Comparing the Classic and Unified Views in iOS 26’s Phone App

@tbutler Travis Butler
Tue, 05 May 2026 19:10:33 +0000

Thank Ghu for this article. I had to spend an hour this morning guiding my 70+ year old dad through fixing this; he was in a panic because he was trying to help my stepmom through a serious health problem and was literally afraid he had missed calls from her doctor or insurance company. Because with Unified view, he had lost the separate Voicemail tab and Recents tab, and he didn’t know how to interpret what he was seeing in the Calls tab.

I haven’t downgraded to iOS 26 yet, so I couldn’t help him using my own equipment; fortunately I vaguely remembered this article, and was able to find it after a few minutes’ searching. And it was a lifesaver.

It also makes me viscerally furious at the iOS 26 UI team. (And the iPad OS 26 team, for that matter; I downgraded my iPad first, and that was enough to get me to postpone doing my iPhone as long as possible.) I’ve generally been able to roll with the punches on UI changes like this (though I don’t want to if they’re this bad); but trying to help Dad really drove home how badly they can hurt people who aren’t very flexible and aren’t able to figure out ‘oh, voicemails are now bundled into the Calls tab, and oh, you have to tap this menu icon to filter that list to just show voicemails.’