iPhone's Walled Garden For 3rd Party Smartwatches May End With iOS 26.1

One of the befits of being in the Apple ecosystem is how tightly integrated all the company’s devices are, which makes things more seamlessly work together. Of course, this comes at the cost of only being able to use Apple made accessories to get the maximum benefit. Although this might be about to change when it comes to third-party watches judging by some of the new code snippets found in the iOS 26.1 beta by Macworld.

Code within the iOS 26.1 beta 1 contains references to a new feature dubbed Notification Forwarding. The purpose of this feature is to enable notifications from a user’s iPhone to be displayed on a third-party accessory. Although it’s limited to only working on “one accessory at a time” and will disable notifications from being passed along to an Apple Watch.


Additionally, there’s another new feature Apple is working on implementing that points towards a more open ecosystem. It goes by the name of “AccessoryExtension,” which looks to be a new framework for enabling the pairing of third-party accessories with an iPhone. However, it’s important to note that this particular feature is still in early development and likely won’t be available to users until further down the line.

Before Apple fans get excited, it’s important to note that these features will likely only become available in the European Union thanks to the Digital Markets Act (DMA). While most of the attention has been related to the availability of third-party app stores such as the Epic Games Store, the DMA also means that platform holders such as Apple must play nice with accessories made by other companies.

Time will tell if Apple decides to bring these new features to territories where it isn’t being forced to, or if it decides to loosen its grip on its ecosystem voluntarily.