Apple releases iOS 26.3 with updates that mainly benefit non-Apple devices

Source: Ars Technica

Other additions, and other OSes

Another iOS 26.3 update is also aimed at interoperability, though it may only apply to iPhones covered by European Union regulations. A feature called notification forwarding will send your iPhone’s notifications to third‑party accessories, including Google’s Android‑based Wear OS smartwatches. Once the setting is enabled, users can decide which apps can forward notifications to the third‑party device, similar to how Apple Watch notifications work.

In current betas, Apple allows notifications to be forwarded to only one device at a time, and forwarding notifications to a third‑party device means you can’t send them to an Apple Watch.

Both iOS 26.3 and iPadOS 26.3 are introducing a feature for some newer devices with Apple’s in‑house C1 and C1X modems: a “limit precise location” toggle that Apple says “enhances your location privacy by reducing the precision of location data available to cellular networks.”

• Currently only available on a handful of devices and even fewer carriers.
• In the US, Boost Mobile is the only carrier offering it.
• Supported devices: iPhone Air, iPhone 16e, or the M5 iPad Pro.
• Not supported on iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, or older phones with Qualcomm or Intel modems.

Apple has also updated all of its other major operating systems today. macOS 26.3, iPadOS 26.3, watchOS 26.3, tvOS 26.3, visionOS 26.3, and version 26.3 of the HomePod software are all quieter updates focused on bug fixes and performance improvements. Beta testers have found early evidence of support for the M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips, pointing to pending refreshes for some higher‑end Macs, but that doesn’t add much beyond what we already knew from Ars Technica.

The 26.3 updates are mostly sleepy, but the upcoming 26.4 releases may be a bigger deal. They are said to be the first to include Apple’s “more intelligent Siri,” a feature initially promised as part of the first wave of Apple Intelligence updates in iOS 18 but delayed after it failed to meet Apple’s quality standards.

Apple and Google jointly announced in January that the new Siri would be powered by Google’s Gemini language models rather than OpenAI’s ChatGPT or other competing models. As with other Apple Intelligence features, we’d expect the new Siri to be available to testers via Apple’s developer and public beta programs before being released to all devices.