The First Eight Settings to Change After Installing iOS 26

Apple’s iOS 26 is spoiling today, and with it comes a lot of small adjustments and improvements in your iPhone functionality. The capture? Many of them are opt, so you have to turn them on before you can harvest their advantages. Here are the settings you need to activate after updating your iPhone to the latest Apple operating system, although notes that some of them need an iPhone 15 pro or subsequent, as they rely on Apple Intelligence.

Adaptive battery mode

If you are like me, you can never decide if it is worth exchanging your phone in battery saving mode. Now, if you have an iPhone 15 pro or more, your iPhone can make the decision for you.

Apple’s news Adaptive power mode Use Apple Intelligence to intelligently determine the moment when your use of the battery works above than usual and makes small adjustments to bring it back under control. These could include a slight gradation of your display or slow down less important tasks, such as those that operate in the background or are particularly intensive. Then, once your phone has been on a uniform keel for some time, it will start to give things to normal. Consider it as a less aggressive “low power” mode which only affects certain processes and can make adjustments according to more than the remaining load of your phone. To try it, just access Settings> Battery> Power mode. Do not forget to turn it off if you notice that his compromises are not worth the lifespan of the additional battery.

Activate call screening

Credit: Apple

I’m going to be honest – I barely take phone calls. Instead, I generally prefer to wait after the call, then recall if the caller was someone I knew or if it was important enough to leave a message. It generally works for me, but I admit it, sometimes I feel a little pain to have left people who call me in boarding, especially if they turn out that they had a good reason to compose me. This is where Apple’s new screening feature come.

This does not require apple intelligence, so it will work on any iPhone running iOS 26. Just open your ParametersSo under Applicationsfaucet Phone And look for it Unknown appellants screen option.

You will have three choices. Never Will work as before, with calls that sound a little before they go to your recent list. But now you have two additional options that you can choose instead.

The first is SilenceWho will turn off your ringtone for calls from not saved numbers, then send them to voicemail and display them in the recent list. Essentially, it just cuts the man in the middle of having to wait until the appellant abandons before continuing to determine what they wanted.

But the most exciting addition is Ask the reason to call. Choose this, and your iPhone will pick up calls from not saved numbers for you, then ask the appellant on their calling pattern. You will see a transcription of their answers to the screen, then you can choose if you want to recover.

It’s an intelligent tip, and I should make myself feel a little less badly for anyone trying to chat with me by phone. I hope that it also works for contacts, to be honest, but I can understand why my family may not be enthusiastic about the call and to obtain a secretary for robots in place.

Try new ringtones

With iOS 26, Apple added some default new ringtones, including choosing. Six are variations in the classic “reflection” ringtone, but there is also a news called “Little Bird”. You can find them all under Settings> Sound & Haptics> RingtoneOr consult the integrations below to hear them for yourself.

This tweet is currently not available. It can be loaded or has been deleted.

This tweet is currently not available. It can be loaded or has been deleted.

Personally, “Bouyant” is probably my favorite, although my colleague Jake Peterson likes the most “dreamer”. I’m probably going to stay with my personalized ringtone, but if you prefer not to bother to download a ringing manually, you now have more choice than ever.

Liquid

This following is technically to deactivate a functionality instead of activating it, but I could not ignore it. With iOS 26, Apple has redesigned its design language to focus on transparency, and not everyone is a fan. If you remember the transparent glasses that Microsoft added to the Windows application in Windows Vista, it’s a lot like that, but more aggressive. Essentially, instead of showing a solid background, many pimples and overlays now seem clear, allowing a blurred version of everything below to bleed.

Fortunately, there is a preexisting accessibility control that Return your iPhone to the way it was before. Simply sail towards Settings> Accessibility> Text display and sizeThen switch to Reduce transparency. This will bring a solid background to your entire iPhone, which you can See in force here. Note how the reading button no longer allows the fuzzy album illustrations of bleeding? If you prefer this more flat and more contrasting look, it could be for you.

Personalized background in iMessage

This one is just fun. Now, in Imessage, you Define personalized backgrounds For your conversations and group cats on a cat base. These include presets, as Water And SkyBut you can also choose solid colors, choose a photo in your library, or if you have an iPhone 15 pro or higher, generate a background using Apple Intelligence.

To start, open a conversation, click on your title at the top of the page, then choose History.

Note that your chosen history will appear for everyone in the cat, but if you don’t like a background that someone else takes place, you don’t have to live with it. Go to Settings> Applications> Messages and deactivate Conversation parades To extinguish functionality.

Notification summaries for news

If you have an iPhone 15 pro or more, Apple actually brings back a functionality previously deleted with iOS 26: Summary of news and entertainment applications.

These initially Launched in the beta iOS 18.3 versionBut were quickly drawn after Apple AI had distorted the BBC titles, including one on the suspect of United health, Luigi Mangione.

Now Apple is confident enough to bring these notification summaries back, although with a new warning indicating that “the summary can modify the meaning of the original titles. Check the information ”.

If you are comfortable with that, according to my colleagues at CNETYou don’t have to do much to turn them on. Apple will actually welcome you with a Splash screen once you have downloaded the iOS 26 update, which will require your preferences for which applications will obtain notification summaries. You will have three options and you can select as much as you wish. All other applications Will summarize the notifications of non -social applications, such as cards, while Communication and Social Will add notification summaries for applications like Tiktok and Mail. These were already available. What is new (still) is the Option of news and entertainmentwhich Will add notification summaries for applications, including BBC or Netflix.

Just make your choices and you are ready to go. If you change your mind later, you can adjust your summaries under Settings> Notifications> Summarize notifications. You can also adjust appearance notification summaries here, which is not available in the Splash screen that you get after installed iOS 26.

Get clear icons in iOS 26

Credit: Apple

Let’s say that you really like liquid glass, but think it doesn’t go far enough. In this case, you may also want to make your icons clear, so that you can see your history through them. I promise that I will not judge.

To make the application icons clear in iOS 26, simply press the bottom of your home screen until your applications start to trap. Then type To modify in the upper left corner, followed by Personalize. Then choose Clear. You can also choose between Clear Or ClearWith the dark mode opting for a more sifted shade.

This will make your application icons look like frosted glass, similar to the new iOS 26 locking screen clock. You are doing.

(If you are like me, you may prefer instead the new tinted light mode option, which finally allows you to define a personalized color for the graphic elements of your application icons next to a light background. You can find it in the Tinted Option next to Clear When selecting the appearance of your application icon).

New ways to customize your lock screen

iOS 26 gives you more control over the appearance of your phone while ever locked than ever. To start, lock your phone, then press the power button, press and hold it on the lock screen and press Personalize.

First of all, you can now adjust the size of your clock by entering one of its corners and dragging it downwards, although it will only work with certain fonts.

Second, you can now justify your box of widgets at the bottom of the lock screen, as well as to add an Apple music search widget, if you wish. If you are really starting to play something, you will notice that it will allow a large game interface that shows the art of the album.

Finally, there is support for space scenes. When selecting a photo wallpaper, you can now draw on a small icon from a mountain and a sun to separate the subject from the background photo. Now when you move your iPhone, the subject will move with him, to help them pop. Your clock can also move to fill the space in the photo, including slightly behind the subject, to help give an illusion of depth. Or, your widgets can move automatically towards the bottom of the screen if they are placed elsewhere, to better frame the photo subject.

Other settings that you can activate

There are many others that you can do to make iOS 26 really yours. If the above changes are not enough for you, here 36 other adjustments You can make the most of the new operating system of your iPhone.