- iOS 26.2 is rolling out now for iPhones
- It includes several new and improved features for Reminders and more
- Highlights a new way to share over AirDrop and tweaks to Liquid Glass
It’s not quite Christmas yet, but there are some new goodies for your well-behaved iPhone, as iOS 26.2 has just landed – complete with quite a few new features and improvements.
Most of these are small, but some could make a real difference to how you use your phone, while others fix annoyances and improve apps.
Below, you’ll find a rundown of what’s new in the software – but on top of all this, there are also bug fixes and security improvements, so even if you don’t care about these features, it’s still worth downloading the update.
1. Reminder alarms
With iOS 26.2, you’re now less likely to miss reminders, as you can have them accompanied by an alarm.
To do this, toggle the ‘Urgent’ option when setting the reminder. When the reminder time arrives, your phone’s alarm will sound, and you’ll see options to snooze or stop it.
2. An easier way to AirDrop
iOS 26.2 has also made it easier to AirDrop with people who aren’t in your contacts list. Now, rather than having to either add them to your contacts or enable the ‘Everyone for 10 Minutes’ option, you can generate a code and share it with them.
Once done, you’ll be able to AirDrop each other for 30 days, while keeping AirDrop on the ‘Contacts Only’ setting.
3. Liquid Glass tweaks
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iOS 26.2 also includes a couple of changes to Liquid Glass. The most significant is a new slider that lets you customize how transparent the lock screen clock appears.
In addition, Apple has added a Liquid Glass effect to the Level tool in the Measure app, so the new interface look is applied more consistently across the operating system.
4. Podcast improvements
There are a few improvements to the Apple Podcasts app as well, with iOS 26.2 adding auto-chapters. That means, if a podcast creator doesn’t manually add chapters to an episode, the app can do so automatically.
Beyond that, the app now makes it a lot easier to find links to websites mentioned on the episode page, and it will also include links to other podcasts mentioned in the episode.
5. Better Sleep Scores
If you ever thought the wording for Apple’s Sleep Scores didn’t match how you felt in the morning, you probably weren’t alone, as Apple has tweaked this for iOS 26.2 as well.
Now, you need a much higher score to achieve an ‘Excellent’ – previously called ‘Very High’ – rating, and anything under 40 will now be considered ‘Very Low’, where before the cut-off was 29. Similar changes have also been made to the other Sleep Score categories.
6. Tables in the Freeform app
We’re not sure how many people use the Freeform app, but if you’re among them and you’re a fan of tables, then this is the update you’ve been waiting for, as with iOS 26.2, you can now make tables in the Freeform app.
You can resize these tables by dragging their corners, and add rows and columns with the ‘+’ buttons. It’s safe to say this one can be filed in the ‘useful, not exciting’ category.
7. Tweaks to Apple News
Finally, Apple News has also been tweaked with shortcuts at the top of the screen, which lead to various sections of the app. These sections include things like ‘Sports’, ‘Puzzles’, ‘Politics’, and ‘Food’.
Not a major change, but something that should make it a little faster to get where you want to be.
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