iOS 26 is finally here – all over the globe, users of the best iPhones are experiencing Apple’s biggest mobile operating system update in years.
The big ticket item in iOS 26 is its visual redesign, which leans on Apple’s new Liquid Glass ‘material’ and sees nearly every aspect of the software experience retouched. With that said, the update also brings with it some great revisions to Apple’s suite of pre-installed apps.
My personal choice for iOS 26’s standout feature belongs to the latter category. The update brings a new Visited Places feature to Apple Maps, which – as you might guess – logs the places you visit, as well as how many times you’ve visited them.
As someone who loves maps, games, and finding cool new spots around my hometown of London, this scratches my brain in all the right ways. The first thing I do whenever I pick up one of the best PS5 games is fill out the map, and I’ve always loved any feature that records your path through the world, like the Hero’s Path mode in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Looking back on the past few years, I’d love to see how many times I’ve wandered through my favorite parks, danced at my favorite nightclubs, and stopped by my friends’ houses. Visited Places seems like a really nice way to literally map out a part of your identity.
And, frankly, in a world of data scraping and attention-grabbing algorithms, it’s just nice to get a new bit of software that actually feels fun. Visited Places is the rare smartphone feature that relies on you not staring at the screen – to get the most out of it, you actually have to get up, go out, and find something new, which is exactly what mobile tech should empower us to do.
Android fans will point to Google Maps’ Timeline feature as a competitor, and I can only admire the fact that Google offers a similar (and in fact more comprehensive) service. Visited Places is simply one for the Apple fans, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it integrates with the rest of iOS 26.
The closest comparison I can think of for features like Visited Places and Timeline is Spotify Wrapped, which gives you a yearly breakdown of your music listening habits to rifle through and share with your friends. Critics of wrapped might say it gamifies listening too much, that the focus on data takes away from the experience.
I think it’s true that anything can be taken too far if you’re just chasing numbers, but Wrapped has led me to listen to a wider and deeper range of music with those yearly figures in mind. And as with Wrapped, I can see Visited Places encouraging me to find new experiences by tallying new spots around town and around the world (as well as being fabulous small talk material).
I’m also notoriously lax when it comes to taking pictures while I’m out adventuring, so having a record of notable locations I passed through could make piecing together my journeys much easier (this has a nice synergy with the updated Journal app, which allows you to add locations to entries).
Visited Places is slated to come to a limited number of countries – the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Switzerland, and Malaysia. I’ve updated my UK-registered iPhone 15 to iOS 26, but can’t see Visited Places available yet – keep an eye on Apple’s help page for instructions and compatibility information.
So, if anyone needs me, I’ll be out adding new locations to my open world with iOS 26 – just as soon as Apple enables Visited Places for me.
Which iOS 26 features have caught your attention so far? Let us know in the comments below.
