Apple today released new Apple Intelligence features that elevate the user experience across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. Deeply integrated across operating systems, today’s new features help users seamlessly communicate across languages with Live Translation; use visual intelligence to learn more about the onscreen content across their apps; and express themselves with enhancements to Genmoji and Image Playground. Additionally, Shortcuts can now tap into Apple Intelligence models directly to accelerate workflows, and developers are starting to take advantage of the on-device foundational model at the core of Apple Intelligence to build intelligent, privacy-protected features into their apps.
Users with an Apple Intelligence-enabled device can start experiencing new features today with iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26, and visionOS 26. Additionally, Apple Intelligence features will be coming soon to eight more languages: Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese (Portugal), Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (traditional), and Vietnamese.
Break Down Language Barriers with Live Translation
For those moments when a language barrier gets in the way, Live Translation can help users communicate across select languages when messaging or speaking. The feature is seamlessly integrated into Messages, FaceTime, and Phone, and users can also access it with AirPods Pro 3 to translate in-person conversations, enabled by Apple Intelligence on iPhone.
With this powerful new feature, users can translate all types of conversations — whether over the phone or while using FaceTime, in person, or asynchronously in Messages — right when they need to. It protects user’s privacy with on-device processing, so personal conversations stay personal.
In Messages, Live Translation can automatically translate a user’s response as they type and deliver it in the recipient’s language. During FaceTime calls, users can follow along with live translated captions while still hearing their friend or family member’s voice. And during a phone call, the translation is spoken out loud in real time. Users can access Live Translation on AirPods with an all-new gesture by simultaneously pressing both AirPods stems; by saying “Siri, start Live Translation;” or even from the Action button on iPhone, which will allow them to hear in their preferred language. Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) lowers the volume of the person speaking so it’s easier to focus on the translation.
And by the end of the year, Live Translation for Phone, FaceTime, and AirPods will expand language support to include Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Mandarin, simplified), and Chinese (Mandarin, traditional).
Search and Take Action with Updates to Visual Intelligence
Visual intelligence, which builds on Apple Intelligence, now helps users learn and do more with the content on their iPhone screen. It makes it faster than ever for users to search, take action, and answer questions about the content they’re viewing across their apps.
Users can search for the content on their iPhone screen to find similar images across Google, as well as apps that integrate this experience, such as eBay, Poshmark, Etsy, and more. If there’s an object a user is interested in learning about, like a pair of shoes, they can simply press the same buttons used to take a screenshot and highlight it to search for that specific item or similar objects online. And with ChatGPT, users can ask questions about anything they’re viewing onscreen.
Updates to visual intelligence help users learn and do more with the content on their iPhone screen.
Visual intelligence enables users to summarize and translate text, as well as add an event from a flyer on their iPhone screen to their calendar, with a single tap.
Users can also take advantage of these capabilities by using visual intelligence with their iPhone camera through Camera Control, the Action button, and in Control Center.
Create Unique Images with Enhancements to Genmoji and Image Playground
Users can now mix together emoji and combine them with descriptions to create a brand-new Genmoji. And when making Genmoji or Image Playground images inspired by family and friends, users can change expressions or modify personal attributes like hairstyle to match their contact’s latest look.
In Image Playground, users can tap into ChatGPT to explore new styles Iike Watercolor and Oil Painting, along with an Any Style option that offers even more creative control. Image Playground sends a user’s description or photo to ChatGPT, which creates a unique image.
Get Personalized Fitness Insights with Workout Buddy
Workout Buddy is a first-of-its-kind fitness experience powered by Apple Intelligence that analyzes a user’s workout data and fitness history to deliver personalized, spoken motivation throughout their session, based on data like heart rate, pace, distance, Activity rings, personal fitness milestones, and more. To offer meaningful inspiration in real time, Workout Buddy analyzes data privately and securely, with Apple Intelligence. A new text-to-speech model then translates insights into a dynamic generative voice built using voice data from Fitness+ trainers, so it has the right energy, style, and tone for a workout.
Workout Buddy will be available starting in English across some of the most popular workout types, and is available on Apple Watch with Bluetooth headphones, with an Apple Intelligence-supported iPhone nearby.
AirPods and iPhone users also have access to Workout Buddy, so their workout data and fitness history can be used to generate personalized, motivational insights during their session.
Build Intelligent Shortcuts
Shortcuts help users accomplish more faster, by combining multiple steps from their favorite apps into powerful, personal automations. And now with Apple Intelligence, users can take advantage of intelligent actions in the Shortcuts app to create automations, like summarizing text with Writing Tools or creating images with Image Playground.
Users can tap into Apple Intelligence models, either on device or with Private Cloud Compute to generate responses that feed into the rest of their shortcut, maintaining the privacy of information used in the shortcut. For example, users can create powerful Shortcuts like comparing an audio transcription to typed notes, summarizing documents by their contents, extracting information from a PDF and adding key details to a spreadsheet, and more.
Experience Apple Intelligence Within Third-Party Apps
Apple opened up access for any developer to tap into the on-device large language model at the core of Apple Intelligence, and many apps have already introduced new experiences for their users. For example, Streaks now intelligently suggests and automatically categorizes tasks in a user’s to-do list; CARROT Weather provides free, unlimited conversation around weather insights, all in the app’s signature tone; and Detail: AI Video Editor helps creatives by generating teleprompter scripts from outlines or existing text.
These experiences are available offline and protect user privacy, using AI inference that is free of cost to developers. The framework is tightly integrated into Swift and leverages capabilities like guided generation to seamlessly incorporate the model’s output into a developer’s app.
Even More Capabilities Across Apps Users Rely On Every Day
Additional Apple Intelligence features are available today:
• The most relevant actions in an email, website, note, or other content can be identified and automatically categorized in Reminders.
• Apple Wallet can identify and summarize order tracking details from emails sent from merchants or delivery carriers. This works across all of a user’s orders, giving them the ability to see their full order details, progress notifications, and more, all in one place.
• Users can create a poll for anything in Messages, and with Apple Intelligence, Messages can detect when a poll might come in handy and suggest one. In addition, Backgrounds in the Messages app lets a user personalize their chats with stunning designs, and they can create unique backgrounds that fit their conversation with Image Playground.
An Extraordinary Step Forward for Privacy in AI
Designed to protect users’ privacy at every step, many Apple Intelligence models run entirely on device. For more complex requests, Private Cloud Compute extends the privacy and security of iPhone into the cloud to unlock even more intelligence so a user’s data is never stored or shared with Apple; it is used only to fulfill their request. Independent experts can inspect the code that runs on Apple silicon servers to continuously verify this privacy promise, and are already doing so. This is a breakthrough for privacy in AI.
MacDailyNews Note: These features are available now as a free software update with iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26, and visionOS 26. Apple Intelligence is available in beta with support for these languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Chinese (simplified), Japanese, and Korean. Some features may not be available in all regions or languages. For feature and language availability and system requirements, see support.apple.com/en-us/121115.
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