CUPERTINO, Calif.—If you’re buying one of the new iPhones or the other hardware that Apple announced today, your new devices will ship with Apple’s latest operating system updates already installed. But if you’re not looking to spend a bunch of money on Apple’s latest and greatest, the new updates will land on Apple’s other supported devices on September 15.
Apple is shifting to a year-based numbering system starting this year, wiping away the previous grab bag of all-over-the-place version numbers. No corner of Apple’s ecosystem is going untouched: we’re getting iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26 Tahoe, watchOS 26, tvOS 26, visionOS 26, and even version 26 of whatever Apple is calling the HomePod’s software these days, all on the same day.
The headliner across all of the updates is Apple’s new “Liquid Glass” UI overhaul, which adds glass-inspired transparency and translucency and bouncy animations throughout all of Apple’s software. Inspired in part by the way that UI elements in visionOS float over top of your real-world surroundings, Liquid Glass is Apple’s most comprehensive UI overhaul since the release of iOS 7 back in 2013.