5 New Features And Changes In iOS 26.1 Beta 1 For iPhone
A couple of weeks after the official iOS 26 release, Apple restarted the test cycle with iOS 26.1 beta 1. Unlike previous years, the company has been more secretive about upcoming features due to the issue with the onscreen awareness feature in Siri unveiled during last year's WWDC 2024 keynote.
Still, the company has a few delayed functionalities that we might start seeing in this beta version. For example, the main feature introduced in iOS 26.1 is the expansion of Apple Intelligence to more languages, including Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Chinese (Traditional), and Portuguese (Portugal).
Moreover, the promised Live Translation language expansion is already happening with iOS 26.1 beta 1, as the company added Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Italian, Japanese, and Korean as available languages. It's still unclear if the new languages for Apple Intelligence will support Live Translation with iOS 26.1 or if Apple might save that for a future update.
iOS 26.1 beta 1 improves the Liquid Glass experience
As expected, Apple keeps improving the Liquid Glass experience on iOS 26. These are some of the changes developers are discovering with this new test cycle:
Apple Music gesture: Once you're on the Apple Music app on iOS 26.1, you can swipe left and right on the MiniPlayer to switch between songs. The feature works whether it occupies the entire bottom of the display or is in a smaller miniature.
Phone app: Following the redesign of the Phone app, Apple has also added a Liquid Glass touch to the keypad, bringing more consistency to the overall experience.
Apple Calendar app: In List view, the Calendar now highlights each event with a full-width color bar.
Background Security Improvements: According to MacRumors, Apple changed the name of Rapid Security Updates to Background Security Improvement. The company hasn't used this feature much over the years.
9to5Mac says Apple is also working to add support for Model Context Protocol, which is Anthropic's protocol for agentic AI. This could make Apple Intelligence available to other third-party LLMs that could autonomously take action within apps. At this moment, it's important to note that ChatGPT continues to be the main third-party LLM available to Apple Intelligence. BGR will let you know if we find anything else major on this beta, and when Apple releases beta 2 to developers.