Apple to drop OS names in biggest shakeup since iOS launch

Apple is planning to reduce consumer confusion with a sweeping change to its operating system naming, with the company planning a rebranding of its OS's that is tied to a coming redesign.

According to a new report by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is planning on making a widespread overhaul of its branding for its operating systems, with the company planning on changing its naming scheme to align with the years.

For example, if the change was made this year, it would mean the current iOS 18 would be swapped to iOS 2026. As you can probably imagine, Apple's other operating systems would also follow this same name change: iPadOS 18.5 to iPadOS 26, macOS 15 to macOS 26, watchOS 12 to watchOS 26, and visionOS 2 to visionOS 26.

Apple will announce the new naming at the World Wide Developers Conference on June 9, where the company will also unveil fresh user interfaces across various operating systems. The new user interfaces will be similar across operating systems, with the goal of making it simpler and easier for users to move between Apple's products.

This change by Apple is something Samsung did with its Galaxy S line of smartphone devices in 2020, with the company announcing the model releasing in 2020 would be Galaxy S20, which was a jump from the 2019 model, Galaxy S10.

Moreover, Microsoft did the same thing with Windows from Windows 95 to Windows 2000. As for Apple, the company will separate itself from the pack by using the upcoming year in the naming rather than the current year, meaning when the next operating systems launch in September 2025 they will be named with a 26 moniker.