Apple Might Open Up iPhones to Third-Party Smartwatches

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On Tuesday, Apple dropped the first beta for iOS 26.1. With it, we can see what the company is planning for the successor to iOS 26, including new gestures in Apple Music, a new scrubbing bar for the video player, and Liquid Glass support for the keypad in the Phone app. It's a small update on the surface, but there's something quite interesting going on behind the scenes.

'Notification Forwarding'

As discovered by Macworld, code within the iOS 26.1 beta suggests that Apple is working on support for third-party smartwatches in future versions of iOS. Macworld found references to a new feature called "Notification Forwarding," which supposedly would allows users to direct alerts from their iPhone to a device not made by Apple. It's a bit vague, as that could mean anything from a tablet to a PC, but Macworld believes it is intended to support notification forwarding to non-Apple smartwatches.

The code also seems to indicate that this feature supports notification forwarding to one device at a time. If you were to set your notifications from your iPhone to a Galaxy Watch, for example, it might disable notifications to your Apple Watch. In addition, there are references to an unfinished feature called "AccessoryExtension," which might support pairing third-party watches to your iPhone.

Notification Forwarding and AccessoryExtension could be indicative of a big change for Apple. One of the things that makes the company so successful is its "ecosystem," the idea that Apple's products are designed to work seamlessly together. If you have an iPhone, it connects to and works with iPads, Macs, and, of course, Apple Watches. When you try to connect to and work with third-party devices, however, you run into road blocks.

Smartwatches might be among the biggest hurdles here. Apple's smartwatch, of course, does everything you'd expect a smartwatch to do with your smartphone. But if you're thinking of picking up a Pixel Watch or Galaxy Watch, it's a different story. In fact, there's really no way to pair one of these to your iPhone. If you're coming from Android and you try to use your Pixel Watch with your iPhone, you're going to have a bad time. "Notification Forwarding" could offer a bridge.

Some smartwatches, like those from Garmin, do offer notification forwarding support already, so the feature wouldn't necessarily be groundbreaking. But it could expand smartwatch options for users beyond the limited devices that currently work with iOS' notifications.

Two reasons you might not see these changes on your iPhone

Before you get too excited, there are a couple of caveats here. First, these changes are not an active part of iOS 26.1; rather, they are simply references within the code. That indicates this is something Apple is working on, but not necessarily something that will definitely launch. Until we see the features appear in a future beta update, it's possible this will simply remain an experiment.

And even if Apple does roll out these changes, it might only be to a select group of users. There's a chance third-party smartwatch support is solely targeted towards the EU, following the union's Digital Markets Act. That legislation requires Apple to open up iOS to third-party devices, which, notably, includes smartwatches. Apple doesn't tend to open up when it doesn't have to, which is why the EU has third-party app stores on iOS and the rest of the world does not. We could see yet another EU-specific feature in this case: Europeans might be able to use their Android watches with iOS, while the rest of us are stuck with Apple Watches.