New in iOS 26.5: Notification Forwarding and Apple Intelligence in China
New in iOS 26.5: Notification Forwarding and Apple Intelligence in China
The first beta of iOS 26.5 has been released, with Apple Intelligence now available to customers in China and notification forwarding going beyond the EU.
Apple began the iOS 26.4 beta testing cycle on Monday, less than a week after it was fully released to the public. The iPhone software upgrade bears the build number 23F5043g, which is up from 23E246 in the final version of iOS 26.4.
Apple Intelligence debuted in China.
According to many iOS users in China, including former leaker LoveToDream, Apple Intelligence features appear to have become available in the nation.
Apple Intelligence first became available to customers in the United States with the iOS 18.1 upgrade. Apple eventually added support for regions and languages outside English. Users in China, however, will not obtain the AI-powered tools as rapidly.
Apple Intelligence has to partner with a domestic AI company in order to launch in China, and the iPhone maker is said to have chosen Alibaba and Baidu.
Throughout 2025, it was widely speculated that Alibaba’s involvement will include the development of a filtering layer for Apple Intelligence. In contrast, the iOS 26.5 developer beta on Monday refers to Baidu’s Wenxin Yiyan model rather than Alibaba’s.
In any scenario, Apple Intelligence customers in China will most likely be unable to access material that their government disagrees with or does not want made public. This effectively symbolizes a censored version of Apple Intelligence that is exclusive to China.
While Apple Intelligence is now available to users of Monday’s developer beta, it has to be clear whether its China distribution is linked to the iOS 26.5 upgrade. The AI-powered feature set may also be available to Chinese customers running iOS 26.4 and earlier.
Notification forwarding is now available beyond the EU.
With the iOS 26.3 release, Apple implemented a notification forwarding capability to improve iPhone compatibility with non-Apple smartwatches. Initially, however, the functionality was only available within the European Union.
The new feature, located in the Notifications section of the Settings app, determines whether notifications from an iPhone can be seen on a non-Apple device.
Notification forwarding was most likely intended to assure Apple’s compliance with the interoperability criteria outlined in the EU’s Digital Market Act. Essentially, the DMA forces Apple to make certain of its unique capabilities available on other manufacturers’ devices.
Apple was similarly obliged to open up the iPhone’s NFC hardware, which aided Apple Wallet competitors. The iPhone maker later made the same capabilities available to developers in the United States, and it appears that notification forwarding will follow suit in iOS 26.5.
Monday’s iOS 26.5 beta also allows developers to test end-to-end encrypted RCS communications. This capability has been available for testing since iOS 26.4’s second developer beta, but it has yet to be included in the public release.
End-to-end encrypted RCS texting is still only available to developers and anyone who wants to test the technology.
There are no Siri improvements in iOS 26.5 yet.
While the iOS 26 version is most recognized for its Liquid Glass appearance, iOS 26.5 may bring Apple’s long-awaited Siri makeover. According to a February 2026 report, personalization options for the virtual assistant were being tried with iOS 26.5.
Siri was expected to receive a significant update with the introduction of Apple Intelligence, which debuted at WWDC 2024. Apple’s virtual assistant was designed to improve in-app capabilities and contextual awareness, which Apple even promoted in ads.
While the iPhone maker’s other AI-powered features, such as Image Playground and Writing Tools, were made accessible to the public, the contextually aware Siri was delayed.
According to reports, Apple intends to deploy the Siri redesign with iOS 26.5 after failing to do so with the previous iOS 26.4 version. It’s unclear whether Siri will receive an update in iOS 26.5.
Overall, based on the first developer beta, iOS 26.5 appears to be a more restrained release. Still, the software has only recently entered developer testing, so Apple has time to enable the much-anticipated Siri improvement later.