When Apple announced a major overhaul of the iPhone’s Camera app in iOS 26 back in June, I was actually very happy. The current app in iOS 18 is a confusing mess, so a redesign was long too late and I recently tested the new camera app in iOS 26 Public Beta.
As Techradar’s former camera editor, I have experienced more than my reasonable proportion of annoying interfaces. And although Apple’s current camera app is far from the worst offender, it feels a lot like my garden shed -with several years of root combined without real attempt at the organization.
Well, the good news is that Apple definitely rolled up its sleeves and attacked this redesign with relish. The camera app looks very different, so much so that you will initially wonder where it is smoking. In general, I would call it a success so far, but with a few reservations …
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1. The pure minimalism
First, the good news – the new camera app in iOS 26 is much cleaner and simpler than the old one in iOS 18.
There are now fewer buttons to accidentally press, and the consistency of the liquid glass nesting design makes everything feel more coherent and less confusing.
To help reduce unintended taps, Apple has opened more space around the shutter button. Fortunately, the shutter still supports his usual shortcuts – hold and iron to the right to shoot video, or hold and push left to Burst mode. Fun Fact: Did you know that the latter is called Quicktake, after Apple’s forgotten digital camera?
But perhaps the biggest improvement over the old camera -app is the new floating glass menus …
My least preferred feature of the current camera app is its camera control menu. It is the one you open by pressing the confusing shortcut game at the top of the screen, or by pushing up anywhere in the viewfinder.
Fortunately, Apple has given this a complete overhaul. Away is the small horizontal series of hieroglyphics for features such as photographic styles and night mode.
Now, when you iron up from the bottom of the screen to reveal a much clearer grille of settings (the house inside liquid glass, natural), with labels for each. It is simply much better.
Unfortunately, the other big minimalist change – the simple photo and video tabs – is a little less successful, but more about it in the not -lide …
I tend to record more photos than video on my iPhone, but I’ve always been frustrated by the Fiddly Video Settings menu in iOS camera app.
Fortunately, it is now corrected in iOS 26. Instead of having to press the resolution or image velocity several times to roll through different options, you now get the improved liquid glass panel above.
Just like in photo mode, you can iron up to access separate video settings (flash, exposure and action mode), which is now easier to understand with a moment. The video experience is still straightforward overall compared to Apple’s final cut camera app, but that makes sense for a point-and-shoot experience.
They don’t like
1. The new NAV -BAR
In theory, I love the simplicity of the new navigation bar at the bottom of the iOS 26 camera app. It starts with just visible video and photo settings. To reveal the other states timelapse, SLO-MO, cinematic, portrait and Pano, to name them all-shell you just push left or right.
But a few niggles have given it a bit of a learning curve. First, the default scroll setting sees both the floating glass change and the navigation bar behind it moves simultaneously, which is a bit disorienting. It also makes it difficult to see the settings under the thumb.
Fortunately, in recent betas, Apple has added a new option in the camera settings in a section called Mode Switching, where you will find a tilted for ‘classic fashion -switching’. This causes it to behave more like the previous camera app, where you directly push the wheel underneath while the shift remains central.
Hopefully this will come to the final version of the camera app. I also originally found it difficult to see the settings for the navigation bar during my thumb, but then discovered that you can still roll through them by pushing the screen instead. While minimalism is generally an improvement, I think some originally will be flummoxed and think it is more difficult to choose some of photo and video states.
2. The lack of a pro mode
I have hoped to see a pro -camera state come to iPhones for a few years now, but iOS 26 has been stuck in the other direction. Does it potentially open the door to a photo -equivalent of Apple’s free final clip camera -app for video? Maybe, but there is no sign of one of them either.
To be righteous, some of the best camera apps such as Halid, Procamer and Camera Obscura fill more than sufficient this hole, and Apple may be on duty to sherlocking them, which is when Apple kills a popular app by building the functionality of its own software.
But if we have a simple floating glass change for video and photo, why can’t there be one for basic and pro photo states? It would be much easier than switching apps to something like manual focus, and would make iPhone an even better rival for the best compact cameras.
It still doesn’t look likely, so so far, the best alternative is to configure your iPhone camera -app with some of the useful tools hidden in the Settings menu. I typically turn on the grid and level, select Apple Proraw in the formats section and then go to preserve settings to activate camera mode and exposure adjustment, causing my iPhone to behave more like a camera.
But for multiple adjustments, you can check out my guide on how to set up your iPhone 16 (or older model) to take amazing photos.
