Apple Touts Faster Core Software Features Across Devices

[MacRumors]

Apple at WWDC 2026 today said it has made several responsiveness improvements across its software ecosystem, speeding up system animations, app launching, and much more.

Apple says that launching iPhone and iPad apps is up to 30 percent faster across devices, while new photos taken on iPhone appear in iCloud Photos up to 70 percent faster.

Elsewhere, sharing files between devices over AirDrop is now up to 80 percent faster and transfers in the Files app are up to 50 percent faster. There's also a new CPU scheduler manager that prioritizes jobs and ensures that the right work is executed on time.

Apple also says that network transitions on its mobile devices have been improved, so that switching between cellular data and Wi-Fi when you're out and about feels a lot more seamless.

Article Link: Apple Touts Faster Core Software Features Across Devices

 

[vertsix]

This might be the best Apple platform feature in the past 10 years.

Good job Apple and thanks for listening!

 

[Line_Noise]

Please let one of them be SMB performance.

 

[NicosAccount]

Thats really cool and im looking forward to this update but wondering why faster airdrop is the main one in bold lol. Is everybody airdropping things left and right? I never use it, just text people what i wanna send em haha

 

[TwoBytes]

I wonder how much of this speed is at the cost of even worse battery life..

 

[jz0309]

Faster is better, though I've not had complaints in the past, I'll take it

 

[Frantisekj]

I must admit Apple really surprised me. Even many things presented at beginning was as selling past failures as new achievements I must admit that they really listened to people bring really needed refinement.
Speed and efficiency, support from iPhone 11 and Child account showing they have been really working and I have to apology them for some bad words I sent their way 😆

 

[cigz]

I wonder how much of this speed is at the cost of even worse battery life..

Exactly, they didn't say anything about improving battery life on iOS and MacOS, it's allegedly just improved on watchos

 

[mcbumbersnazzle]

Imagine if this is another iOS 9 where they promised refinement and everything ended up worse lmao

 

[System603]

Thats really cool and im looking forward to this update but wondering why faster airdrop is the main one in bold lol. Is everybody airdropping things left and right? I never use it, just text people what i wanna send em haha

Most often I airdrop to myself as Photos or iCloud file sync takes ages to upload and even longer to propagate between my own devices.

I need the photo I took or the file I edited now. Not in a minute, much less after few minutes or in extreme cases even hours (large files, videos).

 

[hybrid_x]

Is this because they're finally cutting out the last of the Intel code from the OS?

 

[RealE]

Thats really cool and im looking forward to this update but wondering why faster airdrop is the main one in bold lol. Is everybody airdropping things left and right? I never use it, just text people what i wanna send em haha

The bolded item changed as they were named during the presentation. This screenshot just happens to be of when they mentioned AirDrop.

 

[yoheywut]

Insane that Apple releases an update with stability and speed as one of the core focuses, along with more customization around liquid glass, and people are lauding it as boring.

 

[JamesMcFlyJR]

I wonder how much of these speed improvements are just things being cleaned up after OS 26? i specifically didnt update to macOS 26 due to how much slower everything was. would be nice to see if macOS 27 is similar in performance to macOS 15 sequoia. M1 Pro here

 

[eilavid]

Please let one of them be SMB performance.

"faster network file browsing" is on the features list

 

[bluecoast]

I wonder how much of this speed is at the cost of even worse battery life..

Yeah they didn't make any claims about battery life.

I never thought that my iPhone 16e was slow under 26 - but its battery life became appalling.

 

[Nyx1]

This is the best feature after that going downhill to slop AI

 

[Aichon]

Please let one of them be SMB performance.

Absolutely this. What a nightmare it is to deal with.

And to those concerned with battery life, the amount of work you're doing for most of these tasks is fixed. So, if you're getting a performance benefit it's usually not because the OS is working harder: it's usually because it's either working smarter (e.g. more efficient approaches) or changing when the work is done (i.e. pulling work forward, which generally doesn't impact battery life since it's still the same amount of work).

There are exceptions, of course (e.g. increasing a poll rate would improve performance at the cost of battery life, though in most cases polling should just be replaced with a pub/sub approach or similar, which gets you even better performance and improved battery life), but broadly speaking, most performance gains in software should be either net-neutral or net-positive for battery life these days.

 

[svish]

Faster AirDrop will be fantastic. Overall very happy to see the overall speed improvements.

 

[Slix]

This is singlehandedly the thing I have wanted for a couple years. Here's hoping it's actually what they describe and things are better. I'm still on Sequioa and iOS 18 so I will be waiting a bit to update again.

 

[NT1440]

I’ll be happy if my “latest episodes” view in the Podcast app doesn’t take 20+ seconds to populate…

 

[tipoo]

Q: Why were file transfers on iPad 5x slower than on mac in the first place?

 

[tipoo]

I’ll be happy if my “latest episodes” view in the Podcast app doesn’t take 20+ seconds to populate…

Yeah, this is something that just feels like a software problem over a hardware problem and yet has been with us for 14 years, one of those things I really hope someone at apple managed to touch for this speed release.

 

[tennisproha]

Would've liked to see bigger focus on bug fixes across platforms instead of just mentioning it in passing

 

[mentaluproar]

literally the only good thing from this WWDC. The rest of this was nothing. What market research told apple people want MORE AI?