Apple is quietly giving iPhones a nifty holographic effect—and it’s our best look yet at where the company is headed next

·AppleApple is quietly giving iPhones a nifty holographic effect—and it’s our best look yet at where the company is headed nextBy Dave SmithBy Dave SmithEditor, U.S

NewsDave SmithEditor, U.S

In iOS 26, you can take almost any 2D photo you’ve captured with your phone and give it a 3D parallax effect, where it looks you can peek around the foreground of your image when you move your phone around

Apple calls it “Spatial Scenes.” It looks a hologram, and it’s pretty cool

This fall, you’ll ly find lots of family and friends experimenting with Spatial Scenes, especially since you can do it with almost any photo, on any recent iPhone (12 or later), and apply these 3D effects to your lock screen

But if you dig a bit beneath the surface of this , you’ll see how this is a perfect example of how Apple envisions the iPhone as a gateway to a future where nearly every digital interaction is spatial and AR-friendly

AR, or augmented reality, is the underlying magic behind the company’s equally impressive and expensive Vision headset, which lets you see and interact with digital elements in the real world

The groundwork for augmented reality, including this new feature in iOS 26, was laid years ago when Apple introduced Portrait Mode in the iPhone 7 Plus

By blending information from two lenses, the camera system began capturing rudimentary depth maps, blurring backgrounds to mimic the look of a fessional DSLR camera

Since then, the iPhone’s cameras have greatly advanced: adding LiDAR sensors in models, refining the Neural Engine that cesses the images you capture, and quietly collecting the data needed to make 3D reconstructions possible at scale

Now, with Vision on shelves and AR an official focus for Apple’s future pipeline, thanks to years of CEO Tim Cook evangelizing the bleeding-edge , Apple is putting these spatial capabilities front and center in the iPhone

Rather than limiting depth effects to photos taken in Portrait Mode, the new iOS 26 can apply them retroactively to nearly any image in your library, so long as there’s a background and foreground to work with

Apple tells Fortune all you have to do is find a image in your library, click a new spatial icon in the top right corner, and your photo will come to life

The ubiquitous iPhone is a key stepping stone to get there: by infusing everyday features wallpapers with AR flourishes, Apple is easing users into a world where spatial content feels normal, even expected

By embedding spatial computing into users’ photos, arguably a person’s most personal digital real estate, Apple is training people to expect depth and dimension everywhere

And by making it available as a lock-screen feature, it’s even er that this is Apple’s attempt to gently introduce people to the direction it’s heading as a company

To be , 3D photos might seem a novelty, but it has actual utility as well

By getting people excited 3D effects on their multimedia, this is also Apple’s way of subtly encouraging developers to build AR-friendly applications, from gaming to social media to shopping

And, since this feature will sync across devices, you can expect spatial features the 3D-photo feature in iOS 26 making its way across the entire Apple ecosystem

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