iPadOS 26 and macOS Tahoe Include Phone App With Call Screening, Hold Assist and More

[jbattan]

This is wonderful news. I have wanted to get my voicemail on my iPad for years, since I use it so much more than my iPhone.

 

[Yigit]

Define privacy nowadays. Apple has the mouth full of that word but do we know what apps are doing in the background and what data gets sent to which server and country?

A friend of mine just bought a ubiquity router which has tons of features apparently and he said the amount of data that goes to Chinese servers is insane. And yes, also from his business iPhone not just from his Android devices.

I suggest your friend contact Macrumors editors with his findings, they'd definitely love to cover it as a huge scandal.

Theories aside I take the answer as Google doesn't claim to do it on-device nor privately?

Btw if other platforms had this already, anyone knows how is the call center reactions to Hold Assist, do they really hang up lol?

 

[mxrider88]

I suggest your friend contact Macrumors editors with his findings, they'd definitely love to cover it as a huge scandal.

Theories aside I take the answer as Google doesn't claim to do it on-device nor privately?

Btw if other platforms had this already, anyone knows how is the call center reactions to Hold Assist, do they really hang up lol?

I assume the data is sent by apps, not by the OS itself. I should have added this for context.

MacRumors would never say anything bad about Apple anyway, no point contacting them!

 

[jafd]

• Live Translation - Live Translation automatically provides translations when you're talking to someone that speaks another language. They'll hear an AI translation of you, and you'll hear an AI translation of them.

Previously:

Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.

 

[subjonas]

The google pixel had this for years though. Nothing new here. They just follow

Who cares? Honestly why does that matter to anyone?

 

[svish]

Great to see this. Hope to see live translation getting support for more languages soon.

 

[MacFarmer]

FINALLY!!! Preview, Journal AND the Phone app! FREAKIN’ FINALLY!!!

preview app was on MacOS for as long as I remember. It is not new

 

[Wagbh]

Now we need to establish if this will require A18 or higher devices or if this will be made available for any iPhones able to run iOS26...

 

[Zdigital2015]

preview app was on MacOS for as long as I remember. It is not new

Preview on iOS and iPadOS. Yes, Preview has been around forever, but it took 18 years to get it on the phone and 15 to get it on the iPad, which is ridiculous.

 

[TruthAboveAllElse]

I assume the data is sent by apps, not by the OS itself. I should have added this for context.

MacRumors would never say anything bad about Apple anyway, no point contacting them!

MacRumors does say negative things about Apple all the time.

 

[Weaselboy]

Call screen is probably my favorite new feature, not because it's a great feature, but because the amount of scam calls I get is beyond ridiculous.

Same here... I have a VTech landline phone that has a similar feature and it has stopped 100% of the spam calls. So I have high hopes this feature will do the same on the iPhone.

 

[Seoras]

Why limit translations (especially if on device and no cloud/network needed) to just voice calls and text messages? What about App's that are written in only one language having their text, optionally, translated on the fly for users to their own language? As a developer, as a lone developer, supporting multiple languages is a big time consuming task. I get requests for other languages but having tried supporting one other (Japanese) I know how much off an overhead it creates and the returns for that aren't always obvious.

 

[Demon Seed]

According to Apple the Phone app for cellular has not been implemented as of yet, but will run indecently of iPhone.

 

[MakaniKai]

According to Apple the Phone app for cellular has not been implemented as of yet, but will run indecently of iPhone.

I hope that’s true but I also don’t really trust support to know all these new things very well.

 

[Boeingfan]

So I tried Hold Assist just now whilst waiting in a queue, and there is a caveat with this feature I wasn't expecting. It only listens for someone talking in order for it to alert you to pick up, and so many queues these days have advertising during hold using voice, which means you'll get prompted to pick up each time an ad plays.

However, I persisted, and when the lady eventually grabbed my call in the queue, my phone prompted me with a transcript of her message, which worked beautifully.

 

[Boeingfan]

According to Apple the Phone app for cellular has not been implemented as of yet, but will run indecently of iPhone.

I'm looking forward to it running 'indecently' on my iPhone 😄

 

[brilliantthings]

I have an iPhone 13 mini which won’t support Hold Assist. I also have an iPad Pro which will support Hold Assist. With both devices on OS versions 26.x will I be able to use Hold Assist on my iPad?