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Daily Happiness

1. I slipped and fell during my walk this evening, but thankfully I just got my clothes wet and skinned my knee, nothing serious. I was walking down a hill and could see that someone had been watering and got it all over the sidewalk, but there weren't any puddles I didn't anticipate there being any issue walking through it, but some of the sidewalk squares were completely smooth rather than rough as they usually are, so there was no grip to them and I slid and fell and scraped one knee. It looked bad but when I got home to clean it up, it turned out most of the mess was dirt and there was only a little scraping and bleeding. Could have been a lot worse! Thankfully I had my phone with me and could have called Carla to pick me up if I hadn't been able to walk, but I made it home on my own.

2. I had several meetings today, which didn't leave a lot of time for actual work, but I did finish another of the tasks I've been assigned. I'm making progress!

3. Jasper's so casual.

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music

Music Monday: Iris by Goo Goo Dolls

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Dear ITPE Creator Letter

First, thanks so much for making me a gift! I'll love whatever you want to make, but here are a few general guidelines about things I prefer and those I'd rather not receive.

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Current Mood: amused

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creator: saintofcrowns

Week 1 - Setup & Research

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daily

Daily Check-in

This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Monday, June September 15, to midnight on Tuesday, September 16. (8pm Eastern Time).

Poll #33621 Daily Check-in

This poll is closed.
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 25

How are you doing?

I am OK.
13 (52.0%)

I am not OK, but don't need help right now.
12 (48.0%)

I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)

How many other humans live with you?

I am living single.
8 (32.0%)

One other person.
12 (48.0%)

More than one other person.
5 (20.0%)

Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.

Current Mood: pleased

Entry tags:

ficathon,
podfic

throws rice

After many delays, Just Married finally went live yesterday! And, wow, what a great exchange this was for me. I got three gifts: a Three/Delgado!Master story, a Twelve/Missy one, and a Harry du Bois/Kim Kitsuragi one (with artwork). All of which are great in different ways.

And on top of that, someone as their entry did a podfic of my Disco Elysium story from a previous round, "Do, Did, Will." Which I'd really been looking forward to hearing ever since they asked me for permission to do it some time ago. And they did a great job with it! I especially like the voice they do for Harry, which very much evokes the one I imagine for him in my own head. You know, it's happened several times now, but I don't think I will ever, ever stop getting a huge kick out of people podficcing my stuff. Partly because it's always such a flattering surprise that anybody wants to do it, but also because listening to the result always feels like encountering my own stuff from the outside for the first time. Like, it's this thing that's just out there in the world and I sort of have to actively remind myself that, hey, I did that, I made that story exist! Which is bizarre-feeling and fascinating and cool.

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(no subject)

Crossing fingers that someone nominates Monkey Island for Yuletide this year (not a shoo-in but isn't totally unthinkable and has happened before) and that someone actually fulfills a request for it (much less likely, unfortunately).

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第四年第二百五十天

部首
囗 part 3
困, sleepy/in trouble/to imprison; 围, to surround; 固, hard/solid ( pinyin )
https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?cdqrad=31

语法
接 vs 接到
https://www.chineseboost.com/grammar/jie1-jie1dao4-answer-receive/

词汇
愿望, desire; 志愿, to volunteer/to wish; 志愿者, a volunteer ( pinyin )
https://mandarinbean.com/new-hsk-3-word-list/

Guardian:
你已经被包围了, you are already surrounded
我们接到匿名举报提供了详尽确凿的证据, we received an anonymous phone call with solid evidence
我就帮你实现愿望, I'll help you make your dream come true

Me:
今晚我干不下去了，太困了。
你怎么一直不接我的电话？

Body Chemistry Sucks

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Thank you, lferion!

Belated but heartfelt thanks to

lferion for contributing paid account time to the community. Thank you, kind fairy godperson!

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daily: check in

Check In: Day 15

Hi all! Happy Monday!

How is writing going today? Any goals for this week?

Rebetika.

Posted by languagehat

https://languagehat.com/rebetika/

https://languagehat.com/?p=18268

I find it hard to believe I’ve never posted about rebetika, since not only do I love the music (when I was in Athens I sought out a dusty record store where I could buy some LPs I then had to lug back to New York) but the word itself is very interesting. For one thing, there’s no unanimity on how to spell it; Wikipedia has it under Rebetiko (“plural rebetika […], occasionally transliterated as rembetiko or rebetico), while the OED (entry from 2002) has it s.v. rebetika (sadly, it’s not in M-W or AHD under any spelling). Here’s the OED definition, which is quite discursive:

A style of Greek popular song, characterized by lyrics depicting urban and underworld themes, a passionate vocal style, and an ensemble accompaniment played esp. on stringed instruments such as the violin, bouzouki, etc.; (with plural agreement) the songs themselves. Also (in form rebetiko): a song in this style. Frequently attributive.

First recorded commercially in Turkey before the First World War (1914–18), rebetika is assumed to have long existed (under various other generic names) as an oral tradition in Mediterranean seaports and prisons. Following the Greco–Turkish war of 1919–22, the genre became associated with the numerous Anatolian refugees settling in Athens. Extensively recorded and performed in the 1920s and 1930s, notably by immigrants from Asia Minor, Piraeus bouzouki players, and Greek Americans, rebetika also became known in English as ‘Greek Blues’ or ‘Piraeus Blues’.

But it’s the etymology that makes it a must-post, and happily Martin Schwartz has sent me a recent article of his on the subject. First I’ll provide the OED version:

< modern Greek ρεμπέτικα, plural of ρεμπέτικο eastern-style song of urban low life, use as noun of neuter singular of ρεμπέτικος of vagabonds or rebels, probably < ρεμπέτης rebetis n. + ‑ικος ‑ic suffix.

Notes
On the further etymology, compare note at rebetis n.
The forms with ‑mb‑ arise from the influence of an idiosyncratic transliteration of the modern Greek (in which the sequence ‑μπ‑ normally represents b), originally in G. Holst Road to Rembetika (1975).

(I think of it as rembetika because I was introduced to it by that Gail Holst book, which I recommend.) Now to Martin’s “A rebetic roundup: people, songs, words, and whatnot” (published as ch. 27 of The SOAS Rebetiko Reader); I’ll quote some bits and urge you to visit the link for more:

Today the adjective “rebetika”, as used by the majority of Greeks, refers to urban Greek music of the earlier half of the 20th century, and is associated with lyrics reflecting lower class culture – drugs, thugs, drink, pimps, prisons, poverty, illness, alienation and thwarted love – although the wide range of the genre makes it describable as an urban popular music, with a déclassé aspect. Indeed, its songs, which are for the most part based on several fixed dance rhythms, played an important role in the Greater Athenian recording and nightclub scene from shortly after the 1922 Asia Minor Catastrophe well into the 1950s and to some extent later. The term “rebetika” has, to shifting degrees, been applied to two successive but overlapping chronological varieties. The first, from ca. 1923 to 1937, is characterised by musical styles, instruments, and vocal techniques continuing, or much influenced by, those of the Greeks of Turkey, chiefly of Smyrna and Constantinople, and including material of Turkish origin. The second, from the early 1930s into the 1950s, while thematically and choreographically related to the first, featured the bouzouki, an earthier singing style, and an increasingly Greco-European profile. […]

Although I am marginally a “rebetologist”, my central discipline is as an etymologist, historical linguistics being my chief academic activity. It is from this perspective, with the aid of some “rebetological” data, that I shall address the history of the terms rebétis and rebétiko / rebétika.

A preliminary notice: I use the transcription rebétika as representing the pronunciation used by most Greeks, as against the often encountered “rembetika”; in Greek spelling, μπ (mp) is necessary to indicate the sound /b/, and in this instance the μ (m) is silent, but wrongly present as a frequent transcription into Latin letters.

After dismissing some other theories (deriving it from alleged Pre-Modern Turkish rebet asker, Greek rébelos ‘a rebel,’ and Arabic ribaṭ), he continues:

The most fruitful direction for our linguistic quest is to proceed from Ancient Greek PEMB- (rhemb-, Mod. Gr. remv-) ‘to wander’, which gives re(m)b- (with-μπ-) in various Late and Modern Greek verbs and nouns referring to loafing, laziness, relaxed enjoyment, etc.; see Gauntlett 1982: p. 90, fn. 51. With the base rebet- itself is the word rebéta found in several literary attestations from 1871 onward as an argot term in Smyrna and Constantinople for ‘a lower-class neighborhood populated by criminals’ (from ‘unruly place’, as still used in 1895 by N. Georgiadis for the festivals [pane(gh)iria] in Silivri). It is interesting that when in 1918 the Constantinopolitan N. Sofron, writing sketches of everyday life in his city, took as a nom de plume Rebétos derived from rebéta in its older usage, and not from rebétis, which shows that the latter form was not yet common. For rebétis, the first occurrence (date unclear to me) seems to be in Nikolaos G. Politis’ serial ethnographic volumes called Paradoseis, in which a character named Giannis the Rebétis figures, although nothing informative is said of him, and, as we shall see, rebétis is not found again until 1923. […]

There remains the question of the newly emerged earliest literary occurrence of “rebetiko” as connected with this designation on the record labels, and the relationship of rebétis to both, which gets us back to our linguistic inquiry. Vlisidis’ material indeed disproves the idea that the term “rebetiko” on record labels was (as proposed by Panos Savvopoulos) just an invention on the part of the recording companies. As Vlisidis indicates, the record labels from 1912-1913 bearing the characterisation “rebétiko” drew on a word which was current at the time. However, Vlisidis’ further proposal, that the literary material which calls itself rebétiko/a was reflected by these discs is problematic. The underclass nature of the diction, as well as the thematics of the four poems which are called “rebétiko / rebétika”, differ dramatically from what we find for the two 1912/13 light love songs called “rebétiko” on the record labels, and also from the many subsequent recordings bearing that epithet on the label. […]

We now have enough material to offer a solution to the problem of the term rebétiko. A linguistic approach would also involve distinguishing between and then reconciling the various usages of what are in fact complexly related words, rebéta, rebétiko, and rebétis. As a mannerism first used literarily in 1912, rebétiko would be an adjectival invention, ‘pertaining to the rebéta’, i.e. ‘that which belongs to the underclass realm’. From popular magazines of the period (cf. Vlisidis), it would have been noticed by Greeks involved in the recording industry, who however took it to be derived from the verb re(m)bo etc. referring to rambles, indolent or relaxed enjoyment, the word thereby providing for the categorisation of discs a trendy-sounding designation of miscellaneous light songs, such as we find in “Aponia” and “Tiki Tiki Tak”. Toward the mid-1920s, however, with the emergence of rebétis for a member of a lower-class subculture, music pertaining to the latter world began to enter the miscellaneous industrial category, explaining the diverse and contradictory range of recordings labeled “rebétiko”.

This now calls for an account of the origin of rebétis. Politis’ obscure attestation of rebétis may reflect a temporary neologism based on one hand on rebéta (cf. Georgiadis’ 1918 rebétos) and on the other hand constituting a regular derivation with -étis from the verb root ré(m)b-, see Gauntlett 1982, pp. 90-91 for parallels; note however that such a derivation is not “undermined” by nouns with -étis yielding adjectives with -etikós vs. the accentuation of rebétiko, which precedes, and is NOT derived from rebétis. For the formation of the more conclusive 1923 attestation of rebétis by “Smyrnios”, one has, alongside a deverbal explanation of rebétis, the possibility of a “back-formation” from rebétiko ‘pertaining to the underclass realm’. Given the 1923 attestation of rebétis and its continuation by Markos in his 1933 “O Harmanis” [The drug-deprived one], Pikros’ 1925 mention of rebéta as in effect the feminine equivalent of rebétis seems suspicious; one would rather expect rebétisa (cf. ghóis [Anc. Gr. góēs] ‘sorcerer’: ghóisa ‘sorceress’ continuing the ancient fem. suffix -issa), which is found canonically in our songs. Given that rebétis itself was still only marginally attested, perhaps Pikros had misunderstood a phrase with the probably already obsolescent rebéta ‘lower-class milieu’, taking the latter as its female personification, or, in a context referring to a group of people, he misinterpreted rebétes as a plural of rebéta rather than of rebétis.

There’s much more (e.g., “It is possible that the suffixation of rebétis was supported by a traditional underclass word of the same semantic field, serétis ‘tough guy’, of Turkish origin”), but I will reluctantly stop quoting and send you to the link. I just want to add something about the difficult issue of nasal + consonant clusters and how to transliterate them. Peter Mackridge, in his excellent 1987 The Modern Greek Language (Amazon, Internet Archive), writes:

To begin with the combinations of nasal + consonant that existed in traditional demotic, some dialects always pronounced the nasal fully, others always omitted it completely, while others displayed a certain variety. Grammarians, on the other hand, have taught that these combinations should be pronounced with or without the nasal according to whether the nasal was present in an earlier version of the word […]. With the rise of literacy, however, speakers have usually treated every instance […] alike, that is, either always with or always without the nasal, according to each speaker’s idiolect. Furthermore, it cannot be expected that speakers will know the etymological origin of all the words they use.

Most scholars now seem to have settled on nasalless versions, but I confess it makes me uneasy, since I always think of the Greek script with its nasals. I also have to point out that my two bilingual dictionaries, D. N. Stavropoulos’s Oxford English-Greek Learner’s Dictionary and J. T. Pring’s Oxford Dictionary of Modern Greek, handle these words very differently; the former has ρεμπέτης ‘outcast, scamp, rebetis’ and ρεμπέτικος ‘of/from a rebetis,’ while the latter has only ρεμπέτικο ‘sort of popular song in oriental style.’ And as I look at those entries, I note the following word in each: Stavropoulos has ρεμπούπλικα ‘trilby, homburg, felt hat,’ whereas Pring has ρε(μ)πούμπλικα ‘trilby or homburg hat’ (Wiktionary has it as ρεπούμπλικα). Truly Greek is a land of contrasts.

https://languagehat.com/rebetika/

https://languagehat.com/?p=18268

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Gavilan's 2025 Wishlist

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AO3 Username: Gavilan
Does your account accept gifts? Yes

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Comment below to leave a gift for this wishlist! Gift comments can be anonymous or signed in. Comments are screened until reveals on 6 October (Reunion Festival).

All gifts must be posted in or linked in comments. If you like, you can post transformative works to the AO3 collection. If your gift doesn't meet AO3's terms of service (picspams, etc.) and is too big to fit in a comment, you can post to Googledocs, set the security to "anyone with the link", and link to the work in the wishlist comments. Other hosting (Tumblr, etc.) is also fine as long as the gift is only visible with a direct link. In any case, please leave a link to the gift in the comments here.

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How to Turn On Apple's New 'Wrist Flick' Gesture in watchOS 26

Posted by Michelle Ehrhardt

https://lifehacker.com/tech/how-to-turn-on-apples-new-wrist-flick-feature-in-watchos-26?utm_medium=RSS

In 2023, Apple introduced the Double Tap feature for Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2. This allows a user to perform common actions, like answering or starting a song, simply by quickly tapping their thumb and index finger together twice. It was an intuitive way to confirm when you wanted to do something on your watch without tapping a tiny touchscreen button, but what if you wanted to dismiss something? Now, with the release of watchOS 26, Wrist Flick is here to solve that problem.

Also available on Apple Watch Series 9 (and higher) as well as Apple Watch Ultra 2 (and higher), Wrist Flick is kind of like Double Tap’s evil twin. If you get a notification you don’t like, or a call you want to mute, now you can quickly twist your wrist to dismiss it, like you’re tossing it into a garbage bin.

To try it out, first install watchOS 26 on your Apple Watch. Using a paired iPhone with iOS 26 installed, open the Apple Watch app, navigate to General > Software Update, and start the upgrade to the new version of watchOS. Alternatively, you can simply ensure Automatic Updates are enabled, and so long as your iPhone has iOS 26, your watch will simply choose a time to update on its own while charging (likely overnight).

Then, once watchOS 26 is installed, put on your watch and navigate to Settings > Gestures. Toggle on Wrist Flick.

That’s it. You’ll simply need to wait for a notification or call to come in, or for a timer you want to silence to go off, and you’ll be able to turn it off with a quick flick of the wrist. It might take some practice, but essentially, you want to quickly rotate your wrist away from your body, as seen on this page on Apple’s website.

Used together with Double Tap, the goal is that you won’t need to fiddle with your watch’s touchscreen for most basic activities anymore, so you won’t have to interrupt your workout (or, if you’re like me, you’re leisurely sit on the subway) by tapping away at it. The only limitation is that, while Double Tap has some basic mapping functions that let you customize what exactly it does, Wrist Flick currently doesn’t offer that level of control, instead sticking to Apple’s default “dismissing” behavior. That means you won’t be able to use it to, say, go back one tile in your Smart Stack, like how you can set Double Tap to advance you by one tile. Here’s hoping Apple expands its functionality soon.

https://lifehacker.com/tech/how-to-turn-on-apples-new-wrist-flick-feature-in-watchos-26?utm_medium=RSS

Spotify Free Tier to Let Users Play the Songs They Want

Posted by Stephen Johnson

https://lifehacker.com/tech/spotify-free-tier-upgrades?utm_medium=RSS

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source.

Spotify is finally giving its free-tier customers a feature that’s been requested since the music streaming platform launched nearly 20 years ago: the ability to listen to any song they choose. That's right: The days of searching for a song, then hitting “skip” until it rolls around on a Spotify-generated playlist are over.

Free-tier users can choose songs in three ways: through the search function, by clicking on any song from the Spotify interface, or by clicking on a link shared by other users. Free-tier users can also listen to podcasts through Spotify, and create and listen to playlists too. Spotify's previous "six skips per hour" rule also appears to be no more.

There are still limitations to Spotify’s free accounts, of course. The most obvious is that you still have to listen to ads. Free users will also face a cap on how many minutes of music they can listen to on demand, won’t be able to queue tracks, and won’t be able to access Spotify’s “AI DJ” feature. (No great loss; trust me.)

They also won't have access to another new Spotify feature exclusive to paid accounts: lossless audio.

Premium Spotify customers to get lossless audio

"Premium" Spotify perks are improving too. The first, most important upgrade in the long-awaited launch of lossless audio on the service. Lossless audio (streaming files that are bit-for-bit copies of the source material) is rolling out to over 50 Spotify markets from now through October.

Premium users will also be able to send private messaging, to make music-sharing easier, and add and customize transitions between songs within a playlist.

The changes make Spotify more competitive

The upgrades to both levels of Spotify’s service aren’t really about making life better for users; they’re about staying relevant and profitable in a crowded and ever-changing marketplace. The hope from Spotify is to increase ad revenue by increasing the number of ears listening to ads, entice more free users to upgrade to pay services, and shed fewer customers who leave for other services.

Until the change, Spotify’s free tier was close to a radio service—you could listen to music that you kind of wanted to hear, maybe, if you also put up with frequent ads. This model may have made sense when streaming was newer, but more and more younger users are turning to YouTube, where you can listen to whatever song you want (and see a video for it) on demand, and for free. And young people are discovering music on TikTok, not on Spotify.

Changes to Spotify’s premium service are aimed at the more “mature” listener. Lossless audio doesn’t make a ton of difference without decent headphones or speakers. But “our music is lossless” has long been a selling point for Apple Music and Tidal, but it won’t be anymore.

https://lifehacker.com/tech/spotify-free-tier-upgrades?utm_medium=RSS

Monday blues

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-Style Pizza

https://xkcd.com/3142/

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Coming Home - Just B

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016: Neon; Stray Kids; New (Old) Position (Seo Changbin, Lee Felix)

Creator:

andersenmom
Title: New (Old) Position
Rating: T
Type: Fic
Size/length/word count etc.: 1263
Prompt: 016: Neon
Fandom/Ship: Stray Kids; Seo Changbin, Lee Felix
Notes/Warnings: Light mention of death.
Summary Changbin needs a new job. He didn’t expect to meet an old client at the interview. Purely aside from how he feels about that client.

Find the table with the list of fics here

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daf yomi

[Daf Yomi] Hadran Alach, Maseches Horayos AND SEDER NEZIKIN

Okay so Horayos was very long per day and very dry. But Nezikin was great, really wonderful and relevant. I had a really great time, such a wonderful contrast to Nashim. Definitely a lot to discuss in the siyum.

Notes on Horayos (only the 3rd perek had anything I wanted to note) behind cut:

( Read more... )

The First Eight Settings to Change After Installing iOS 26

Posted by Michelle Ehrhardt

https://lifehacker.com/tech/settings-to-change-after-installing-ios-26?utm_medium=RSS

Apple’s iOS 26 drops today, and with it comes a bunch of small tweaks and improvements to how your iPhone works. The catch? A lot of them are opt-in, so you need to turn them on before you can reap their benefits. Here are the settings you should turn on after updating your iPhone to Apple’s latest operating system, although note that some of them require an iPhone 15 Pro or later, as they rely on Apple Intelligence.

Adaptive battery mode

If you’re like me, you can never decide whether it’s worth it to swap your phone over to Battery Saver mode. Now, if you have an iPhone 15 Pro or above, your iPhone can make the decision for you.

Apple’s new Adaptive Power mode uses Apple Intelligence to intelligently determine when your battery usage is running higher than usual, and makes small tweaks to bring it back under control. These might include slightly dimming your display or slowing down less important tasks, like those that are running in the background or are particularly intensive. Then, once your phone’s been on an even keel for a while, it’ll start turning things back to normal. Think of it as a less aggressive “low power” mode that only affects certain processes, and can make adjustments based on more than your phone’s remaining charge. To try it out, simply navigate to Settings > Battery > Power Mode. Just don’t forget to turn it back off if you find its compromises aren’t worth the extra battery life.

Turn on call screening

Credit: Apple

I’ll be honest—I barely pick up phone calls anymore. Instead, I usually prefer to wait until after the call, and then call back if the caller was someone I knew or if it was important enough to leave a message. This usually works out for me, but I’ll admit, sometimes I do feel a bit bad for leaving people who call me in the lurch, especially if it turns out they had a good reason to dial me up. That’s where Apple’s new Call Screening feature comes in.

This one doesn’t require Apple Intelligence, so it’ll work on any iPhone running iOS 26. Simply open your Settings, then under Apps, tap Phone and look for the Screen Unknown Callers option.

You’ll have three choices. Never will work just like before, with calls ringing for a bit before they go to your Recents list. But now, you’ve got two additional options you can choose instead.

First is Silence, which will turn off your ringer for calls from unsaved numbers, then send them to Voicemail and display them in the Recents list. Essentially, it just cuts out the middle-man of having to wait for the caller to give up before you move on with figuring out what they wanted.

But the more exciting addition is Ask Reason for Calling. Choose this, and your iPhone will pick up calls from unsaved numbers for you, then ask the caller a few questions about their reason for calling. You’ll see a transcript of their answers on screen, and then you’ll be able to choose whether you want to pick up.

It’s a clever trick, and should make me feel a little less bad for anyone who tries to chat with me over the phone. I do wish it worked for Contacts as well, to be honest, but I can understand why my family might not be enthused to call me and get a robot secretary instead.

Try out the new ringtones

With iOS 26, Apple’s added a few new default ringtones to pick from. Six are variations of the classic “Reflection” ringtone, but there’s also a new one called “Little Bird.” You can find them all under Settings > Sound & Haptics > Ringtone, or check out the embeds below to hear them for yourself.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Personally, “Bouyant” is probably my favorite, although my colleague Jake Peterson likes “Dreamer” the most. I’ll probably still stick with my custom ringtone, but if you’d rather not bother downloading a ringtone manually, you now have more choice than ever.

Fix Liquid Glass

This next one is technically about turning a feature off instead of turning it on, but I couldn’t ignore it. With iOS 26, Apple’s redesigned its design language to focus on transparency, and not everyone’s a fan. If you remember the transparent bezels Microsoft added to app windows in Windows Vista, it’s a lot like that, but more aggressive. Essentially, instead of showing a solid background, many buttons and overlays will now appear clear, allowing a blurred version of whatever is underneath them to bleed through.

Luckily, there’s a pre-existing accessibility control that essentially sets your iPhone back to how it was before. Simply navigate to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size, then toggle on Reduce Transparency. This will bring back solid background across your entire iPhone, which you can see in effect here. Notice how the play button no longer allows blurred album artwork to bleed into it? If you prefer that flatter, more contrast-y look, this could be for you.

Custom backgrounds in iMessage

This one’s just fun. Now, in iMessage, you set custom backgrounds for your conversations and group chats on a per-chat basis. These include presets, like Water and Sky, but you can also pick solid colors, choose a photo from your library, or if you have an iPhone 15 Pro or above, generate a background using Apple Intelligence.

To get started, open a chat, click its title towards the top of the page, then choose Backgrounds.

Note that your chosen background will appear for everyone in the chat, but if you don’t like a background someone else set, you don’t have to live with it. Go to Settings > Apps > Messages and disable Conversation Backgrounds to turn the feature off.

Notification summaries for news

If you have an iPhone 15 Pro or above, Apple is actually bringing back a previously deleted feature with iOS 26: Notification summaries for news and entertainment apps.

These initially launched in the iOS 18.3 beta, but were quickly pulled after Apple’s AI had misrepresented some major BBC headlines, including one about United Healthcare shooting suspect Luigi Mangione.

Now, Apple is confident enough to bring these notification summaries back, although with a new warning that says “Summarization may change the meaning of the original headlines. Verify information.”

If you’re comfortable with that, according to my colleagues over at CNET, you don’t have to do much to turn them on. Apple will actually greet you with a splash screen once you download the iOS 26 update, which will ask your preferences for which apps will get notification summaries. You’ll have three options, and you can select as many as you wish. All other apps will summarize notifications from non-social apps, like Maps, while Communication & Social will throw in notification summaries for apps like TikTok and Mail. These were available already. What’s new (again) is the News & Entertainment option, which will add notification summaries for apps including BBC or Netflix.

Simply make your choices, and you’re good to go. If you change your mind later, you can adjust your summaries under Settings > Notifications > Summarize Notifications. You can also adjust notification summaries on a per-app basis here, which isn’t available in the splash screen you get after installing iOS 26.

Get clear icons in iOS 26

Credit: Apple

Let’s say you actually like Liquid Glass, but think it doesn’t go far enough. In that case, you might want to turn your icons clear too, so you can see your background through them. I promise I won’t judge.

To turn your app icons clear in iOS 26, simply long press on your home screen’s background until your apps start jiggling. Then, tap Edit in the top-left corner, followed by Customize. Then, choose Clear. You can also choose between Clear Light or Clear Dark, with the dark mode opting for a more subdued tint.

This will make your app icons look like frosted glass, similar to iOS 26’s new lock screen clock. You do you.

(If you’re like me, you might prefer the new Tinted Light Mode option instead, which finally allows you to set a custom color for your app icons’ graphical elements alongside a bright background. You can find it in the Tinted option next to Clear while selecting your app icon appearance).

New ways to customize your lock screen

iOS 26 gives you more control over how your phone looks while locked than ever before. To get started, lock your phone, then press the power button, tap and hold on the lock screen, and tap Customize.

First off, you can now adjust the size of your clock by grabbing one of its corners and dragging it down, although this will only work with certain fonts.

Second, you can now justify your widgets box to the bottom of the lock screen, as well as add an Apple Music search widget to it, if you like. If you actually start playing something, you’ll notice it’ll enable a large Now Playing interface that shows album art.

Finally, there’s support for Spatial Scenes. When selecting a Photo wallpaper, you can now tap on a small icon of a mountain and a sun to separate the photo’s subject from the background. Now, when moving your iPhone, the subject will move with it, to help them pop. Your clock might also move to fill up space in the photo, including slightly behind the subject, to help give an illusion of depth. Or, your widgets might automatically shift to the bottom of the screen if placed elsewhere, to better frame the photo subject.

Other settings you can enable

There’s plenty more you can do to make iOS 26 truly yours. If the above changes aren’t enough for you, here are 36 other tweaks you can make to get the most out of your iPhone’s new operating system.

https://lifehacker.com/tech/settings-to-change-after-installing-ios-26?utm_medium=RSS