Transcription
Apple is dropping great features on all of its platforms in 26.2, like the new edge light feature on macOS, which is actually brilliant, more options for liquid glass, better Airdrop settings, iPad Split View is back, well, kind of, we'll get into that, a bunch of new features in Apple Podcasts, and there's even some secret shortcuts actions.
First is edge light, which is actually a great feature. Let's say you're trying to record a podcast or do a video call, you're in your hotel room or just don't have good lighting. Previously, people would hack this by opening up a blank Word document on their Mac and just was turning up the brightness, but now. In the menu bar where you would find Center Stage, Portrait Mode, Studio Light, you'll now see Edge Light. When you turn that on, a light ring actually appears on screen and you can even adjust the brightness and color temperature. I was wondering how they would do the whole brightness adjustment, but the ring actually gets thinner or thicker depending on how bright you want that light. Plus, you can even change the color temperature. You can even have it turn on automatically when your camera activates on your Mac.
Next, in iOS 26.2, there's the new liquid glass slider for the clock on the lock screen. When you go to your lock screen, tap and hold and hit customize, then tap on the clock here at the top. And you'll have both a thickness slider right here. And there's also a liquid glass slider. So you can go very transparent and glassy or more opaque. At the very bottom, you'll also see a glass or solid option. So if you just want to go solid clock, you can do that too. But now if you want to make that clock a little bigger, you can adjust that transparency accordingly, going all the way to where you almost can't even see it.
Next, there's a new Airdrop setting that will make it easier to share to contacts for longer periods of time. If you go to the Settings app in 26.2, then General, and then go down to Airdrop, you'll see at the very bottom, there's now a Manage Known Airdrop Contacts. Now, the rest of this feature isn't live in the 26.2 Beta 3 that I have right here. But when you add Airdrop Contacts, you'll be able to share files and images and more back and forth for 30 days once you provide contacts with a one-time code.
Number four, there's been a slight change to Apple News. This is iOS 26.1 here on the left. And in 26.2, you'll see there's some new categories that appear here at the top. Now, you can jump over to Sports. If you have Apple News+, you can go over to Food and then maybe see some recipes and save those to your device. A little faster to jump around those categories. Doesn't seem like you can change what categories appear here at the top, which would be a nice feature.
But another great way to get news is actually today's sponsor, Morning Brew. Trying to find good news sources today can be difficult and you definitely shouldn't turn to social media or TikTok for your news. Sometimes articles can be difficult to follow or it doesn't feel like they actually explain something. Morning Brew comes in. It's a free daily email newsletter that's delivered first thing in the morning and it only takes five minutes or less to read. It covers the most relevant news written in short, simple write-ups that everyone can understand and it looks great on your Mac, iPad, or iPhone. It uses a witty conversational tone, helps you stay informed, and it even has daily games and quizzes that sneaks in some business knowledge without you even realizing it. Being that I do a weekly tech news podcast, Primary Technology, I'm always looking for ways to find the best stories to cover. And Morning Brew delivers on that AI and latest tech news as well. Morning Brew is the go-to newsletter for 4 million plus professionals. It's 100% free and takes less than 15 seconds to sign up. So click the link in the video description to sign up for Morning Brew, or you can scan the QR code on screen right now, and you can start reading Morning Brew today. My thanks to Morning Brew for sponsoring this video.
All right, next, Apple brought Slide Over back in iPadOS 26.1, and now they've brought back Split View. Kind of. First of all, you have to have Stage Manager or windowing enabled. Split View does not work in the full screen mode. For instance, I don't have Stage Manager enabled right now, but if I take an app, I can drag it up into Split View. But if I turn on Stage Manager or windowing right here, then once I'm in my windowed apps, I can take an app from the dock, swipe it over here to the left and let it go, and it'll be here in Split View. In the same way, I can take something like Shortcuts, drag it up here to the right, and now it's 50/50 Split View. That action of dragging from the dock into the 50/50 Split View is a great addition. And you'll actually see when you're dragging up from the dock, as you drag it around, the window shape actually changes size. In the middle, you see it kind of has that vertical window shape. That means it's gonna go into 50/50 Split View. If you move it over like here, that's just gonna be a normal windowed mode and it won't fill up half the frame. If you drag it all the way to the right, you'll see it now highlighted with a little arrow. That means it'll open up as the Slide Over app. So once again, I can take an app from the dock, drag it out. If it looks like this, more of a horizontal shaped window, it won't go into 50/50, it'll just kind of be the windowed mode here. And then I can either flick it to the side and it'll go 50/50, or again, drag from the dock and it'll go into 50/50 mode. That's nice. I wish it would work in full screen mode, and also you can drag up and do Split View here from the home screen. If I take the same app and try to drag it up, it's gonna start editing the home screen, even though I have Stage Manager enabled up here. I wish I could go from my home screen to drag up an app and go to 50/50 view, but that's not possible. So it's not 100% like the previous implementation. Also, while you can put an app in Slide Over, even while you have 50/50 Split, you can't have multiple apps over window like you could before but thankfully you can also drag an app from Spotlight so if I hit Command Space here on the Magic Keyboard start searching for an app I can start dragging Shortcuts you'll see that windows changing sizes depending on where I drop it and if I do it over here now that didn't do 50/50 so it seems like if you have an app full screen like I have Music here and it's not windowed or made smaller I can't do Split View even when I drag an app from the dock here it goes into almost a Slide Over view but it's actually just windowed you have to have the the window smaller like that. If I drag the Shortcuts up, it'll go 50/50. So it's not a perfect implementation. I'm glad it's closer. You can drag apps from the dock into Split View as long as windowing mode or Stage Manager is enabled.
Next, there are big changes coming to Apple Podcasts. First Apple is going to start auto-generating chapters for podcasts that don't already provide them. Creators can opt out. And I think you're going to see a lot of big shows like Smart List opt out because they probably don't want a chapter that says sponsor break or ads. But when 26.2 actually comes out for everyone, you might see more chapters and podcasts. And the other feature is timed links. Creators can add links either to a chapter or their description, and Apple will surface those links in three places. There's a new "From This" episode at the bottom of the episode page, if you linked Apple content. If you're listening to a podcast and you open the transcript, if the creator links something like an Apple TV+ show or an Apple Book, you'll actually see that right here in the transcript. You can tap it and quickly open it in Open TV or share that link. Those links should also pop up here on the Now Playing screen. Though, Apple only surfaces those links when it's to Apple content, like an Apple TV+ show, Apple Book, an Apple podcast, and more. It would be nice if Apple offered those links for anything that you wanted to link, like a YouTube video or other news article, but it's only Apple content right now. And if in a podcast, another podcast is mentioned, Apple might automatically link that episode or that show. Like right here, you'll see MacBreak Weekly is actually linked in this transcript. I actually linked the chapter. But this would be great if you're doing feed swaps with other shows or you have a guest. You can quickly save that episode here in the transcript, and the link will also be in that "From This" episode section below the show notes of any podcast. I explained in detail what Apple's doing to chapters and timed links in my podcast, Primary Technology. I'll link that timestamp down in the description and right up here.
A few other small changes. The Measure app in iOS 26.2. If you go to the level option, there's a new liquid glass bubble effect there. Yes, if you didn't know, you can use your iPhone as a level and you get a liquid glass level bubble now in 26.2.
Next, the new Games app, which-- which came out in iOS 26, you can now filter your library. So once you go into the game, you can go over to the library tab down here, and then you'll see the filter options right here.
Number nine, Apple is making some tweaks to the sleep score. So if you do sleep tracking with your Apple Watch and you have that integrated with the Health app, you'll see some refinements to the grading there. And I'll link this 9to5Mac article because you can see here the grading differences between 26 and then 26.2 for that sleep score.
All right, and number 10, this is pretty wild. There are some hidden shortcuts actions that apparently have been hidden since iOS 18. Antonio on Ivory actually sent me a link to this Reddit thread and then this refers to the Discord channel for our shortcuts, but I'll link this thread because the Discord you do need an invite for. And basically there are a ton of actions that you can't search for in Shortcuts right now, even if you're not running the beta, just regular iOS 26. The only way to use these actions yourself is to download a shortcut with those actions already placed like I have here and I'll put a link to this shortcut in the video description so you can try all these different actions, but you cannot search for these actions in Shortcuts. This won't come up as results, but you can do a copy and then paste this action in another shortcut and they actually work. A prime example and one that I've been using a lot is adjusting whether or not Share Sheet is toggled on or off for specific shortcuts. This action right here can actually adjust multiple attributes for a shortcut, like whether it's showing Share Sheet, whether it's pinned in the menu bar and more. You can find this action just by searching or even scrolling through the actions library on your iPhone. You have to literally copy this action and then paste it somewhere else. But this action with this shortcut right here lets me change in bulk which shortcuts show up in the Share Sheet and which don't. Really useful when you're testing and building hundreds of shortcuts a week. I'm still experimenting and seeing which of these actions I can really use and put in automations that are useful. But again, I'll put a link to that shortcut so you could download and try any of these actions on your iPhone, iPad or Mac right now. My thanks to Antonio for alerting me. And I'm going to be checking the r/Shortcuts Reddit and Discord more often because this is some wild stuff.
If you have any questions or thoughts like on Split View and iPadOS 26, leave them in the comments. And remember, this is beta 3. The public release will not be coming probably till December, but get subscribed and hit that like button. If anything else changes or big updates, I'll cover when it launches and I'll put the last Apple intelligence video I made right up here and a video YouTube thinks you'll really like over here. And if you do love Shortcuts, I actually have a whole Shortcuts community. You can join at shortcut.bot. Almost 3000 people have joined for free and a bunch of you have paid to support it. Thank you so much for your support there. Plus I have Shortcuts merch. Links to all of that in the description below. Thanks for watching.