The iOS 26.2 beta is out now and these 9 new features are coming to your iPhone

You’ve probably only just downloaded iOS 26.1 – and if you haven’t then the feature-packed update should be waiting for you now, but already a beta for iOS 26.2 has landed, revealing numerous new features you can look forward to soon.

We wouldn’t necessarily recommend downloading the beta, since it will be unfinished and likely buggy – though if you want to, here’s how to download iOS betas. However, it gives us a good idea of what you can expect on your iPhone when the finished version of iOS 26.2 launches.

So below, we’ve detailed nine new features that should be coming to your iPhone soon.

1. A Liquid Glass lock screen slider

With iOS 26.2, the lock screen is getting even more customizable, because – as shared by MacRumors – there's now a slider that lets you tweak the appearance of the clock.

Much like now, you can choose whether you want the clock to appear ‘solid’ or like ‘glass’, but with iOS 26.2, if you choose the latter you’ll then also get a slider allowing you to adjust just how transparent it appears.

2. Reminder alarms

If you find yourself ignoring reminders then iOS 26.2 has a feature you might like, as if you toggle the ‘Urgent’ option when setting a reminder, you’ll also now be able to set an alarm to accompany it.

Then, when it comes time to remind you of that thing, rather than a short alert your alarm will sound, with options to snooze it with a tap or slide to stop it. If you snooze it, then the lock screen will display a countdown, alongside options to complete or reschedule the reminder.

Alternatively, you can toggle a setting in the Reminders app to replace the snooze button with a button you can press to mark the reminder as completed.

3. Enhanced Safety Alerts

If you head to Notifications > Settings in iOS 26.2 then – as spotted by 9to5Mac – you’ll now find a new option called Enhanced Safety Alerts. Tap on that, and you’ll be taken to a screen where you can enable or disable earthquake alerts and imminent threat alerts.

We’d suggest leaving these on, but there’s also a toggle for ‘Improve Alert Delivery’ which you might want to enable, as this will share your approximate location with Apple to “improve the timeliness and reliability of Enhanced Safety Alerts.”

4. Improvements to the Podcasts app

Apple’s Podcasts app is getting a few new features with iOS 26.2, the biggest of which is automatically created chapters, so if a podcast creator doesn’t split an episode into chapters, the app will do so automatically, making it easier for listeners to navigate them – though creators will be able to disable this feature if for some reason they don’t want their podcasts to have chapters.

Another new feature is that if other podcasts are mentioned in an episode, you’ll be able to view and follow those podcasts from the transcript and the player.

Finally, you’ll also now be able to “quickly access the links shared in a podcast on the episode page,” which should make it easier to access sites mentioned in an episode.

5. Flash for Alerts

This is a niche feature but is bound to be very useful for some – if you head to Settings > Accessibility in iOS 26.2 you’ll find a new Flash for Alerts section, which gives you the option to have the screen flash when you get an alert.

Previously, the only accessibility option along these lines was to have the camera LED on the back of the phone flash, but now you can choose to have the screen flash instead or as well.

6. More accurate Sleep Scores

This is as much an Apple Watch feature as an iPhone one, but we’re including it here since you can view your Sleep Score in the Health app, and with iOS 26.2, these scores should better reflect how you actually feel.

That’s being achieved by adjusting the score ranges for ‘Very Low’, ‘Low’, ‘OK’, ‘High’, and ‘Very High’. For example, a score of 0-40 is now considered ‘Very Low’, where before it was 0-29, and you now need a score of 96 or higher to achieve a ‘Very High’ rating, where before you needed a score of 90 or above. Similar changes have been made to the ratings in between too.

And less significantly, ‘Very High’ itself is new wording, replacing the ‘Excellent’ that the top scores were previously listed as.

7. A new Passwords feature

Head to the settings section of the Passwords app in iOS 26.2 and you’ll now see an option to ‘Show Excluded Websites’. Tap that and you’ll see a list of websites that you’ve excluded from the app – in other words those where passwords won’t be saved when signing in.

From here, you can choose to remove any or all of these exclusions, giving you an easy way to change your mind.

8. Tables in the Freeform app

With iOS 26.2, the Freeform app has gained support for tables, which you can easily resize by dragging the corners, or add rows and columns to with the accompanying ‘+’ buttons.

This will probably be a niche feature, but for those who actually use Freeform – or would if it supported tables – this could be a big deal.

9. Shortcuts in Apple News

Finally, if you use Apple News, you’ll find that with iOS 26.2 there are now shortcuts along the top of the app for things like sports, politics, business, puzzles, and food.

From early impressions of the beta it seems these shortcuts might be based on your activity in the app – so in other words the specific shortcuts you see might vary depending on which sections you most commonly visit.

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