Transcription
iOS 26 is jam-packed with hundreds of new features, but it also includes several new settings that you probably didn't even know existed. So, in this video, I'm going to be showing you 24 settings that you need to change immediately on your iPhone.
Okay, so this first one is going to be very useful for those with CarPlay. So, before if you took a screenshot while you were connected to CarPlay, it would not only take a screenshot of your home screen on your iPhone, but it would also take a screenshot of your CarPlay interface. But now with iOS 26, that does not have to be the case because if you go into settings and go into general and then down to screen capture, we have a brand new setting that is enabled by default called CarPlay screenshots. So you might want to go ahead and turn that off if you do not want a bunch of CarPlay screenshots in your photo library.
And if you're somebody who wants the highest quality for your screenshots, you might want to also go down here and change the format for your screenshots from SDR to HDR. And once you select this, it's going to capture your screenshots and your screen recordings in HDR for full dynamic range, and it's going to save it in the hif format. And I may as well mention it while we're in here. So full screen previews is when you take a screenshot and you see the screenshot front and center right away. So if you want that, so you could easily go ahead and visual intelligence to search for something or to mark up quickly, you can have that turned on. However, if you have it off, it just goes back to the default style that we had in iOS 18.
Now, automatic visual lookup is also something else that you might want to turn off if you don't want your device automatically looking up the, you know, images or whatever you screenshots right away.
Now, we're going to stay on the theme of cars, but this is not related to CarPlay because now if we go into our settings and go into general and then down here to AirPlay and continuity, we have a brand new toggle with iOS 26 called keep audio with headphones. you might want to turn this on. And the reason being is because if you have AirPods in or any type of Bluetooth headphones in your ears and then you get into a car if you have this turned on, the audio will stay with the headphones and it will not switch until you take them out. And it's not just a car. This could be for speakers as well. So, if you go into your house and you have HomePods and sometimes it autoconnects to those, if you have this enabled, it will keep the audio in your AirPods or in your headphones until you decide to take them off or switch it manually.
So, as you know with iOS 26, we have the unknown senders list right here. So, now with iOS 26, if you get a message from an unknown sender, it will not even show up in your main feed right here. However, that can sometimes be troublesome if you're getting a two-factor authentication code and you need to see those notifications even though it's an unknown number. So, let's fix that because there is a setting for that. So, if we go into our settings and we're just going to search for messages to make this quicker. Let's go into messages right here. And then if we scroll down, you want to make sure that screen unknown senders is on. That way you do hide notifications from, you know, unknown senders. It is good to have on. However, the setting you need to change is right here under allow notifications because everything in here is off by default, but I would recommend going in here and turning on timesensitive because this will give you those two-factor authentication alerts, especially when it comes to autofill and Safari. If you have this enabled, even though they're unknown senders, you will still get the notification and you will still be able to autofill in Safari. And if you want to allow more than just time-sensitive alerts and messages, you can also do that right here by category. So, promotions, transactions, and personal. However, I think most people are just going to stick with time-sensitive.
Now, one of the most exciting features for me in iOS 26 is that we now have order tracking built into the wallet application. So, you don't have to go to 20 different sites to look at all your, you know, tracking information for your different shipments. So now if you go into wallet and go up here to orders, you will see all of your orders right here, but only if you have this turned on and configured correctly. So what you need to do is go into your settings and go to wallets and then go all the way down to the bottom and you will see a brand new section called order tracking. If you go into that, you need to enable mail beta. So this is going to allow Apple intelligence and Siri to update the wallet with order tracking information that it detects from your emails. Now, of course, Apple Pay is turned on by default, but you may not have mail turned on by default. So, you want to make sure to go ahead and have that enabled. That way, all of your shipments that you have, you know, email receipts from will show up here with the correct order number and you can track where they are and when they get delivered.
Now, easily one of the most useful features in iOS 26 is call screening. So, this is a new feature for the phone application where when an unknown caller calls you, it will now immediately ask that person for their name and why they're calling. And it will not actually give you a notification on your device right away. It will kind of show it up in the dynamic island and it will show this on the lock screen, but it will not give you a sound or anything like that until they answer the question and tell you who they are and why they're calling. However, you need to set this up properly. Okay, so if you go into your settings and go into the phone section right here, we have a brand new section called screen unknown callers. Now, before the default was silent, so it would just silence unknown callers, but now we have ask reason for calling. So I would recommend going ahead and setting that up. That way when you get a call from an unsaved number, they will be asked for more information. And at the same time, you want to make sure you have these two options for call filtering enabled as well. So spam and unknown callers. And the reason for that is because if we go into our phone app, it will now separate those into their own individual sections for unknown callers and for spam instead of just taking up space on your main feed here on the phone app.
And here's a little bonus tip. You could also now see all of your blocked contacts in one screen. So now if you go into the phone app and go down here, you can see we have blocked contacts. And if you tap on that, it will show you your blocked contacts. If you have them still saved as a contact or if they're just a number, it will show them as unknown right there. And you can also add a blocked contact from here.
I should also mention hold assist as well. So, this is another new feature in iOS 26. I would highly recommend turning this on. What this does is it will automatically detect when you're being placed on hold when you have music and things like that playing and then you can kind of step away and you'll have to almost reanswer the phone once the person is on the line and it's no longer on hold.
Now, if you installed iOS 26 and you started typing on your keyboard and you thought that something felt off, but you couldn't quite put your finger on it, it might be because there's a setting that's disabled that disables the character preview. So, before this is what it looked like when you tap on a key, it will almost maximize it. So, that button will come out right there and give you a preview of what you're tapping on. So, you can see, you get a visual cue of everything you're pressing. However, that is disabled by default, even though that was the default in previous iOS versions. So, let's change that. So, we're going to go into our settings and go into general. We're going to scroll down to keyboard. And then from here, we have a brand new toggle for character preview. So, if this is disabled, you will not see that preview when you type on the keys. You will not see it pop up and kind of elevate out of the keyboard. But if you turn that on and we go back, you can see that we now have the preview from those keys.
Now, here's a setting that took way too long to come to iOS, but at least it's finally here with iOS 26. And this is related to the clock application, more specifically with alarms that you set, whether that be your wake up alarm or just a one-off alarm or just one that you have set right here. So, if we go ahead and tap on plus to create a new alarm or if we go into edit an alarm, we now have a new section down here where you can customize the snooze duration. So, if you were not a fan of the default duration before, you can now change that from 1 minute up to 15 minutes. And again, this will also work for your wake up alarm as well. If you scroll down, you can see that we have snooze duration right there.
Now, there's something else I need to tell you about the phone application because this is something that might be controversial. So, now with iOS 26, by default, if you're in the new unified view and you tap on a contact right here, it will not call them back right away. That's because if we go back, we now have our call back options over here to the right. You have to press on that specific glyph all the way to the right of the contact. And that, in my opinion, is way better. That way you don't accidentally tap on these recent calls and call them. I've done that way too many times. However, if you're not like me and you actually prefer to tap on the name instead of the glyph icon to the right, you could actually change that. So, we're going to head back into our phone settings and we're going to go right here to tap recent to call. This is disabled by default, but you might want to go ahead and enable that if you want to tap on that contact to call them back quickly from the recents view. And you can see that when you change that setting, it will now change the glyph icon to the right of those recent calls to an information bubble.
Now, iOS 26 comes with a new Safari tab bar down at the bottom. And some people love it, some people hate it. So, you know, it's kind of confusing at first. Some people don't know how to get into all tabs. Some people just tap on the three dots and then go to all tabs that way. However, you could also just simply swipe up on that bar to go into the tab view. You can also have to press on that for more options such as closing the tab or closing all tabs. You can also double tap on the three dots right here to go into the tab view as well. But if you want to change this bottom bar as a whole, you can change that as well. So let's go into our settings. Once again, we're just going to search for Safari to get there quicker. So now if we go into Safari and then we scroll down, we have this tabs section. So, if you're not a fan of the default compact Safari tab bar, you can change that back to the old style, which is bottom, or you can change it back to top.
So, I've never really been a huge fan of the always on display on the iPhone. I think it's cool, but a lot of times I just prefer to have my screen black. However, there is a new setting in iOS 26 that's actually made me start enjoying the always on display more than I used to. So, by default, if you go ahead and put your device into the always on display, you could see when you lock it, of course, it will show either your wallpaper in the background or it will just show black with your clock right there. However, there's a new setting in iOS 26 that takes that to another level. So, now if we go into our settings and go down to display and brightness and go down here to always on display, we have a brand new toggle that's off by default called blur wallpaper photo. And it seems small, but actually looks way better now when it goes to the always on display. It's less distracting. I think that's why I didn't like the always on display in the past. It was kind of distracting. But for some reason, this blur, I've used this for the past couple of months. It makes it so much better on the always on display. So, I'd recommend going ahead and trying that if you are somebody who uses the AOD.
And while we're on the lock screen, you may as well go ahead and set up a spatial scene with a photo where there's some depth to it. Because if you turn that on, which by the way, you turn that on with this button right here. You can see it will turn on. It will kind of zoom out as well. You can zoom in if you want that to kind of, you know, be behind your head or you can expand this a little bit as well. You can see what that looks like there. But it has this really cool movement to it. And like I said, you should definitely move the clock a little bit so it goes behind the subject. It just makes the whole lock screen look that much more immersive. And you can also tap on these three dots right here as well if you want to extend the wallpaper. So it will generate a spatial scene and extend that a little bit. So it's going to use, you know, machine learning to extend that wallpaper and make it look much larger than it was by default. And if you're looking for a stunning wallpaper that goes perfect with liquid glass, check out the Lustra wallpaper collection that is linked down in the description below. I also have had an Easter egg in this video already that gave you a 15% off coupon if you were paying attention. So, you can go ahead and pick this up now. It is awesome with Liquid Glass. There's also some Mac OS wallpapers in there as well that look great on the Mac.
Okay, so take a look at my camera application. Do you notice anything different from your camera application? I'll give you a hint. Look up top. Mine looks even more clean than what you would see by default on your camera. And the reason for that is because there's a new setting where we can change our labels. So if we go into our camera settings right here and then scroll down, we have a new section under composition called indicator. So now you can disable certain indicators or certain labels that you see at the top of the camera application to indicate you can go into those modes. So, for example, if I turn all three of these on, flash, live photo, and action mode, and I go back, take a look at that. They now all show up up top. Especially if it gets dark, you will see the flash right there. Everything shows up there up top. But now, if I go ahead and turn them off, all three of them, you can see they disappear. And I can access those now by tapping on the three dot menu up top. And now they pop up at the bottom just when I need them. They're not always there taking up space. I think it just makes your camera app look a little bit more clean.
Oh, and by the way, another new feature in iOS 26 is lens cleaning hints. So, if you get smudges all over your lens and your iPhone detects that it's not going to take as good of a photo, it will now give you a hint that you need to clean your lens. However, you will need to have that setting turned on, otherwise it will not tell you about that. So, go back into your settings for camera and then scroll down near the bottom and we have lens cleaning hints. You want to make sure that's turned on. That way, you are notified anytime you have smudges on your lens.
Okay, so I have to say the photos application is so much better in iOS 26 than it is in iOS 18. It's just a lot less confusing now that we have a tab for library and a separate tab for all of our collections, all of our albums. However, it's still not great by default because you will need to move these into the position that you prefer. So, what you need to do when you're in the collections tab is tap on your three dots up here next to your profile picture and then go to reorder. And this will allow you to change the order of your collection. So, for example, if I wanted, you know, featured photos to be all the way near the top, I can now move that and it will show up there. And you could also collapse these menu options very easily as well. So, if you go ahead and press on that little arrow, it will collapse them that we can see more in that view. And also, if you tap on this edit button right here, this will allow you to change what is pinned. So, of course, we do have the pinned section right here, but if you want to change exactly what is in the pinned section, this is where you can change that.
So, if you're like me and you have your credit cards saved to your Apple wallet, but you don't always have access to the physical card and you might need it for like an online checkout. Well, now with iOS 26, you can add your card details in the wallet application, but you have to set this up. So, go to that card in Apple Pay and then go up here and tap on the three dots and go to card details. And then you want to go to card information, put in your face ID, and you will see we have a brand new option for add physical card information. And then you can go ahead and scan your card or enter the card details manually and then it will show you those details from then on out in the wallet application.
And if you have an Apple card, there's a really great feature and kind of a setting that you need to change for a specific transaction. So, for example, if I go into a transaction here in my Apple card and I tap on it and then I tap on this again and we can see, you know, the full view of that transaction, we can now change the category. So, if Apple got it wrong with their sorting and they said it was shopping even though it was health or transportation, you can now change that. And then when you change that, you get the option to change it for that specific transaction only or for multiple transactions. And then you can go in here and select which transactions you want to change the category for.
Now, raise your hand if you wish your battery life was better on iOS 26. Well, if you raised your hand, there's actually a setting inside of battery now that might help you out. So, if you go into your settings and then go down here to battery, of course, we do have the redesigned battery screen, which is insanely useful for getting details about where your battery life is going. However, we're talking about settings here. So, you need to go down to the bottom and go to power mode because we now have a brand new power mode that is disabled by default called adaptive power. And you might want to go ahead and turn this on to see how it improves your battery life. So, Apple says that 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%. So, I would highly recommend turning that on because some people may not even realize that they're using their phone more than usual, more than they should be. So, this could actually help a lot with saving battery. I would also recommend having adaptive power notifications turned on. And here's what those look like when you get one. So, it will say iPhone is adjusting performance to help extend your battery life. That can also give you a good indicator as to, you know, when you're actually pushing your device to its limit when you may not be realizing it in the moment.
Now, if you have a device with the camera control button and you actually use the camera control button quite a bit, there are some new settings here in iOS 26 that you will absolutely want to change because this is something we should have had from the start. So, if you go into your settings and go into camera right here and then into camera control and if we go down to controls, we now have customize. And what this does is it allows us to change the order of our controls and also disable certain controls that you may not use. So, for example, if you never use the camera control button for changing the exposure or changing the tone, you can disable those and now they will not show up in your camera control, you know, menu.
Now, I am a sucker for background sounds on iOS. I think this is one of the best features on the iPhone. The fact that we can have, you know, soothing sounds to fall asleep to and so many different variations of sounds to play in the background. Well, with iOS 26, they've gotten so much better and there are some settings that you might want to change related to that. So, if you haven't had the ear in your control center, you should add that ear right there because when you press and hold on that, that will give you access to the background sounds right here where you can adjust the volume. And you can see that we do have some new background sounds with iOS 26 right here. But again, this is a video about settings. So, let's talk about settings. So, if you go into your battery sounds settings, it will open up the settings pane right here. You want to make sure that is turned on first of all. And then, if we go down here, we now have an equalizer. So, I would recommend going in here and turning on the equalizer and adjusting this to your specific preference. And you could also change the tone between broad and focus. They will give you a description of what that means. And you can also see how the kind of equalizer is changing there. And you can hear the difference as well. You could also change the balance in terms of the left and right speakers. But the best new setting for background sounds in my opinion is right here. Stop sounds with a timer. So now you can set a timer for your background sound. So if you turn that on, you can turn off background sounds at a specific time or after a certain amount of time has passed. And you have a toggle to always use these settings. That way you don't have to do it manually each time. So, background sounds much better when you dig into the settings and change some of these.
And if you have some AirPods, these also got a lot better with iOS 26. You don't even need to buy the new AirPods because they've improved quite a bit here with the iOS 26 update. So, if you go into your AirPods settings, and then you go down here, we have a brand new section that's turned off by default called camera remote. So, when you turn this on to press once or press and hold, it will actually take a photo or start a video from pressing on the stem of your AirPod. And this is a great feature to have if you're taking like a group photo and you want to be able to snap that photo without a selftimer.
Now, here's one that may not be as useful to everybody, but this is something that's very useful to me and I think that you should go ahead and change this. And that is adding a quick reminder. If you're somebody like me who sets reminders throughout the day every single day, I need a quick and easy way to do that. And now you can do it through the action button or through the control center, like a control center toggle right here. However, I like mapping it to my action button. So now if I press and hold on the action button, you can see I could just simply type in my reminder right there and I get it done so much faster throughout the day because it's set to my action button. And again, you could also do this inside of your control center. There's a toggle for this now for this. So if you go ahead and tap on, it's right there. But if you go and tap on add a control and then you search for reminder, there's now a toggle for new reminder. And that's what it looks like. So now when you tap on that, it will prompt you to give you a new reminder. And if you want to add that to your action button, just go into your settings and go down here to action button and go over to controls and make sure you have new reminder set up right there.
Now, if you're somebody who listens to podcasts, iOS 26 has a must change setting inside of the now playing screen right here. So now, if you go to adjust the playback speed of that podcast, you can see a brand new interface right there. You can also swipe right here. So, if you don't press on anything, but you kind of swipe over, you can set a custom playback speed like 2.4. Also, I would highly recommend turning on enhanced dialogue. It's off by default. I would highly recommend turning that on. That way, the dialogue is much more clear and you don't, you know, lose the voice in music. If a podcast's playing music, this will kind of bring out the dialogue and not get you distracted from everything else going on in the episode. However, once you have your settings set right there and you go out of it, there's now a popup that tells you you can save the settings for future episodes. So, basically, if you save these presets to the podcast, it will now remember that. So, every future podcast will have those same settings. You could also get to this by going to the main page of the podcast, tapping on the three dots right here, and then go into settings, and then all the way down at the bottom, we have custom for this show. And you could set up your custom settings right there. if you don't see a popup on the now playing view. So, you could set them up right there. That way, they stay for future versions of the show or future episodes of that show.
And then last but not least, if you're somebody who's not the biggest fan of the liquid glass design, you could actually disable this if you want to. So, to do that, go into your settings, go into accessibility, and we're going to go into display and text size and now you can turn on reduce transparency. And what this will do is it will pretty much remove a lot of the transparent effects and UI elements of liquid glass. It's not going to get rid of it permanently, but especially in the control center, you can see that's a lot easier to read for some people. So, that's something if you're not a fan of liquid glass.
So, those are some of the must change settings on iOS 26 on your iPhone. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I hope it was helpful for you. If it was, I would appreciate if you give it a thumbs up. Also, be sure to check out the Lustra wallpaper collection that is linked down in the description below. It's just so perfect with liquid glass. But anyways, hope you guys enjoyed. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out on future iOS 26 videos.