When Apple announced a great review of the iPhone camera application in iOS 26 in June, I was very happy. The current application in iOS 18 is a confusing disaster, so a redesign was very late, and recently I have been promoting the new camera application in the IOS 26 public beta.
As a former editor of Techradar cameras, I have experienced more than my fair part of annoying interfaces. And although Apple’s current camera application is far from being the worst offender, it feels like my garden shed, with several years of combined disorder without any real organization attempt.
Well, the good news is that Apple definitely put on the sleeves and attacked this redesign with taste. The application of the camera looks very different, so much that you will initially wonder where everything is. In general, I would call it a success so far, but with some reservations …
The tastes
1. Clean minimalism
First, the good news: the new camera application in iOS 26 is much cleaner and simpler than the previous one in iOS 18.
Now there are fewer buttons to accidentally press and the consistency of the liquid glass redesign makes everything feel more cohesive and less confusing.
To help reduce accidental taps, Apple has opened more space around the shutter button. Fortunately, the shutter still admits its usual shortcuts: keep your right and slide to the right to shoot videos, or hold and slide to the left for the gust mode. Curious fact: Did you know that the latter is called Quicktake, after Apple’s forgotten digital camera?
But perhaps the greatest improvement on the application of ancient camera are the new liquid glass menus …
My less favorite feature of the current camera application is its camera control menu. That is the one you open by playing the confusing direct access arrow at the top of the screen, or sliding anywhere in the viewfinder.
Fortunately, Apple has given you a complete review. Gone was the small horizontal row of hieroglyphs for characteristics such as photographic styles and night mode.
Now, when sliding from the bottom of the screen, it obtains a much clearer grid of options (housed inside liquid glass, naturally) with labels for each one. It is much better.
Unfortunately, the other great minimalist change, simple photo and video eyelashes, is a little less successful, but more about that in dislikes …
I tend to take more photos and than the video on my iPhone, but the violent video configuration menu has always frustrated me in the application of the iOS camera.
Fortunately, it has now been solved in iOS 26. Instead of having to touch the resolution or frame rate several times to move through the options, it now obtains the improved liquid glass panel up.
As in photo mode, you can slide up to access separate video options (flash, exposure and mode of action), which are now easier to understand a look at. Video experience is still very simple in general compared to the application of Apple’s final camera, but that makes sense for an experience of aiming and shooting.
The dislikes
1. The new navigation bar
In theory, I love the simplicity of the new navigation bar at the bottom of the application of the iOS 26 Chamber. Start with only video visits and visible photos. To reveal the other modes: Timelapse, Slo-Mo, Cinematic, Portrait and Pano, to name them all, simply slide to the left or the right.
But a couple of Niggles have given him a little learning curve. First, the default displacement configuration sees both liquid glass and the navigation bar behind it moving simultaneously, which is a bit disorient. It also makes it difficult to see the options under your 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 lever for ‘Classic Switching’. This means that it behaves more like the anterior chamber application, where the wheel is directly sliding, while the lever remains central.
With luck, this reaches the final version of the camera application. Initially it also seemed difficult for me to see the navigation bar options under the thumb, but then I discovered that it can still move through them sliding the screen. While minimalism is an improvement in general, I think some will initially be baffled and find it more complicated to choose some of the photo and video modes.
2. The lack of a professional way
I have expected to see that a professional camera mode arrives in iPhones for some years, but iOS 26 has firmly gone in the other direction. Does that potentially open the door for an equivalent of photos of the Apple Final Final Final Chamber application for the video? Maybe, but there are no signs of one of those.
To be fair, some of the best camera applications such as Haluro, ProCamera and Camera Dark are filled with greater than that void, and Apple may be careful with the sherlocking, which is when Apple kills a popular application in developing functionality in its own software.
But if we have a simple liquid glass lever for video and photo, why can’t there be one for basic and professional photos modes? That would be much easier than changing applications for something like the manual approach, and the iPhone would make an even better rival to the best compact cameras.
That still does not seem likely, so for now the best alternative is to configure the application of your iPhone camera with some of the useful tools hidden in the configuration menu. Usually, I turn on the grid and the level, I choose Apple Poraw in the formats section and I will also preserve the configuration to turn on the camera mode and the exposure adjustment so that my iPhone behaves more like a camera.
But to get more adjustments, see my guide on how to configure your iPhone 16 (or previous model) to take excellent photos.
