Cupertino: As part of its sweeping iOS 26 announcement at WWDC 2025, Apple has introduced a brand-new app called Games, catering to the more than 500 million users who regularly play games on their iPhones. This marks the tech giant’s most significant push yet to consolidate gaming on its platform and deepen user engagement.

The new Games app includes multiple dedicated tabs aimed at enhancing the gaming experience. The Home tab will highlight updates and live events for the games users already play. A Library tab will track and display every game a user has ever downloaded from the App Store, while a Play Together tab showcases what friends are currently playing and offers quick options to invite others to join. Apple Arcade also gets a dedicated space within the app, reinforcing Apple’s investment in its subscription gaming service.

One of the standout features is Challenges, which introduces head-to-head or time-bound objectives to specific games. Developers will be able to easily convert single-player games into interactive competitions, encouraging more social gameplay.

This new gaming focus comes alongside Apple’s broader redesign across iOS 26, which features a sleek Liquid Glass interface, system-wide visual changes, and the unification of OS versions under a new year-based naming system. Other major highlights include Apple Intelligence—the company’s foundational AI framework powering smarter experiences across apps—and overhauled Phone, Messages, Camera, and Photos apps.