iOS 26 Lets You Fix a Broken iPhone Without a Mac or PC
Apple's quietly rolling out something pretty handy in iOS 26 – you won't need to scramble for a Mac or PC when your iPhone decides to have a meltdown.
Apple has included a new Recovery Assistant feature into the first iOS 26 beta, though they only bothered mentioning it properly in the second beta's release notes. Basically, if your iPhone gets stuck during startup, it'll automatically drop into Recovery mode and offer to fix itself with help from whatever other Apple device you've got lying around.
The whole thing works by letting you use an iPad (or presumably another iPhone) to download and push a fresh iOS installation to your broken device. No more hunting for that dusty MacBook or firing up iTunes on your Windows machine – just grab another Apple gadget and you're sorted.
It's actually building on some recovery tricks that started with the iPhone 16 last year, so Apple's clearly been thinking about this device-to-device approach for a while. It makes sense if you think about it – most people probably have multiple Apple devices these days, but not everyone keeps a computer handy.
iOS 26 is currently in developer beta, with a public beta expected in July, followed by a general public release in the fall – just in time for the launch of Apple's new iPhone 17 lineup.
Popular Stories
Apple is planning to launch new MacBook Pro models as soon as early March, but if you can, this is one generation you should skip because there's something much better in the works.
We're waiting on 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, with few changes other than the processor upgrade. There won't be any tweaks to the design or the display, but later this...
Wednesday February 11, 2026 10:07 am PST by
Juli CloverApple today released iOS 26.3 and iPadOS 26.3, the latest updates to the iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 operating systems that came out in September. The new software comes almost two months after Apple released iOS 26.2 and iPadOS 26.2.
The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to Settings > General > Software Update.
According to Apple's release notes, ...
It has been a slow start to 2026 for Apple product launches, with only a new AirTag and a special Apple Watch band released so far. We are still waiting for MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, the iPhone 17e, a lower-cost MacBook with an iPhone chip, long-rumored updates to the Apple TV and HomePod mini, and much more.
Apple is expected to release/update the following products...
Apple plans to announce the iPhone 17e on Thursday, February 19, according to Macwelt, the German equivalent of Macworld.
The report said the iPhone 17e will be announced in a press release on the Apple Newsroom website, so do not expect an event for this device specifically.
The iPhone 17e will be a spec-bumped successor to the iPhone 16e. Rumors claim the device will have four key...
Apple acquired Canadian graph database company Kuzu last year, it has emerged.
The acquisition, spotted by AppleInsider, was completed in October 2025 for an undisclosed sum. The company's website was subsequently taken down and its Github repository was archived, as is commonplace for Apple acquisitions.
Kuzu was "an embedded graph database built for query speed, scalability, and easy of ...
