Transcription
Hi everyone, Aaron here for zolotete and iOS 26 is a pretty huge update. But I wanted to share with you 26 important settings, tips, and features that I thought you should know to get more out of iOS 26.
Now, the first thing has to do with ringtones. Apple added a bunch of new ringtones, but you can set your own custom ringtone very easily in iOS 26. If we go over into our files app, I've saved an MP3 to the files app, and here is the actual file itself, and it has to be under 30 seconds long. So, you may need to use something such as GarageBand to cut that down to under 30 seconds, but I'll play it here. And now, if I go back, we'll go back and search for it here. Press and hold on the file, go to share, then go to more, and you'll see a new option for use as ringtone. I'll tap on it. It brings us into our ringtone settings, and you can see all of the other ones, but now it's selected the new one. If I tap on it, it will play and it will continue to loop as a ringtone. So, we can use our custom ringtones much easier than we could before.
This time, if we go into settings, scroll down to accessibility, then we go down to where we have hearing, and under hearing, go to audio and visual, we have background sounds, and we have new ones there, but we also have some new options to go along with this. If we scroll down, you'll see we have a new option to stop sounds with a timer. If we go into this option, we can enable it and then stop it at a specific time, after an amount of time, and then you can adjust it here and then always use these settings. So, if we want to use maybe after an amount of time, go to sleep with maybe some background noise or ambient sounds, we can turn it off after maybe 3 hours or whatever you set here. So, some great options there. And we can further customize this with an equalizer. If we go into the equalizer, I know a lot of people want this for music as well, but we do have it for the background sounds. You can adjust it from broad to focused and then adjust the tone here as you're listening to it. So, if you want to hear the equalizer, you can do that and then adjust the sound that works best for you. We also have balance, so maybe you want it all in the right ear or left ear, you can change that.
Safari this year got a pretty big update as far as the way it looks with a new address bar at the bottom that sort of shrinks away as you scroll. And not everybody really likes this look. We can actually customize this in settings. If we go down to our apps and then Safari within our Safari settings, if we scroll down and go to tabs, you'll see that we have compact, which is default. And if we go to bottom, we can switch this and it changes the address bar and adds the tools under it. If we go back to our settings, we can switch to top if we want the address bar at the top. The tools remain at the bottom. So, you'll see the way it looks. the tools get out of the way as you scroll and the address bar shrinks as well when you scroll. But you can change that to whatever works best for you.
Now, maybe you're someone that takes a lot of screenshots when you're connected to maybe Apple CarPlay and you're sick of seeing not only the screenshot from your iPhone, but also a CarPlay screenshot as well. You can now turn that off in iOS 26. You'll find it under settings, general, then scroll down to screen capture, and you'll see it here where it says CarPlay screenshots. So, disable that if that's something that's annoying you.
There's also an option if maybe you use your AirPods a lot, you're listening to music or other headphones, and you connect to CarPlay, you don't want your AirPods to jump over to CarPlay, you can now turn that off as well. That's again found in settings. Then, if we go under AirPlay and continuity this time, there's a new option to keep audio with headphones. It says when using AirPods or other wireless headphones, keep audio with headphones when other devices like speakers or cars connect to iPhone. So, it works across not just CarPlay, but also other speakers you're using as well, where it won't just jump around when you're connecting to other devices. So, this is something I find very helpful that I use all the time.
Now, now, we'll get back to screenshots and other things in a moment, but there's some other changes you may want to consider when you're using iOS 26. Many people don't like the liquid glass design, the icons with maybe the folders, sort of the translucency, and different changes here. And you can disable that if you'd like to. If you go into your settings this time, we'll go back to accessibility and then we'll go back to display and text size. We have an option to reduce transparency. Once that's enabled, you'll see here that the dock at the bottom is no longer translucent or transparent. Also, the folders are no longer transparent, and it should help you see the background a little bit better, including control center. You can see what it looks like. And as we scroll through, you'll see all of the folders. They no longer reflect what's in the background. So, if that will help you, be sure to enable that.
Now, with iOS 26, Apple added some customization for the camera that allows you to use your AirPods as a wireless microphone. So, if we open these up here, and I definitely need to charge the case of the AirPods Pro 3, but we'll go ahead and place one in my ear. And if we go into the camera, you'll see we're in video. And then once we're connected, we can go to our control center. And then you'll see camera controls. Within camera controls, we have input. Now within input we can select between iPhone, Aaron's AirPods Pro 3 or same as system. Once we have these selected we have the option for voice isolation. So maybe we're in a noisy environment but we're at a distance we want to record. We can do that. Or we have standard or automatic based on your surroundings. So those are some great options to have if you need a wireless mic and maybe you didn't want to run out and buy a DJI mic or another one.
Within settings, we have some new options you should know about for camera. Within camera, if we scroll down, go past where we have composition, and you'll see indicators at the bottom. We now have the option to disable or permanently remove flash, live photo, and action mode from the camera. So, if you don't want these to show at all, just go into your camera. They're no longer there under photo. So, you'll see they're not there at all. If we go back, turn them back on, you'll see them reappear. So, you'll see they reappear there. And if we go back, I'll turn those off. But if you want to use those, make sure they're on. If not, turn them off and you won't have to see them again.
Also, within camera, if we go to the top and you have a phone with camera control. Within camera control, there's some additional customization. It works along the same way as indicators, but if we go down here, you'll see control. We have camera adjustments and then customize. So, if you have this enabled, but maybe you don't want to see different things such as light press or swipe, you can customize that, but turn off controls for things maybe such as exposure. You never want to change that. Maybe you don't want to change depth and maybe styles or tone, but you do want to use zoom in and cameras. You could do that. So, if we go back into the camera here, maybe we'll go to video. And with camera control here, you'll see that we have our zoom options here. So, we can use zoom. And then if we double press, we only have two controls. One for zoom, one for cameras. So, now it removes those. You can add those or remove those based on what you like best.
Also, on one of the newer phones, I would make sure that if you scroll down to the bottom, I would enable lens cleaning hints. This displays a suggestion when the camera lens should be cleaned to improve image quality. Maybe you have a smudge on the front, maybe something on the back, it will let you know that you probably need to clean it to get a better photo or video.
If we go over into the clock app and maybe we have an alarm set, whether it's a time to wake up or something else, we'll go in and change the alarm. But if we scroll down to the bottom, you'll see the option for snooze. We can now change the snooze duration. So, by default, it's set to 9 minutes, but you can change it anywhere from 1 minute now to 15 minutes. So, customize that for whatever works best for you, as you couldn't do that before.
If we go into the phone app, we can go under recents and if we search for an individual contact, we can see their entire call history. So, if we go maybe under Apple here, just as an example, you'll see call history. you will need to search for that contact and tap on them to see the call history. But once you go into this, it seems like it goes back to 2023. So, it seems to keep all of the recent call history all the way back to 2023. And that's what I'm seeing on most of my contacts. But if you want to use that, it's now available and a great way to see the entire call history if you're looking for something.
Now, maybe you have a contact that was blocked and you're not sure where it is or how to find it and you just want to see everything that's blocked. Apple has moved that location in settings. Under settings, if we scroll down to privacy and security, then we scroll down a little bit further, you'll see we have a dedicated section for blocked contacts. We can go into that and see all of our blocked contacts. You'll see I have one separately that was in my contacts itself and 88 unknown. We can also add blocked contacts or edit and remove them.
Now, if you use a lot of reminders, there's a couple different ways you can actually access that. Now, one way is to go into your control center and you'll see we have a new reminders option. So, you can set this for a reminder. It will open up and then you can put in a reminder on any one of your different reminder lists or categories or anything else. However, there's another way to do this. If you set a lot of reminders, we can go into settings and if you have a phone with the action button, you can actually set the action button to create a reminder. Under settings, go to action button. Scroll over until we find control center here. So you'll see controls, choose a control, then we can search for reminder and then select reminder. Now if we scroll home, maybe just press and hold the action button, it will now allow us to create a reminder right from here. So if that's something you use a lot, you may want to consider setting that.
Now, something that could help you that you may want to enable depending on the phone that you have has to do with battery. Apple completely redid the battery application, giving us more in-depth information. But if we scroll down, you'll see a power mode. And I have it set to adaptive. You can use adaptive power. And you also have the option for adaptive power notifications. And it says, "When your battery usage is higher than usual, iPhone can extend your battery life by making performance adjustments such as lowering display brightness, allowing some activities to take longer, or turning on low power mode at 20%." Now, you can have notifications for this when it enables, or you don't have to. But either way, I would recommend enabling that. However, if you do find that your phone is slow or choppy, I would try disabling it and see if that helps. But either way, when you're charging your phone, whether it's wirelessly or anything else, make sure you have adaptive power on to get you through the day, as I believe they've added this to help with things such as the new iPhone Air since it has less battery, but seems to be getting people through the day. So, again, make sure that you enable that or at least try it out.
One thing I've been enjoying in music is something I would recommend again trying out if you haven't already. Go into your settings this time. Go into music. And within music, if we scroll down, you'll see that we have song transitions. I've been using automix, which is a new feature. It says song transitions at the perfect moment based on an analysis of the key and tempo of the music. Now, crossfade works just fine, and you can change the crossfade duration like we had before. But if you want it to maybe mix through different songs, you have a playlist and you want it to mix between songs like it was a DJ, changing the tempo and speed, this definitely is something you'll notice. And it sort of makes things flow together. But it doesn't work great in all situations. So you may want to change it to crossfade or disable it altogether. But I would highly recommend trying it out and see if you actually like it. And if you do, keep it enabled or change it as needed.
And to go along with music, if we go down to accessibility, then scroll down again under the hearing section, you'll see music haptics. Apple has really updated it this year so that if you have it enabled, you have a couple different options. For customize, we have full mix or just vocals only. So, it will sort of give you haptics based on the vocals. And then we can change the intensity this time around. So, we can have medium, strong, or light. And you can feel this as you're changing it. whatever you want to set. You can change it based on this. So maybe full mix and we'll leave it on strong if you want to try it and then you can play a sample as well.
One feature I've been enjoying with iOS 26 has to do with order tracking so that it can track your orders through the wallet by utilizing mail that is sent to you. They added this feature some time ago in the wallet app, but not enough people actually used it, so it didn't really work well. Now they're using intelligence on the phone to automatically find emails privately. It's all done on the phone. None of the data is sent to Apple. It recognizes an order and then adds it into the wallet app. So, if we go into wallet, you can see in the upper right menu where we have orders. You'll see that I sorted this from July and we had an order from Mod Retro. It found it in my email, presented me with tracking information, and gave me notifications when I should check it and when it should arrive. This was super helpful and something I didn't expect, but you do need to enable a setting in order for this to work. So, if we go into our settings and then we go down to wallet and Apple Pay, at the very bottom of our settings, we have order tracking. Within order tracking, you'll see there's an option not only for Apple Pay, but a new one that says mail beta, and it says allow Apple Intelligence and Siri to update wallet with order tracking information from your emails. So, make sure that's enabled if you want to try it out. Of course, you can turn it off if you don't find it useful.
Within Apple Card, you can see down here under latest card transactions, there's a menu option. It now allows us to sort our different transactions based on payment disputed transactions, refunds and adjustments and purchases, making it much easier to find something you're looking for.
Now, if you have an iPhone that supports an always on display, there's a new option. So, we're on the lock screen now. If we unlock this, go into our settings, go down to display and brightness, scroll down again to always on display, we have a new option to blur the wallpaper photo. Enable that. And now if we lock the display, the background blurs and then it sort of unblurs as it wakes up. So this is a nice little touch that they've added. So if you want to use that, just enable it.
Within podcasts, we have a couple nice new options that you should know about under maybe a recent podcast here. We'll go to the menu in the upper right, go to settings, scroll to the bottom, and we now have customization based on the show itself. So we could use default settings for everything and just leave it alone. But if maybe we're listening to a show that continuously has dialogue that's a little bit hard to hear, we can turn on enhanced dialogue and it will only apply to this show. The same is true with playback speed. So we can turn that up or down. We can also customize this a little bit better on our settings when we're listening or playing a podcast. So if we go into this one, maybe we want it faster or slower. We can just swipe our finger up and down on the speed and adjust it that way instead of just tapping on it. Of course, we have the same options here with enhanced dialogue and others. So, whatever works for you, you can customize this and then make it work for you.
Now, finally, there's some options you should know about with screen recording. If you use screen recording a lot, so if we just go and hit screen recording, there's an option here if maybe you want to share an updated screen recording. They are higher quality this time, but if we go into our settings under general, scroll down to screen capture, you'll see that we have HDR or SDR. So, if you want to share your screen recording in HDR for an HDR video, you can do that.
Now, also, you may have already noticed, depending on if you've been using your iPhone with iOS 26, when you take a screenshot, it's either going to look like this or it's going to look like you went into it and you can fully edit it and then use visual intelligence. Now, this can be customized now, and you'll see I have that disabled. But, if I turn this on, take a screenshot, it now brings me into the full screen preview. So you can enable it, crop the photo, or change it however you'd like. So that's an option you may not be familiar with that you may want to turn off or on based on how you want to use your screenshots.
So those are 26 different important settings and tips that you should know about. Let me know if there's any that you use regularly or didn't know that I mentioned in the video. I'd love to hear from you in the comments below. Also, let me know your favorite change to iOS 26 as well. Of course, I'll link this wallpaper in the description like I normally do. And if you haven't subscribed already, please subscribe. And if you enjoyed the video, please give it a like. As always, thanks for watching. This is Aaron. I'll see you next time. [Music]