Apple today seeded the first betas of its upcoming iOS 26.1 and iPadOS 26.1 updates to developers for testing. The new betas come one week after Apple release iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 to the public.
Registered developers can download the new beta software using the Software Update section of the Settings app.
New Features Found in iOS 26.1 Beta 1 So Far
The beta has so far been reported to add support for additional languages in Apple Intelligence, including Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese (Portugal), Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (Traditional), and Vietnamese.
The iOS 26.1 update also adds more languages that work with AirPods Live Translation, including Japanese, Korean, Italian, and Chinese (both Mandarin Traditional and Simplified).
The Phone keypad now uses Liquid Glass for the numbers.
User can now swipe on the music player in Apple Music to switch songs, by sliding a finger over where the song title is listed, and it’ll go to the next song or back to the previous song.
The slider for scrubbing through videos in the Photos app has been updated.
Some Calendar app views now show events from different calendars with a full color background.
The name of Rapid Security Updates appears to have been changed to Background Security Improvement, which is mentioned in the iOS 26.1 code.
“Background Security Improvement improves the security of your iPhone by installing security improvements and system files before they are available in iOS Software Updates. In rare instances of compatibility issues, these deliveries may be temporarily removed and then improved in a feature software update.”
As usual, MacTrast and Apple both warn users to not install any betas on their daily driver iPhone or iPad. Instead, only install betas on a device set aside for testing purposes.
