Apple's iOS 26 release date is coming up: Check to see if your iPhone is compatible for the update

We're only a few days away Apple's iPhone 17 event, which the company has dubbed "awe dropping" and scheduled for Tuesday, September 9. If all goes as expected, we should get to download iOS 26 and iPad 26 about a week later.

Coming with those OS updates are substantial updates to your iPhone and iPad's operating systems. You may have already heard about "Liquid Glass," which (intentional or not) is sort of like Apple's take on the old Windows Vista design language. That's the most notable change, but we spent two weeks test-driving many of the other features included in the update — you can check out our hands-on iOS 26 preview for more impressions, or you can try the software out yourself by downloading and installing the latest public beta. The public beta is a more stable iteration of the update than the developer version ...