Apple released the fourth beta of iOS 26 today, and the company has continued making changes to the way that Liquid Glass looks. There are also new features, including the return of Apple Intelligence Notification Summaries for news. This beta is of particular interest because it's likely the beta that public beta testers will get in the not too distant future.

Liquid Glass Changes

Liquid Glass is more translucent in beta 4, with Apple walking back some of the opacity changes that it introduced in beta 3.


Menu bars in apps like Photos, Music, and the App Store are now feature more transparency, allowing more of the background color to show through.


On the Lock Screen, when you scroll through notifications, the background gets darker. The darker tone improves the readability of text.

Notification Summaries

‌Apple Intelligence‌ Notification Summaries are available for News and Entertainment apps again. Apple removed summaries for news articles back in January to improve the feature, and now it's ready for testing again.


At the time, Notification Summaries were producing misleading news headlines by picking up and combining the wrong information in articles. Apple says the feature should work better now, and that testing will continue throughout the ‌iOS 26‌ beta.

After updating to ‌iOS 26‌, you'll see a pop up for enabling the summary feature for different app categories. You can choose to get news summaries or opt out. All notification summaries for News and Entertainment apps that are generated with ‌‌Apple Intelligence‌‌ will be italicized and will be annotated with a "Summarized by ‌‌Apple Intelligence‌‌" notice.

Camera App

When you swipe between modes in the Camera app, the button behavior has changed slightly. Before, the button seemed to be fixed with the background sliding back and forth, but now the button moves freely in both directions.


Apple also changed the icon of the Camera app on the Home Screen.

CarPlay Wallpapers

There are new CarPlay wallpapers available that match the new ‌iOS 26‌ wallpaper design. The ‌CarPlay‌ wallpapers come in a range of colors, including blue, brown, gray, green, purple, and red. The wallpapers support both light mode and dark mode.


Apple has also removed some older ‌CarPlay‌ wallpapers that were introduced with earlier versions of iOS.

Passcode Changes

When you tap on Face ID & Passcode in the Settings app, there's an updated interface and wording that reminds you to enter the passcode you use to unlock the iPhone.

Passwords

The Passwords app has an Allow Contacting Websites option, which allows the app to contact websites to show names and icons for apps and websites and to let you know when a website supports passkeys.


With this feature, Passwords now shows custom icons for websites automatically.

Weather

There's a new toggle in the Weather app settings that allows it to access Significant Locations. With the feature enabled, the Weather app is able to provide weather information for places that you are likely to visit.

Reduce Loud Sounds

The "Late Night Mode" option in the Sounds and Haptics section of the Settings app has been renamed to Reduce Loud Sounds, and Apple added a description.

Reduces audio volume range and creates softer sound effects while maintaining the quiet details of the original audio.

Call Screening

Apple updated the Screen Unknown Callers option to add new options. You can turn the feature off, ask unknown callers the reason why they are calling, or silence calls from unknown numbers automatically, sending them to voicemail.

Mail

There are very subtle changes to the design of the Mail app icon.

Wallpaper

The wallpapers introduced with ‌iOS 26‌ are now dynamic and will change color over the course of the day.

Read More

We have additional info on all of the new features in ‌iOS 26‌ in our roundup.
This article, "Everything New in iOS 26 Beta 4" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Apple’s headline iOS 26 features like Apple Intelligence and redesigned apps tend to get all the attention. But some of the most useful changes are easy to miss. These underrated iOS 26 updates quietly improve the iPhone experience in ways that don’t make the keynote but still matter in everyday use.

From smarter AirPods behavior to new journaling tools and better battery estimates, here are 13 updates you might have missed.

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Apple may be developing a sleep score feature for the Apple Watch, based on code found in iOS 26 by MacRumors contributor Steve Moser.


An image buried in the Health app code features an Apple Watch with an "84" on it. Around the sides of the number, there are three bars that are the same colors as some of the sleep stages that can be tracked with the Apple Watch. The orange could represent time awake, the lighter blue may correspond with REM sleep, and the darker blue could be Core or Deep sleep.

The watch graphic is surrounded by sleep-related icons that Apple uses in different places in iOS, including a moon and stars, a "zzz," a bed, an icon representing sleep stages, an alarm clock, and in one spot, a thermometer.

Apple named the image "Watch Focus Score," suggesting that it is indeed some kind of sleep-related score that the watch will provide. With the focus name, it could perhaps provide a prediction on how well you'll be able to function during the day based on the amount of sleep that you got the night before.

Many health tracking devices offer a sleep score, but it's something that Apple has not provided with the Apple Watch yet. The Apple Watch has sleep tracking and separates sleep into REM, Core, and Deep, plus Apple provides time in bed and time awake metrics.

Based on the temperature icon, the future sleep score could take into account multiple health metrics, similar to the Vitals option that Apple introduced in watchOS 11.

We haven't discovered further signs of a sleep score feature, so there is a possibility that this graphic relates to something else. It's also possible that this is an option that Apple plans to introduce with the watchOS 26 update, and we're just seeing the first hints of it.
This article, "Apple Seemingly Working on Sleep Score Feature for Apple Watch" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Today, Threads announced a new batch of analytics upgrades as part of its push to let creators better understand how their posts are doing on and off the platform. Here’s what’s new.

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Infuse, an excellent video player for Apple platforms, has gotten a nice update today. Infuse 8.2 is now available with support for user profiles on Apple TV, the ability to stream content directly from iCloud Drive, and more.

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Apple has a new Home product in the works that’s been reported on widely, and which I’ve been calling ‘HomePad.’ But a leak in iOS 26 beta 4 reveals Apple may have a different product name planned for the forthcoming HomePod with a touch screen.

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Three years ago, Apple struck a deal with Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, for a new show at Apple TV+. Now, the company is teasing its unveiling with a live countdown timer.

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In the fourth beta of iOS 26, there's some curious wording for a HomePod setting that references a ‌HomePod‌ with a display, perhaps hinting at a future product that could come out sometime in the not too distant future.


There’s a location-related setting that has the following wording:

Your HomePod won't be able to show you the local weather, time, or respond to Siri requests about your area.

"Show" is an interesting word for Apple to choose, because right now, the ‌HomePod‌ isn't able to show anything like the weather or the time because it doesn’t have a screen to display the information.

There have been multiple rumors of a ‌HomePod‌ with a display over the last few years, and the screen-equipped ‌HomePod‌ may in fact turn out to be the home hub that Apple has in development.

Rumors suggest that the hub will have an iPad-like display, but with a square shape rather than a rectangular shape. It will be able to control all of your HomeKit and Matter devices, plus it will run Apple apps like Weather, Calendar, Apple Music, Photos, Apple News, and more.

Siri integration is expected, with ‌Siri‌ able to answer questions similar to how the ‌HomePod‌ works. In fact, Apple has reportedly delayed the launch of the home hub due to the issues that it has had developing the Apple Intelligence version of ‌Siri‌.

There's no clear word yet on when the home hub will launch due to the ‌Siri‌ delays, but we could see it late this year or early next year.
This article, "Hints of HomePod With Screen Found in iOS 26" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Apple has changed up the wallpaper collection on CarPlay in iOS 26 beta 4. Several new options have been added. The update also removes many of the existing wallpaper options that were still hanging around from older iOS versions.

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If you’re running the developer beta on your iPhone and get a lot of spam or robocalls, you might have noticed that the Silence Unknown Callers feature had gone missing, at least for some users. With today’s beta release, it’s back, now integrated as part of the new Call Screening feature.

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With the fourth beta of iOS 26, Apple has again made changes to the Liquid Glass design that's available across the operating system, tweaking how the menus and buttons appear in apps.


In response to criticism about too little Liquid Glass in beta 3, Apple has upped the translucency in several areas.



Navigation bars in apps like Photos, Music, the App Store, Podcasts, are slightly clearer, allowing more of the background color to show through.



Apple cut down on the frosted glass look, but the changes are small enough that text remains readable, so it appears to be more of a balance between beta 2 and beta 3.



Control Center, the Lock Screen, and the Home Screen look largely the same, so most of the transparency changes are focused on app navigation bars and buttons. On the Lock Screen, though, the background darkens as you scroll through notifications.


Apple will likely continue to make small changes to Liquid Glass based on user feedback, and we won't see the finalized version of the design until ‌iOS 26‌ is released in the fall.
This article, "Apple Improves Liquid Glass in iOS 26 Beta 4, Reversing Some Beta 3 Changes" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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iOS 26 beta 4 is available now, and the public beta is expected soon too. Besides adding more liquid back into the Liquid Glass design, the new beta also introduces a new Dynamic wallpaper option. Here are the details.

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Alongside new design changes, iOS 26 beta 4 also re-enables Apple Intelligence notification summaries for the News & Entertainment category of apps.

As you may remember, Apple disabled this feature in January after a handful of botched summaries went viral…

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iOS 26 beta 4 has just been released, and one of the biggest question on many testers’ minds has been answered. After dialing back its redesign in beta 3, Apple has now infused more ‘liquid’ into the Liquid Glass design once again.

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With the fourth betas of iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26, visionOS 26, and watchOS 26, Apple has re-enabled Apple Intelligence Notification Summaries for apps in the News and Entertainment categories.


After installing the betas, there is a pop up for enabling notification summaries across these and other categories. Users can opt-in or opt-out of notification summaries on a per-category basis.

Apple says that it has improved notification summaries in ‌iOS 26‌, addressing issues that could cause confusion with news headlines.

All notification summaries for News and Entertainment apps that are generated with ‌Apple Intelligence‌ will be italicized and will be annotated with a "Summarized by ‌Apple Intelligence‌" notice.

Apple plans to further test and refine ‌Apple Intelligence‌ summaries for news articles during the rest of the ‌iOS 26‌ beta testing process, and there is an option for users to report a concern directly if there is an issue with a notification summary.

Notification Summaries for the News and Entertainment category were removed in the iOS 18.3 update in January, following criticism over some misleading news headlines created by ‌Apple Intelligence‌.

‌Apple Intelligence‌ Notification Summaries are available on devices that support ‌Apple Intelligence‌. The feature groups multiple notifications from the same app together, providing a one-sentence overview of the content. The short summaries were causing issues when AI pulled the wrong details from news stories, but Apple's improvements should help fix the issue.


This article, "iOS 26 Beta 4 Reintroduces Notification Summaries for News Apps" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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iOS 26 beta 4 is out now for iPhones on the developer beta release cycle. Below we’re collecting all of the iOS 26 beta 4 changes compared to the previous version.

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Update 2:29 p.m. ET: After initially launching the beta exclusively on its developer website, Apple has now begun rolling out the OTA version as well.

Apple has released a new batch of developer betas for the systems it announced during WWDC25, including macOS Tahoe 26. Here’s what’s new.

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Apple today provided developers with the fourth beta of macOS Tahoe 26 for testing purposes, with the update coming two weeks after the third beta.


Registered developers can download the new beta software through the System Settings app.

macOS Tahoe features Apple's Liquid Glass redesign, which extends across all of the new updates this year. Apple also brought the Phone and Journal apps to the Mac for the first time, and introduced a new cross-platform Games app.

With the update, Apple overhauled how Spotlight works, enabling new functionality that allows it to be used to complete all kinds of actions like sending emails without having to open up an app. There are also changes to a number of apps, including Messages, Safari, and Notes.

All of the new features that are included in macOS Tahoe are outlined in our dedicated roundup.

macOS Tahoe is set to launch this fall.
This article, "Apple Seeds Fourth Beta of macOS Tahoe to Developers" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Two weeks after releasing the third batch of developer betas for the operating systems announced during WWDC25, Apple has released the fourth batch, including for visionOS 26. Here’s what’s new.

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Apple has released watchOS 26 beta 4 for developers, debuting new software a little more than two weeks after the last beta and ahead of the public beta’s arrival.

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tvOS 26 beta 4 is now available for developers on both Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD. Here’s what to expect from the latest beta.

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Apple today provided developers with the fourth betas of iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 for testing purposes, with the updates coming two weeks after Apple seeded the third betas.


Registered developers can download the new beta software using the Software Update section of the Settings app.

‌iOS 26‌ and ‌iPadOS 26‌ feature Apple's new Liquid Glass design aesthetic, with a focus on translucency and glass-like interface elements. The design extends to the Lock Screen, Home Screen, and Control Center, along with menus and buttons in apps.

Apple's software includes features for apps like Messages, Phone, Shortcuts, and Apple Music, along with new Apple Intelligence features, a revamp for CarPlay, and more. In ‌iPadOS 26‌, there's a whole new multitasking system that supports multiple app windows for a more Mac-like experience.

For more on the features in ‌iOS 26‌, we have a dedicated iOS 26 roundup and a separate iPadOS 26 roundup. Several new features were found in beta 2 and we rounded them up, plus we did the same thing for beta 3.
This article, "Apple Seeds Fourth Developer Betas of iOS 26 and iPadOS 26" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Apple changed a few Liquid Glass elements in iOS 26 developer beta 3 and got a lot of online feedback. Now we’re on to iOS 26 beta 4, which will surely be compared under the microscope in as much detail in this season of change.

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Apple has just released iPadOS 26 beta 4 to developers. Today’s release will likely also be the build that gets shipped as the public beta soon. Here’s what to expect.

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