At the moment, Live Translation in Phone and FaceTime only works with one-on-one calls in English (UK and US), French (France), German, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish (Spain). Live Translation in Messages has slightly broader language support, including Chinese (simplified) and Japanese. Since there’s now a Phone app on iPadOS and MacOS, you can still take advantage of these features if you answer on those platforms.

Visual Intelligence and the iPhone Screen

Visual Intelligence debuted with Apple Intelligence as a way to have Siri understand the world around you through the iPhone’s camera. It’s now expanding to understand the context of your iPhone’s screen. Very much like Google’s Gemini, Visual Intelligence can identify what’s on your screen and suggest specific actions.

Unlike triggering Visual Intelligence and Siri with the Camera Control or Action Button, to trigger the onscreen contextual mode, you have to take a screenshot (these don’t have to be saved if you tap the X icon on the top left). If you take a screenshot of an invitation someone sent you, for example, you’ll see a suggestion to add it to your calendar with one tap. If you’re looking at a PDF, a screenshot might suggest a summarization so you can get the highlights.

There’s even a feature very similar to Google Lens or Google’s Circle to Search, where you can take a screenshot and then highlight a specific thing on the page you want to search via Google, or through another app that’s installed on your phone that supports the feature, like Etsy. So you can highlight a vase, for example, and then find similar results via Google or similar shoppable vases on Etsy.

New Group Message and Emoji Features

Group chats are finally getting typing indicators and polls (though the latter is exclusive to iMessage group chats). There’s also the ability to add new background designs for messages to make them more personalized. If you’re big on emoji, you might like the new ability to mix two emojis via Genmoji in the keyboard or in Apple’s Image Playground app. (It’s somewhat similar to Google’s Emoji Kitchen.)

Conversations in Messages have background textures now.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Group chats get an overhaul.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

A New Games App

There’s a new app in iOS 26! The Games app is now your one-stop shop to see all the games you’ve ever bought on the App Store, and you can launch them right from this app. (There’s even controller support so you can use a mobile controller to move through the user interface.) The app lets you discover new games, see what your friends are playing, and a Challenges tab lets you compete even with single-player games via a leaderboard.

Other Noteworthy Features

There are several other features not mentioned here, but here are a few other highlights.

• Photos: Apple heard your complaints about the Photos app and brought back the Library and Collections tabs on the main page of the app.
• Camera: The Camera app has a new look, with a simplified Photo and Video layout that expands when you move through modes.
• Reminders: You’ll now see suggested tasks, shopping items, or follow-ups based on your emails and texts on your iPhone, powered by Apple Intelligence. There’s also an option to auto-categorize related reminders in a list.
• AirPods Audio and Video Recording: If you have AirPods or AirPods Pro with the H2 chip, you can start recording a video in the iPhone’s camera app by pressing and holding the stem. You can also record audio in high definition in the camera app with those AirPods.
• Maps: Maps will learn the routes you travel regularly and will give you a heads up about delays before you leave the house. Also, there’s now a Visited Places section in the app (you have to opt in, and you can choose how long Maps stores this data, from 3 months to forever).
• Apple Music: In the Music app, there’s now an AutoMix feature that will seamlessly mix one song to the next like a DJ using tools like time stretching and beat matching. Also, if you’re looking at music lyrics, you can now see translations.
• Wallet: Apple’s Wallet app can create Digital IDs with your US passport, which can be used at TSA checkpoints, in apps, and in person. Also, your boarding pass will now feature airport maps, luggage tracking with Find My, and shareable Live Activities so your loved ones can easily receive and see your flight info.
• Image Playground: There are new ChatGPT styles to choose from when generating images in Apple’s image generation app.
• CarPlay: Live Activities are now available in CarPlay, so you can see the status of a friend’s flight as you’re on your way to the airport to pick them up. You can also now react in Messages with Tapback.

The Top New iPadOS 26 Features

iPadOS 26 gets many of the same features as iOS 26, so I won’t repeat things in this section, but let’s take a look at specific new capabilities coming to iPads this fall. As always, you can get a deeper dive from Apple here.

Multitasking Improvements

iPads have become incredibly powerful over the past few years, but multitasking has been lackluster, making them feel inadequate as laptop replacements. That’s changing now with the multitasking changes in iPadOS 26. Now apps support windowing, so you can have multiple apps on the screen in different sizes. Just resize them by dragging a corner of the app and arrange them wherever.

Apps can be tiled in different configurations.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

You get Mac-style traffic light buttons too.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

There are native window tiling options—a flick to the left or right will tile apps to the sides for easier split-screen, and you can even split apps into thirds or quarters. The familiar traffic light buttons from macOS are also available now on apps, and if you press and hold them, you’ll see more options to arrange apps with a tap. Swipe up and hold, and your apps will spread out in Exposé mode, and you’ll be able to revisit your grouped apps later, even if you switch to a full-screen app. There’s now also a menu bar you can pull down from the top in any app, though the available options will depend on the app.

Best of all, iPadOS now lets you handle more tasks in the background. Previously, if you were rendering a file in Final Cut, you’d have to keep it open for the render to complete. Now, that task can be done in the background, allowing you to switch to other apps for a true multitasking desktop experience.

A Better Files App

The Files app has a new design that offers more info at a glance. There are resizable columns, collapsible folders, and you can set default apps for opening specific file types. You can also customize folders with different colors and emojis to make them visually distinct. Speaking of, you can put folders in the dock for speedier access.

The Files app has sortable, resizable columns.

Courtesy of Apple

Preview App Comes to iPad

Apple’s Preview app from macOS is now available on iPadOS, allowing you to open, edit, and mark up PDFs or images. It works with the Apple Pencil, making it great for filling out text fields and signing documents.

The Preview app works with Apple Pencil.

Courtesy of Apple

Other Noteworthy Features

• Phone: There’s now a dedicated Phone app on iPad. Calls made to your iPhone can be routed so you can answer from the iPad, and you’ll be able to take advantage of new features like live translation and call screening, too.
• Journal: The Journal app, originally an iPhone-exclusive app, is now on iPadOS. It now supports the Apple Pencil, so you can make your journal feel even more personal with your own handwriting.
• Audio recording: There’s a new input chooser that lets you pick the right microphone for each app, handy if you’re connecting external mics to the iPad.
• Notes: You can capture conversations from the Phone app as audio recordings with transcriptions.

A new study in Acta Psychologica finds that South Korea’s new law requiring mobile games to disclose loot box probabilities is more effective than industry self-regulation.

Researchers Leon Y. Xiao (City University of Hong Kong & beClaws.org) and Solip Park (Aalto University) analyzed the 100 top-grossing iPhone games in South Korea.

They found that:

• 90% of games included paid loot boxes.
• 84% of games with loot boxes disclosed probabilities—compared to just 35% in the Netherlands and 64% in the UK.
• Only 41% of disclosures were easy to find, meaning many players may fail to access the information and remain confused or uninformed.

South Korean regulators have backed the law with active enforcement, identifying noncompliance and forcing companies to fix mistakes. Separately, fines were levied against major South Korean publishers like Nexon for misleading disclosures.

“South Korea is showing the world that loot box regulation can work—but only when actively enforced,” said Xiao. “Industry self-regulation has failed globally. If governments really want to protect players, we need enforceable laws with real penalties.”

The authors call on other countries to follow South Korea’s lead in actively enforcing video game regulations, but also to strengthen standards so that disclosures are clear, accessible, and independently evaluated for accuracy.

Once you’ve decided on a size, there are a number of other important aspects of your next monitor to consider. Some of these factors may matter more for certain uses—for example, gamers generally care more about higher frame rates than office workers do—but they’re all handy to know going in.

Resolution: The bigger the monitor, the more it will benefit from higher resolutions. That will allow you to have app windows that take up less space but are still legible. Most monitors today are typically 1080p (1920 x 1080), 1440p (2560 x 1440), 4K (3840 x 2160), or even 5K (5120 x 2160).

Refresh rate: This refers to how many times the display can refresh the picture per second, measured in hertz (or Hz). A higher refresh rate makes all movement and animation look smoother because you’re seeing more information. For productivity, 60 Hz is probably enough, but gamers will generally want a panel that can at least hit 120 or 144 Hz. 240 Hz has become the new standard for high-end gaming monitors, but there are now extreme models that go up to 500 Hz and beyond. You’ll need a powerful enough computer that can maintain a high frame rate to take advantage of these high refresh rates, and you usually have to enable this feature in your operating system’s display settings.

Panel type: Monitors usually have a type of LCD (liquid-crystal display) panel. Three of the most popular options—twisted nematic (TN), vertical alignment (VA), and in-plane switching (IPS)—are all different types of LCD panels, and all use TFT (thin-film-transistor) technology too. Each is popular for different reasons: IPS for color, VA for contrast, and TN for speed with higher refresh rates and response times. IPS has become especially popular thanks to its growing refresh rate speeds. Mini-LED uses a more advanced backlighting solution that uses a number of lighting zones to more accurately and efficiently control pixels. These tend to be the brightest monitors you can buy. OLED (organic light-emitting diodes) panels take that even further, allowing the monitor to control individual pixels, including turning them off entirely to create extreme contrast. These are becoming highly popular in gaming monitors, in particular. You should think about what’s most important to you (great color? thin form factor? max brightness?) to choose the best panel type for your needs.

Nvidia G-Sync/AMD FreeSync support: A gamer-specific criteria, these two features let monitors adjust their frame rates based on the games they’re playing. This reduces screen tearing without affecting performance. G-Sync is made by Nvidia and FreeSync comes from AMD, and while FreeSync monitors can usually work with most modern Nvidia graphics cards, G-Sync doesn’t work with AMD cards, so make sure everything you have is compatible when buying.

HDR support: This isn’t crucial for productivity, but if you watch a lot of media or play games, it’s nice to have. Just like on TVs, HDR dramatically expands the range of colors a screen can reproduce, leading to more vivid pictures. Content still has to support HDR, but many sources do these days, so it’s often worth springing for. You’ll find lots of monitors that say they support HDR (such as DisplayHDR 400 certification), but in almost all cases, you’ll need a Mini-LED or OLED screen to really get proper HDR.

Port availability: A crucial but easy-to-overlook factor is what kind of ports the monitor has for connecting your devices. Most typically come with one or two HDMI inputs, and a DisplayPort input, which will cover most needs, but it’s always a good idea to check what your setup needs. More expensive monitors can function as USB hubs, letting you connect all your peripherals and accessories directly to your monitor. Conversely, check out our Best USB Hubs guide if you need to expand your computer’s port options without paying for a more expensive monitor.

Built-in KVM switch: A KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) switch is a device that helps you easily switch your monitor, keyboard, and mouse between two different computers or source inputs (like a gaming console). If you have one setup for both a work and personal computer, or a computer and gaming console, having a KVM switch built into the monitor means you can easily switch everything between your two devices without needing an external KVM switch.