Learning iOS 26 Through Intentional Micro-Apps
A practical approach to adopting new system APIs through focused, disposable software
Every major OS release presents the same problem in a new disguise. The APIs are unfamiliar, the system behaviors are still settling, and documentation often explains what something does long before it reveals how it behaves in real use. The question is not whether to learn the new platform, but how to do so without overfitting to examples or overengineering experiments.
For this cycle, I chose to explore iOS 26 by building a small set of focused apps. Each one exists to answer a specific question about the system. None of them aim to be complete products. They are intentionally narrow, disposable, and constrained. The goal was not to accumulate features, but to accumulate understanding.
The goal was not to accumulate features, but to accumulate understanding.
The constraint was simple. Each app would center on a small surface area of the OS and stay there. Persistence, background execution, system surfaces, device sensing, and user restraint were treated as first-class concerns, not as checkboxes. That meant resisting the urge to generalize early or build infrastructure that the experiment did not yet earn.
Working this way changes how decisions are made. Architecture becomes lighter because the problem is smaller. UI becomes more honest because there is less to hide behind. Mistakes surface faster, and tradeoffs become visible instead of theoretical. When something feels awkward, it usually is. When something is missing, the system tells you quickly.
Building within these constraints also clarified what these apps are not. They are not tutorials. They are not reference implementations. They are not attempts at reusable frameworks. They are working probes into the OS, written to be read, tested, and eventually set aside once their purpose is fulfilled.
The result of this approach was a clearer signal than I usually get when learning a new release. Certain APIs revealed their shape immediately. Others resisted clean abstraction. Some features worked exactly as expected, while others only made sense once friction appeared. The small size of each app made those moments obvious rather than buried.
More importantly, the apps made it easier to reason about judgment rather than mechanics. It became clear which tools want to live inside long-running products and which ones benefit from isolation. Some ideas feel safe only when exercised repeatedly over time. Others are best understood quickly, used deliberately, and then discarded.
That distinction is the real lesson here. Focused apps are not a replacement for long-running software, and long-running software is not always the right place to experiment. Each has a role. For learning a new OS release, the value of a purpose-built app is not speed alone. It is clarity. You learn what matters, what bends, and what breaks before the weight of a larger system obscures the answer.
This series documents that process through a set of small, intentional iOS 26 apps. Each post looks at one experiment, the decisions behind it, the outcome it produced, and the lesson it left behind. The work is not meant to be exhaustive. It is meant to be honest.