, regardless of language. AutoMix uses intelligence to transition from one song to the next like a DJ. In Apple Maps, Visited Places help users remember the places they’ve been. Users can choose to have iPhone detect when they’re at a place like a restaurant or shop, and view all of their Visited Places in Maps. iPhone can now use on-device intelligence to better understand a user’s daily route, presenting them with their preferred route when they’re headed home or to the office, along with notifying them of delays and offering alternate routes. Updates in Apple Wallet help make everyday interactions with the physical world easier than ever. Users can choose to pay with installments or rewards when they make in-store purchases with Apple Pay using iPhone. Refreshed boarding passes in Wallet offer the ability to see and share Live Activities for real-time updates on a flight. They also provide convenient access to a traveler’s most relevant information, such as Maps to navigate airports, Find My to track important items and report missing bags, and more.

Apple Games is a new app that gives players an all-in-one destination for their games. It helps players jump back into titles they love, find their next favorite, and have even more fun with friends. They’ll find out what’s happening across all their games, including major events and updates, so they never miss a moment. The Games app is also the best way to experience Apple Arcade, Apple’s game subscription service with more than 200 award-winning and highly rated games for the whole family.

AirPods are more versatile than ever with new features for AirPods 4, AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), and AirPods Pro 2. Building on the benefits of Voice Isolation, studio-quality audio recording allows iPhone, iPad, and Mac users to record their content with great sound quality and enjoy even clearer calls. With camera remote, users can press and hold the AirPods stem to take a photo or start and stop a video recording on iPhone or iPad. Parents can now create or move kids into Child Accounts even more easily, taking advantage of a wide set of parental controls designed to keep children safe. Enhancements across Communication Limits, Communication Safety, and the App Store include parental approvals for contact requests from kids, blurring out sensitive content in FaceTime calls and photos in Shared Albums, and enabling parents to grant an exception for their child.

References
[1] https://fr.advfn.com/bourses/NASDAQ/AAPL/actualites/96207664/apple-elevates-the-iphone-experience-with-ios-26