iOS 26.2 and iPadOS 26.2: New Features, Multitasking Overhaul, and a Serious Screen Time Bug (21 November 2025)

iOS 26.2 and iPadOS 26.2 bring a customizable Liquid Glass lock screen, smarter Reminders and Podcasts, a big multitasking reset on iPad, powerful new AI capabilities – and a nasty Screen Time bug beta testers need to know about.

Apple’s 26.2 wave: where things stand today

As of 21 November 2025, Apple is deep in the 26.2 cycle across iOS, iPadOS and macOS:

iOS 26.2 / iPadOS 26.2: developer beta 3 and public beta 2 are out. ^[1]
Apple has confirmed that iOS 26.2 will be released to all users in December, without a specific day yet. ^[2]
The update is supported on iPhone 11 and newer, though some features (especially Apple Intelligence‑powered ones) need the latest devices. ^[3]

Today’s coverage pulls together the most important news and analysis from MacRumors, 9to5Mac, Six Colors, MacObserver, Geeky Gadgets, t3n and others, plus a fresh report of a critical Screen Time bug affecting beta 3. ^[4]

Key takeaways at a glance

Personalisation: A new Liquid Glass slider gives you fine‑grained control over the Lock Screen clock and other UI elements. ^[5]
Everyday features: Offline Apple Music lyrics, smarter Sleep scores, alarm‑style Reminders, and a revamped Apple News and Podcasts experience. ^[6]
Privacy & AI: Time‑limited AirDrop codes, Live Translation for AirPods in the EU, and a new option (in Japan) to map the iPhone’s side button to alternate AI assistants. ^[7]
iPad big change: iPadOS 26.2 essentially re‑builds multitasking, blending the new windowed model with classic Split View and Slide Over. ^[8]
Developers & power users: New ML frameworks finally tap the M5 Neural Accelerator on iPad Pro and high‑end Macs for dramatically faster AI workloads. ^[9]
Warning: A serious Screen Time bug in iOS 26.2 beta 3 can effectively lock you out of almost all apps. This beta should not be on a primary device. ^[10]

iOS 26.2: the headline iPhone features

1. Liquid Glass lock screen controls

iOS 26.2’s most visible change is a new Lock Screen slider for Apple’s “Liquid Glass” aesthetic. Instead of a fixed look, you can now adjust how frosted or clear the clock appears, from almost solid to heavily blurred. ^[11]

This builds on the earlier “Clear” and “Tinted” options from iOS 26.1 and finally lets you match the clock to busy wallpapers or more minimal setups. Accessibility settings like Reduce Transparency and Increase Contrast now interact more predictably with these options in beta 3. ^[12]

2. Offline lyrics in Apple Music

iOS 26.2 quietly solves a long‑standing annoyance: lyrics now work offline for Apple Music tracks. Once a song and its lyrics have been cached, you can still follow along even in airplane mode or with no data connection – a big plus for travel, gym use, or spotty coverage. ^[13]

3. Smarter Sleep scores and health APIs

Apple is recalibrating sleep tracking in iOS 26.2 and watchOS 26.2:

The sleep score bands have been shifted; for example, “Very Low” now starts at 0–40 instead of 0–29, and “Very High” covers 96–100. ^[14]
The idea is to give more realistic feedback instead of making most nights look “excellent.”

On the developer side, a new Hypertension Notifications API lets health apps read blood pressure alerts triggered on Apple Watch, so medical or wellness apps can respond when a user’s watch flags a hypertension event. ^[15]

4. Reminders finally get real alarms

Both MacRumors and 9to5Mac call out the new “Urgent” option in Reminders as one of the most useful upgrades. ^[16]

When a reminder has a due time, you can mark it as urgent.
Instead of a standard push notification, the due time triggers a full alarm that keeps sounding until you stop or snooze it.
A Live Activity keeps the task pinned on your Lock Screen so it doesn’t quietly disappear.

If you’ve ever missed an important reminder because it was “just another notification,” this feature is a big deal.

5. Apple Podcasts: AI‑generated chapters and richer playback

iOS 26.2 leans on Apple Intelligence to significantly improve the Podcasts app. According to both MacRumors and 9to5Mac: ^[17]

Episodes now get automatic chapters, even if the creator never added them.
The player can show timed links on screen and a new view listing other podcasts mentioned in the episode, drawing from the auto‑generated transcript.

For long or multi‑topic shows, auto chapters alone dramatically change how you browse and skip around episodes.

6. Apple News navigation redesign

Apple News continues to evolve from a pure news feed into a hybrid of news, puzzles, sports, recipes and audio stories. iOS 26.2 reorganizes the app:

A new Following tab replaces the previous bottom‑row Sports tab.
Quick‑access buttons at the top of Today take you straight to Sports, Puzzles, Politics, Food and other key sections. ^[18]

The result is less “everything crammed behind Search,” and more of a hub for the content News subscribers actually use.

7. Better accessibility: flashing screen alerts

Previously, “Flash for alerts” meant using the camera LED on the back of the phone. In iOS 26.2, you can also have the screen flash when notifications arrive, or combine both. ^[19]

That’s a small change on paper, but a big one if your phone usually sits face‑up on a desk or if you rely on visual alerts more than sound or haptics.

8. AirPods Live Translation expands to the EU

Apple’s Live Translation for AirPods – introduced with iOS 26 as an Apple Intelligence feature – will finally roll out to EU users next month, and iOS 26.2 is the vehicle for that launch. ^[20]

On compatible AirPods and iPhones, Live Translation lets you:

Hear real‑time translations of in‑person conversations through your AirPods.
Show a live bilingual transcript on your iPhone if the other person isn’t wearing AirPods.

The EU delay was tied to Digital Markets Act compliance; Apple has now done the extra engineering work and is aligning the feature’s EU rollout with the 26.2 release window. ^[21]

Privacy and security: AirDrop codes and “Known AirDrop Contacts”

One of the most practical 26.2 additions is a new AirDrop trust model:

You can generate a one‑time AirDrop code and share it with someone who isn’t in your contacts.
After they enter the code, both devices can see each other over AirDrop for up to 30 days, then the permission automatically expires.
A new “Manage Known AirDrop Contacts” screen in Settings lets you see and revoke these temporary relationships. ^[22]

This is designed to replace the awkward “AirDrop to Everyone” toggle while still making it easy to exchange files with people you don’t want permanently whitelisted.

iOS 26.2 in Japan: the side button opens up to third‑party AI

A quietly huge change – but initially only in Japan – is Apple’s move to let users remap the iPhone’s side button away from Siri.

Code in iOS 26.2 beta 3 and Apple’s own documentation show that Japanese users will be able to choose a different “conversation app”, such as Google Gemini or a voice‑enabled ChatGPT, when holding the side button. ^[23]
The option is being introduced in response to local antitrust pressure from Japanese regulators, not as a purely voluntary move. ^[24]

It’s the first time Apple has allowed this kind of deep integration for non‑Apple assistants. Whether it remains Japan‑only or spreads to other regions will likely depend on regulatory pressure elsewhere.

iPadOS 26.2: Apple’s multitasking reset

If iOS 26.2 is about polish, iPadOS 26.2 is about course correction.

After iPadOS 26 removed classic Split View and Slide Over in favor of a more Mac‑like windowed model, many iPad users – and reviewers – were unhappy. Apple is now rowing back, blending old and new.

Split View and Slide Over return (on modern terms)

In beta 3 and the current public beta, iPadOS 26.2:

Brings back Split View and Slide Over inside the new windowing and Stage Manager environments, effectively restoring beloved multitasking workflows. ^[25]
Lets you drag app icons from the Dock, App Library or Spotlight to the left or right edge to create tiled views, or further out to create a Slide Over window. Visual indicators show whether you’re about to tile or float the app. ^[26]
Allows you to replace a Slide Over app (or a tile) just by dropping another app on top of it.

The classic behavior is back, but only within the newer multitasking modes – Apple still doesn’t re‑enable Split View/Slide Over in pure full‑screen mode. ^[27]

Why this matters

Between MacRumors’ hands‑on and analysis from MacObserver, Geeky Gadgets and others, the consensus is clear: iPadOS 26.2 “fixes” multitasking for most people. ^[28]

Power users keep Stage Manager and full windowing.
Everyone else gets drag‑and‑drop Split View and Slide Over back — especially valuable on smaller iPads where full windows can feel fiddly. ^[29]

If you stopped using your iPad for serious work when 26.0 arrived, 26.2 is the first version that genuinely tries to win you back.

AI and performance: 26.2 finally unlocks M5 hardware

Apple’s M5‑based iPad Pro and high‑end Macs were announced with bold AI performance claims, but some of that headroom relied on pre‑release software. With 26.2, that software is finally arriving.

Six Colors reports that: ^[30]

Apple’s open‑source MLX frameworks now support the M5’s Neural Accelerator, yielding dramatic speed boosts for on‑device machine‑learning workloads on the latest iPad Pro.
Apple is also enabling a new feature for Mac “AI clusters”, harnessing the 480Gb/s bandwidth of the Mac Studio’s Thunderbolt 5 ports so multiple Macs can share workloads with far higher efficiency than traditional data‑center setups.

For most users, this will surface as:

Faster Apple Intelligence operations (summaries, image handling, suggestions).
Better performance in third‑party apps that adopt MLX and the new APIs.

It also signals that Apple sees a real role for Macs as efficient AI compute nodes, not just client devices.

The big red flag: a Screen Time bug that can lock you out

The most worrying iOS 26.2 news today is not a feature – it’s a bug.

A German‑language report details a serious Screen Time issue in iOS 26.2 beta 3: ^[31]

The “One more minute” option in Screen Time’s app limits, meant to briefly extend usage for a single app, is misbehaving.
Instead of applying to one category or app, the extension is treated as global. After that minute passes, almost all apps become blocked, leaving only emergency calling and a few basic settings.
The only practical workaround right now is to delete all Screen Time app limits, restart the device, and manually re‑create rules.

Apple has not yet issued a public statement or a beta 4 fix. Until that happens, the advice is clear:

Do not install iOS 26.2 beta 3 on a primary iPhone if you rely on Screen Time or parental controls.

This bug also highlights how fragile Apple’s Screen Time system still is; similar issues have plagued family controls earlier in the iOS 26 cycle. ^[32]

Other small but notable changes

Beyond the headline features, 26.2 betas include many smaller tweaks:

Measure app Level UI: The Level in Measure adopts a Liquid Glass‑style design, refined in later betas so numbers stay readable. ^[33]
Games app: New filters, better controller navigation, and real‑time score updates make Apple’s Games app feel more like a proper hub. ^[34]
Messages in CarPlay: You can now turn off pinned conversations in CarPlay, reducing clutter on in‑car displays. ^[35]
UI polish: Multiple reports mention smoother animations when tapping menus and moving around the system, particularly on the latest iPhones and iPads. ^[36]

Should you install the iOS 26.2 / iPadOS 26.2 beta?

For most people, the answer is still “probably not on your main device.”

Reasons to wait for the December release:

The Screen Time bug alone is a deal‑breaker if you have kids’ devices or rely on app limits. ^[37]
Apple is still refining Liquid Glass behavior, multitasking corner cases and privacy prompts. ^[38]

Reasons you might consider the beta on a secondary device:

You want to test apps or workflows with new multitasking on iPadOS 26.2. ^[39]
You rely heavily on Reminders, Podcasts or Apple News and want to adapt early to their new behavior. ^[40]

If you do opt in, use the Apple Beta Software Program, back up before installing, and be ready to file feedback through the Feedback app—especially if you hit edge cases around Screen Time, AirDrop, or multitasking.

FAQ: iOS 26.2 and iPadOS 26.2

When will iOS 26.2 be released to everyone?

Apple has said iOS 26.2 will ship to all users in December 2025, and multiple outlets expect a mid‑December window following at least one more beta. ^[41]

Which iPhones support iOS 26.2?

According to MacRumors and the current betas, iOS 26.2 supports iPhone 11 and newer, though some Apple Intelligence features and Live Translation require the latest hardware (such as iPhone 15 Pro or newer and specific AirPods models). ^[42]

How do I get the iOS or iPadOS 26.2 public beta?

You can enroll a device through Apple’s public Beta Software Program, sign in with your Apple ID, and then enable the 26.2 beta under Settings → General → Software Update → Beta Updates. Make sure you have a full backup and understand that betas can contain serious bugs like the current Screen Time issue. ^[43]

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