- The first public beta of iOS 26.3 is now available
- Provides an easier way to switch to an Android phone
- It also includes new weather backgrounds and a frame for another feature.
Less than a week after the release of iOS 26.2, the first public beta of iOS 26.3 is now available, and while it doesn’t offer as many features as the previous update, there are still some potentially big changes.
Probably the largest, discovered by MacRumors and others: it is a tool that makes it easy to transfer from iOS to Android.
It allows you to transfer content such as photos, messages, notes, apps, passwords and your phone number by simply touching your iPhone to an Android device. This is done wirelessly, without the need for separate applications. However, health data and secure items, such as locked notes, are not transferred.
This isn’t a one-way street though, as Google is rolling out a similar feature that makes switching from Android to iPhone easier, so it should be a win-win.
Weather backgrounds and message forwarding.
Additionally, this iOS 26.3 beta also includes changes to the wallpaper gallery.
Now the ‘Weather and Astronomy’ section is split into two sections, one for ‘Weather’ and one for ‘Astronomy’. This part of the time also got new wallpapers.
Finally, as it was discovered 9to5MacThis beta version also includes a message forwarding interface to allow third-party devices to access your messages.
This change specifically applies to EU users, as new rules require this functionality to be enabled so that third-party smartwatches work better with iPhones.
The feature isn’t fully available yet, but in the UI visible in this beta, we can see that you can only forward notifications to one paired accessory at a time, and that notifications won’t appear on a paired Apple Watch if notification forwarding is enabled.
That’s all we’ve found in this beta so far, but there may be more features to discover. But usually the betas that Apple releases this time of year are pretty light, maybe because the holidays are coming up and you don’t want to deal with too many bugs.
This timing also means we probably won’t see the next iOS 26.3 beta, or final version, until early next year.
