Apple has released the fourth developer betas of iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26 and its other next-generation software updates today. And along with their other changes and fixes, the new builds are bringing back Apple Intelligence notification summaries for news apps.
Apple disabled news notification summaries as part of the iOS 18.3 update in January. Incorrect summaries circulating on social media prompted news organizations to complain to Apple, particularly after one summary said that Luigi Mangione, alleged murderer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had died by suicide (he had not and has not).
Upon installing the new update, users of Apple Intelligence-compatible devices will be asked to enable or disable three broad categories of notifications: those for "News & Entertainment" apps, for "Communication & Social" apps, and for all other apps. The operating systems will list sample apps based on what you currently have installed on your device.
All Apple Intelligence notification summaries continue to be listed as "beta," but Apple's main change here is a big red disclaimer when you enable News & Entertainment notification summaries, pointing out that "summarization may change the meaning of the original headlines." The notifications also get a special "summarized by Apple Intelligence" caption to further distinguish them from regular, unadulterated notifications.
Apple Intelligence will also reportedly see under-the-hood improvements in the new updates, relative to the first-generation versions in iOS 18. Apple executives have talked about underlying architectural improvements that will allow it to finally roll out a new version of Siri, for example, and notification summaries should also benefit (when contacted by Ars for comment, Apple wouldn't share more specific information about exactly what has been changed or improved).
In any case, the disclaimer makes it clear that Apple's fix for the problem involves warning users to expect incorrect summaries and allowing them to turn news summaries off, rather than guaranteeing that summaries will always be correct.
Other changes that Apple has made to distinguish summarized notifications from regular ones should remain in effect in the new OS versions: Summaries will get italicized text and a small icon denoting that you're looking at summaries rather than the original notifications, and users can tap a stack of summarized notifications to see all of the originals.
Apple announced back in June that the first public betas of the new operating systems would be available in July. With only around a week and a half left in the month, it's highly likely that the first public beta will be similar to the developer beta build released today. The updates will be released to the general public sometime this fall—usually in September or October if Apple adheres to its usual timeline.
Splitgate 2 goes back to beta after meh debut and dev layoffs