While the redesign is a major change in itself, it’s not the only thing that you should get excited about. There were many other changes that were demoed on stage at the WWDC opening keynote, but there’s an even broader list of smaller features that will arrive on your iPhone this fall, yet most flew under the radar.
One useful feature that’s coming along and will enrich Apple’s overall ecosystem capabilities is the universal captive Wi-Fi sync that will make its way to all Apple devices very soon.
What is universal captive Wi-Fi?
You know those landing pages at hotels, airports, and restaurants that often pop up when you attempt to connect to an open Wi-Fi network in your vicinity and usually require an email to log you in? Well, with iOS 26, if you log into such a network with any of the devices connected to your Apple Account, the login will sync with all your other devices as well.
So, if you log in with your iPhone, your MMacBook, oriPad will be able to automatically connect to the same Wi-Fi network without having to go through the paces of the same captive page. Neat-o!
iOS already allows any device logged in with your Apple Account to share Wi-Fi networks that were authenticated on another of your devices, and this new addition makes the networking experience that much more convenient and intuitive.
The feature is available on iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS 26, so regardless which device you use to log in to the public Wi-Fi, you will be able to share that log-in across your devices.
That’s just the stuff that the Apple ecosystem needs, and is more than welcome.
Universal Wi-Fi captive sync is also something that Android lacks. Even if you’ve logged yourself into multiple Android devices with your Google account, you will have to go through the paces of the captive page with every device.
