Apple Just Gave an Essential iPhone App a Clever New Ability

When Apple rolls out iOS 26 in just over two months, it’s going to overhaul the look of your iPhone, primarily thanks to a “Liquid Glass” color scheme, as well as deliver quite a few cool new features to some of your most-used apps, such as Phone, Messages and Photos.

FaceTime is gaining some new abilities, too. The highlight is Live Translation, which harnesses Apple Intelligence so that you can have a call with somebody speaking a different language. But that’s not all.

A Community Safety feature

Apple

During its WWDC presentation in June, Apple announced that FaceTime is gaining a new safety feature for child accounts, designed to block nudity. Specifically, when nudity is detected — or somebody on the call starts undressing — the audio and video of the FaceTime call will freeze.

However, 9to5Mac has reported that those with the iOS 26 Developer Beta have discovered that this safety feature isn’t just for child accounts. It’ll affect adults, too.

When the FaceTime call detects any nudity, this warning message appears:

“Audio and video are paused because you may be showing something sensitive. If you feel uncomfortable, you should end the call.”

The message then gives you the option to end or resume the call.

As the 9to5Mac article notes, it’s not yet certain whether this is a glitch or if it will become a community safety feature for both adults and children.

It’s also worth noting that this feature is believed to use on-device detection and therefore none of the FaceTime call info will sent to the cloud. Essentially, Apple won’t be able to see anything that happened on the call.

When’s it coming?

iOS 26 will roll out to compatible iPhones this fall, likely early September, after Apple announces the iPhone 17 lineup.

At the time of writing, it’s unclear whether this Community Safety feature will work on all compatible iPhones or only on those that support Apple Intelligence. We’re guessing it’s the latter.

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