iOS 26 dropped today, and your SMS marketing and list growth are about to face some changes. While the marketing world is buzzing with concern, the reality is more nuanced than the headlines suggest. Here’s your no-nonsense breakdown of what’s actually happening and what you need to do about it.
iOS 26 Changes Impacting Ecommerce Marketing
Let’s unpack all changes…
Unknown Sender Filtering
The non-issue everyone is talking about.
What’s happening: Apple introduced enhanced filtering for unknown SMS senders that breaks your Messages inbox into four folders: Known, Unkown, Spam and Recently Deleted. The marketing world immediately went into panic mode without understanding what this is about.
The reality: This feature is opt-in only. Users must manually navigate to their settings and enable it themselves. Based on user behavior patterns, we expect adoption rates to be minimal.
Why it won’t have an impact: The filtering is so aggressive it actually hurts the user experience. In our testing, we enabled this feature and immediately missed genuinely important, time-sensitive messages because Siri struggles to properly categorize legitimate communications. The feature feels more hindrance than help, which is why we (and likely most users) turned it off after missing a few important messages.
Action items: The only way to get 100% of your messages into the Known folder is to have your customers add your number as a contact. If you haven’t yet activated contact cards in your flows – now it’s the time!
Summary: The combination of low adoption rates and poor functionality means minimal to no impact on your SMS campaigns.
Notification Summaries by Apple Intelligence
What’s happening: Apple Intelligence introduced notification summaries with last year’s iOS 18. iOS 26 now summarizes text message notifications more aggressively than last year’s version, often stripping out brand names and transforming your carefully crafted messages into generic summaries.
In many cases, brand name is stripped, offer is simplified, urgency softened.
- The evolution: This feature existed in iOS 18, but iOS 26 appears to summarize notifications more frequently and covers recent messages more comprehensively. Once a notification gets a few hours old without clearing, Apple typically displays the original content.
- Potential impact: If Apple continues to expand this summarization aggressively, you may need to adjust your SMS copywriting strategy. Consider moving brand names from message openings to the body text to ensure brand visibility even in summarized versions.
- Action required: We receommend you start testing copy changes and monitor results. Monitor how your messages appear in notification summaries and be prepared to adapt your copy strategy if needed.
UTM Stripping: Targeted, Not Universal
What’s actually affected: Contrary to widespread reports, generic UTM parameters (campaign, medium, source) remain unaffected based on our internal testing.
What Apple is targeting: The focus appears to be on advertising platform-specific tracking IDs from Meta, Google, and similar services that can identify users at a personal level.
What’s NOT Impacted
- MTA solutions (unless poorly implemented) – no UTM parameter impact
- Most analytics solutions – core tracking remains functional
I highly recommend reading Mandar Shinde’s summary of the changes on the Bloutout blog.
SMS impact: Your standard SMS tracking and UTM parameters will continue working normally.
We’re continuously tracking SMS click-through rates and conversion metrics to catch any unexpected changes immediately.
Liquid Glass Design Changes in Safari
What’s changing: iOS 26 introduces a major visual overhaul to Safari’s interface. The traditional footer that contained action and navigation buttons have been replaced with a dynamic liquid glass design. This new interface features transparent areas that spring and expand based on user scroll motion.
The impact on popups: This design change means most full-screen popups are no longer truly full-screen. The dynamic interface elements can interfere with pop-up display and functionality.
The change:
The solution:
At Recart, we rolled out an important enhancement to ensure a flawless experience with the latest iOS 26 update. Apple’s changes in Safari and Chrome now allow page content to stretch edge-to-edge, which also introduced some unwanted side effects like background scrolling and accidental “pull to refresh” while a popup was active.
What’s new:
- Background content is now fixed in place when a popup is displayed, preventing unintended scrolling.
- Pull-to-refresh is disabled during popup interactions, ensuring a smoother, distraction-free experience.
- Extensively tested across major devices and browsers (Safari, Chrome, Firefox) on iOS 26.
Here’s a quick screenshot so you can see the polished result.
Why this matters: If your pop-up provider hasn’t adapted to these changes, your full-screen pop-ups may appear broken or partially obscured by the new interface elements.
Recart customers are already protected: We anticipated this change and have already implemented the necessary adjustments to our pop-up structures. These updates are live in all Recart accounts and enabled by default – no action required on your part.
Not using Recart pop-ups? It’s worth testing your full-screen pop-ups immediately to ensure they’re still displaying and functioning correctly with the new Safari interface.
What This Means for Your Marketing Strategy
The key takeaway? Don’t panic, but do prepare. iOS 26’s changes are more about privacy protection than marketing disruption. Most impacts are minimal, opt-in, or poorly implemented enough that user adoption will be low.
Immediate action items:
- Continue your SMS campaigns as normal
- Begin testing notification summary appearances this week
- Monitor your analytics for any unexpected changes
- Prepare to adjust brand name placement in SMS copy if needed
Stay informed, stay prepared, but don’t let iOS 26 derail your marketing momentum. The changes are manageable, and with proper monitoring, you’ll adapt quickly to any real impacts that emerge.
Want to dive deeper into how these changes might affect your specific campaigns? Contact our team for a personalized impact assessment.
