The 10 best new tips for iOS 26.3, iPadOS 26.3 and macOS 26.3

Operating methods don’t stand nonetheless. Last 12 months, I rounded up the best iOS 26 tips, best iPadOS 26 tips and best macOS 26 Tahoe tips. Those stay stable beginning factors. But Apple’s saved tinkering, refining and sometimes stunning us since then.

So listed here are ten of the best new options to land in iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and macOS 26 over the previous couple of months – and methods to use them.

Table of Contents

Set a Reminders alarm

Standard notifications are high-quality for ‘buy milk’. Less so for an pressing deadline about to fly previous your ears. So open Reminders, faucet or click on a reminder’s information button, then assign the duty a time and activate Urgent. When the second arrives, you’ll get a correct alarm, full with snooze and Live Activity performance you may make use of whereas scrabbling to finish the duty.

That beats a meek banner that vanishes when you’re furiously doomscrolling. But do word the alarm solely blares in your main machine, which might be an iPhone. Make certain that’s the proper iPhone by opening Find My on it, heading to the Me tab, and tapping ‘Use This iPhone as My Location’.

Customise Lock Screen glass

Tap-hold your Lock Screen, select Customise and then faucet the clock. In the ‘Font & Colour’ pane, you might already decide a color and faucet Solid in the event you’ve had sufficient of translucent stylish. But as of iOS 26.2, Apple has offered extra nuanced choices.

Select Glass and then drag the transparency slider. You get the complete vary, from “actually that’s not too bad” to “OK, why are you even bothering at this point?” Except on Mac. Because for some motive, Apple doesn’t need you to have clock transparency management on macOS 26.3 Tahoe. Boo/hiss/and so on.

Follow podcast hyperlinks

With various success, Apple now makes use of generative AI to transcribe podcasts. You can entry transcripts from present notes pages on iPhone or iPad, or by way of … > Transcript on Mac.

But Apple’s now gone additional, embedding hyperlinks immediately into the transcripts, saving you having to notice them down for later . The app will even try to floor talked about podcasts, including useful hyperlinks to the present notes web page, making it even simpler to queue but extra reveals you completely shouldn’t have time to take heed to.

Save lyrics offline

Download songs to your machine in Apple Music and lyrics now come alongside for the trip. That means you possibly can hearth them up if you’re in the course of nowhere, offering some solace if you’re bored inflexible throughout a flight or horribly misplaced within the woods. Alas, Apple Sing’s sort-of-karaoke mode refuses to work offline, though that can certainly come as an enormous aid to any fellow passengers or close by wildlife.

Flash your show

Your telephone would possibly make a noise when an alert arrives. Not nice in the event you’re deaf or exhausting of listening to – or your ears are in any other case occupied. Previously, you might use an accessibility setting to have notifications make the digicam flash blink, thereby making certain you didn’t miss something necessary. Apple now enables you to flash the show as a substitute – or as nicely.

In Settings, open Accessibility and scroll all the way down to Hearing. Under ‘Audio & Visual’, activate ‘Flash for Alerts’ and set it to Screen or Both. That ought to be sufficient to get your consideration, wanting Apple determining methods to have your iPhone dance in entrance of your face when it needs one thing.

Filter your video games

Apple’s Games app hasn’t checked all of the bins it must, however no less than it’s evolving. Which is greater than I can say for Game Centre throughout most of its life. The newest updates are all about sorting.

OK, that sounds boring. It is boring. But it’s additionally helpful. In Library, now you can view your video games by class, what associates are enjoying, dimension (besides on Mac) and ‘Designed For’ (Mac solely). The final of these is useful for recognizing iPad video games put in in your Mac.

The best pairing is Size and ‘On This iPhone/iPad’ on a cellular machine. That’ll rapidly present what’s consuming storage. Tap-hold any sport and then ‘Delete Game’ to nuke it. Although if you need rid of the sport however not its information (assuming it doesn’t retailer progress within the cloud), as a substitute go to General > ‘iPhone/iPad Storage’ in Settings, faucet the sport, and select ‘Offload App’.

Note: all kind choices might be chosen a second time to reverse their kind order. More hidden Apple interface design! ‘Yay’.

Bring again Split View

If you miss basic iPad Split View, it’s potential to approximate it in iPadOS 26. You’ll have to be in ‘Windowed Apps’ mode (activated in Control Centre or ‘Multitasking & Gestures’ in Settings) for this to work. Then open two apps, drag down from the highest of the display screen to disclose the menu bar, and go to Window > ‘Move & Resize’ > ‘Left & Right’. The apps will snap side-by-side with a draggable divider.

Alternatively, seize a single app window’s toolbar and flick the window to a display screen edge so it snaps into place. If the Dock isn’t seen, drag (not swipe) it upwards, and drag an app to the opposite aspect of the display screen. Extra tip the primary: drag nearer to a display screen edge to dump an app in Slide Over. Extra tip the second: drag an app from the Dock to an current Split View/Slide Over member to switch it.

You’ve lengthy been in a position to dictate your AirDrop openness for sharing information. In Settings, you possibly can nonetheless go to General > AirDrop and select your degree of privateness: ‘Receiving Off’, ‘Contacts Only’ or ‘Everyone for 10 Minutes’. Alas, there’s by no means been a ‘But Keep Out The Randos’ setting. Until now, that’s.

Well, form of. If you open up your AirDrop however somebody tries to ship you one thing and isn’t in your contacts, you possibly can decide to get an AirDrop Code. If the opposite get together enters the code into their machine, the merchandise is squirted throughout to yours. You’ll be capable of discover one another for 30 days, until you go into ‘Manage Known AirDrop Contacts’ within the aforementioned settings pane and delete them. Or hurl their iPhone right into a ravine. Definitely a type of.

Fire up a digital ring gentle

This one’s for if you’re taking a video name in low gentle however need everybody to extra simply see your stunning visage. During the decision, click on the app’s menu bar icon and allow ‘Edge Light’. A digital ring gentle will seem in your show, brightening your face. A bit.

Look, it’s not going to beat an actual ring gentle or, certainly, another gentle. But it’s one thing in the event you don’t have entry to these issues or can’t be bothered to maneuver. And it beats sitting there in darkness, going “MWAHAHA!” and then questioning why nobody will take your calls.

Switch to Android

You’ve lengthy been in a position to switch information to a new iPhone by plonking it subsequent to your outdated one. Now you are able to do a lot the identical with Android. To begin, have your Android in its setup course of and place your iPhone subsequent to it.

In Settings, go to General > ‘Transfer or Reset iPhone’ and faucet ‘Transfer to Android’. Use your iPhone to scan the QR code that seems on the Android machine, choose information classes to ship throughout, twiddle your thumbs for a bit, and then begin doing issues in your Android machine. The first of which ought to be checking what did and didn’t efficiently switch.

Want to move within the different route? Apple’s Move to iOS app has, natch, been on Google Play for over a decade.