The newest iPhone operating system, iOS 26, might be the biggest update yet in a whole variety of ways, including a complete design and visual overhaul to make the entire interface feel as if you’re touching what Apple calls “Liquid Glass.” But among the many nifty features you’ll discover is an eye-catching feature that almost feels like a parlor trick: the ability to give any photo a 3D effect. In iOS 26, you can take almost any 2D photo you’ve captured with your phone and give it a 3D parallax effect, where it looks as if you can peek around the foreground of your image when you move your phone around. Apple calls it “Spatial Scenes.” It looks like a hologram, and it’s pretty cool.
This fall, you’ll likely find lots of family and friends experimenting with Spatial Scenes, especially since you can do it with almost any photo, on any recent iPhone (12 or later), and apply these 3D effects to your lock screen. But if you dig a bit beneath the surface of this update, you’ll see how this is a perfect example of how Apple envisions the iPhone as the gateway to a future where nearly every digital interaction is spatial and AR-friendly. AR, or augmented reality, is the underlying magic behind the company’s equally impressive and expensive Vision Pro headset, which lets you see and interact with digital elements in the real world.
The groundwork for augmented reality, including this new feature in iOS 26, was laid years ago when Apple introduced Portrait Mode in the iPhone 7 Plus. By blending information from two lenses, the camera system began capturing rudimentary depth maps, blurring backgrounds to mimic the look of a professional DSLR camera. Since then, the iPhone’s cameras have greatly advanced: adding lidar sensors in Pro models, refining the Neural Engine that processes the images you capture, and quietly collecting the data needed to make 3D reconstructions possible at scale.
Now, with Vision Pro on shelves and AR an official focus for Apple’s future pipeline, thanks to years of CEO Tim Cook evangelizing the bleeding-edge tech, Apple is putting these spatial capabilities front and center in the iPhone. Rather than limiting depth effects to photos taken in Portrait Mode, the new iOS 26 update can apply them retroactively to nearly any image in your library, so long as there’s a clear background and foreground to work with. Apple tells Fortune all you have to do is find a image in your library, click a new spatial icon in the top right corner, and your photo will come to life.
Here’s what it looks like in action:
Everyday AR, not just for headsets
Apple’s Vision Pro headset, released in February 2024, was Apple’s attempt to finally make “spatial computing” happen—but it clearly has a long way to go in terms of adoption. At an eye-watering starting price of $3,499, Vision Pro remains a niche device targeting early adopters, although Apple has made clear its ambitions to make the tech mainstream. The ubiquitous iPhone is a key stepping stone to get there: By infusing everyday features like wallpapers with AR flourishes, Apple is easing users into a world where spatial content feels normal, even expected.
By embedding spatial computing into users’ photos, arguably a person’s most personal digital real estate, Apple is training people to expect depth and dimension everywhere. And by making it available as a lock-screen feature, it’s even clearer that this is Apple’s attempt to gently introduce people to the direction it’s heading in as a company.
To be clear, 3D photos might seem like a novelty, but it has actual utility as well. By getting people excited about 3D effects on their multimedia, this is also Apple’s way of subtly encouraging developers to build AR-friendly applications, from gaming to social media to shopping. Hundreds of these applications exist on the Vision Pro headset, but the true opportunity lies with the iPhone, of which there are north of 1.3 billion owners. And, since this feature will sync across devices, you can expect spatial features like the 3D-photo feature in iOS 26 making its way across the entire Apple ecosystem.
While Apple fans and consumers are most likely focused on the other bells and whistles of iOS 26—the new app icons, phone features like call screening, and further personalization options for Messages—we may look back on this update as the first time Apple really started to lean into its AR future.
