Apple is making its operating system names less confusing across all devices
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Apple’s next developer conference is just around the corner. With WWDC25 in the second week of June, there’s not much longer to wait. This means we’re getting rumors and leaks about what we’ll see announced there. One of them is how Apple plans to change its operating system naming scheme, according to Mark Gurman at Bloomberg.
With a plan to unify the versions across its various products and make the number correspond to the years instead, this should simplify understanding what the latest version is for each device. This follows the rumor that Mark previously reported that all of Apple’s interfaces will receive the Solarium interface refresh.
The new update should bring the Vision Pro’s translucent backgrounds, circular icons, rounded corners, and other interface features from the VR OS to the rest of the product lineup. With such a unifying and big change, the naming scheme gets an equally important change.
New Apple OS names
Below, you can find the list of operating systems Apple has and the expected names they will have following WWDC25.
- iOS 26 (instead of iOS 19)
- macOS 26 (instead of macOS 16)
- iPadOS 26 (instead of iPadOS 19)
- watchOS 26 (instead of watchOS 12)
- tvOS 26 (instead of tvOS 19)
- visionOS 26 (instead of visionOS 3)
With this update, each OS will follow the same naming convention, instead of being discombobulated into various numbers. It might at first seem like quite the jump, but considering the yearly updates, it makes sense to reflect that in the version number.
However, it doesn’t reflect the current year of release; instead, it follows the practice of car manufacturers, who typically introduce new models that start shipping in the year preceding their release. With the new operating systems set to release in September alongside the new iPhones, we will be ahead of the curve.
It could also reflect plans for the iPhone to follow suit. Although iPhone model numbers have been incrementally released in sequence, they skipped 9 to release X instead. Therefore, after iPhone 16 (the latest model), the next model released later this year could jump up to 26 to reflect the uniform UI. We’ll have to wait and see.
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