26.5 is not a major functional update, as the new generation of Siri will most likely not be presented until June at the World Wide Developers Conference. Instead, you will find a maintenance update with minor functional adjustments. Most likely, Apple is planning the release for May – there will certainly be one or two more betas and release candidates by then.
Known innovations in 26.5
Users in the USA are receiving an “improvement” that hardly anyone wanted: advertising in Apple’s maps app. The company has laid the foundations for this with the new “Apple Business” platform, and the Maps Ads will be launched in the coming weeks.
It remains unknown whether end-to-end encryption of RCS messages will actually be part of System 26.5 – Apple has been testing the change since the betas of 26.4. Apple is also continuing to test “Notification Forwarding” in order to send notifications directly to third-party hardware (e.g. smartwatches) – but only in the EU, where the change must take place for legal reasons.
The current betas
Finally, as always, the well-known list of currently available beta versions. As usual with a previous beta, the letter at the end is still a long way from “a”. Apple always uses this to indicate how far advanced they are in the development cycle. This time it started with “g” and “h” (watchOS), whereas in the second beta it looked more inconsistent – iOS even went from “g” to “h”, while macOS received a “d”. This is what it currently looks like in the developer area:
| system | Build number | Published |
| macOS 26.5 Beta 3 | 25F5058e | April 20, 2026 |
| iOS 26.5 Beta 3 | 23F5059e | April 20, 2026 |
| iPadOS 26.5 Beta 3 | 23F5059e | April 20, 2026 |
| watchOS 26.5 Beta 3 | 23T5558e | April 20, 2026 |
| tvOS 26.5 Beta 3 | 23L5460d | April 20, 2026 |
| visionOS 26.5 Beta 3 | 23O5458e | April 20, 2026 |