iOS 26 Beta 5 Now Available With 14 New Features

With iOS 26 public beta now available, Apple enters the second half of the iOS 26 test phase with developer beta 5. While the company was able to greatly improve the general stability in previous version, there's still a long way to go before iOS 26 feels as stable as iOS 18.

With the previous update, iOS 26 beta added the following improvements:

• Liquid Glass: Menu bars in stock apps have more transparency. On the Lock Screen, Apple improved the readability by making it darker whenever a notification appears.
• Notification Summaries: iOS 18's Notification Summaries are now back. With that, Apple Intelligence can summarize news, even though Apple says this feature "may change the meaning of the original headlines," and users need to verify the information.
• Call Screening: Screen Unknown Callers has more options, including the ability to disable it.
• Dynamic wallpapers: iOS 26's new wallpapers are now dynamic and change color throughout the day.

Still, there's a lot more users should know about iOS 26.

With iOS 26 beta 5, Apple will likely continue to tweak the Liquid Glass UI and improve battery life. For iPhone 15 Pro or newer users, they can take advantage of several new Apple Intelligence features, such as ChatGPT-powered Image Playground creations, combining emojis to create a Genmoji, use on-screen awareness with ChatGPT, and enjoy Live Translation from a handful of different languages.

Apple has also added a new ringtone, background for chats and polls within the Messages app, and a new Recovery Assistant mode that lets users fix their iPhones without connecting them to a Mac.

iOS 26 beta 5 also features an order tracking feature introduced within the Wallet app. There, users can also save credit card information linked to the virtual card available for Apple Pay. Alongside iOS 26 beta 5, Apple has also released the fifth beta versions of iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe, watchOS 26, tvOS 26, and visionOS 26.