iOS 26 Developer Beta 7
Apple today provided developers with the seventh betas of iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 for testing purposes, with the updates coming a week after Apple seeded the sixth betas.
The release notes are still titled “beta 6” and don’t call out any changes since beta 5.
The seventh developer betas of iOS 26 and watchOS 26 include a redesigned Blood Oxygen feature on Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra 2 models sold in the U.S. since mid-January 2024.
Previously:
Update (2025-08-19): Ezekiel Elin:
It is not generally correct that the Blood Oxygen change is only Series 9/10 and Ultra 2.
My series 8 watch didn’t have it either and today’s change re-enabled it.
Seems like every news outlet is completely ignoring the fact that Series 8 watches continue to be sold/furnished to customers as new even now.
iOS 26 beta 7 adds an additional Adaptive Power Notifications toggle in the Settings app, under Battery → Power Mode. This setting allows you to choose whether you receive push notifications each time Adaptive Power mode kicks in.
I feel as lost now with beta 7 as I did with the WWDC seeds; system components just aren’t coming together and I can’t afford to lose a week each time waiting for the next build. This design language needs at least another six months in the oven, with third party developer testing and collaboration, because I don’t think it’s ready to meet the challenge of a million third party apps. Alan Dye’s team is about to have all their theories tested, in public, on a billion devices
Not looking good on the radar front in beta 7, and I’m starting to see bug reports, and blockers, being punted ‘to a future OS release’ (read 26.1 and beyond). September is starting to feel like a lost cause.
I was surprised to find this latest beta having new animations even when you set the motion to off in the accessibility settings. There’s an shutter open effect now when you open an app. It makes it slow which is what I wanted to avoid with this setting.
iOS beta 7 still has so many little animation bugs that I’m needing to scale back my redesign.
Overcast’s adoption of Liquid Glass for 26.0 is going to be a small set of incremental changes, not a “redesign”, really.
Update (2025-08-20): Greg Pierce:
August 18th and APIs are still changing (looking at you
AssetInventory)
Imagine that you’re a developer at a company that has had a certain shade of red as a part of their branding for the past 134 years. It’s a red that’s known worldwide.
You pop that color into your iOS app and quickly realize two things:
- The red you specified is not the red that’s displayed.
- Your brand color is secondary to the chrome that Apple has imposed.
Marketing blows a gasket so you start implementing your own controls: without accessibility, device traits, etc.
If the iOS 26 install intro remains in the final build, yikes. It is a vestibular accessibility disaster. Yes, you can skip it, but you’ll already have been ‘zapped’ by that point. And, yes, I’m dizzy right now. And not very happy about it.
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Did they really need to release a beta 6 last week? It's one thing to do developer betas every two weeks, but now weekly?
Speaking for consumers, it's gotten worse IMHO over the last year with dot or dot-dot releases monthly. I cannot imagine what it's like working for this company. Jeez....
