iOS 26.5 beta 1 changes, more

Welcome to 95 Mac Daily for Tuesday, March 31, 2026. I'm your host, Chance Miller. We are sponsored this week by Backblaze. Leading off today, last December, GM began rolling out a dedicated native Apple Music app for select Cadillac and Chevrolet cars. Now the automaker has announced another expansion of its Apple Music app, this time to select Buick and GMC cars. The Apple Music app is now rolling out to the 2026 Enclave and Envision, as well as the 25 and 26 Acadia Canyon Sierra EV, Terrain, UConn and UConn XL, and the 2026 Hummer EV. According to GM, the Apple Music app will appear automatically on these cars, and with the expansion, it's now available across 1.2 million cars on the road today. Audio streaming apps, including Apple Music, are included for eight years through OnStar Basics on new GM cars. But the reason to bring this up is that since GM started rolling out its native Apple Music app last December, the move has largely been viewed as a band-aid for the automaker's carplay problem. Almost exactly three years ago, GM announced that it was ditching carplay in all of its future EVs. Most recently, it also said that it will gradually abandon carplay on more cars in the future including internal combustion engine cars. A native Apple Music app does give GM drivers one aspect of the carplay experience, but there are countless other things that are nice about carplay that GM drivers are still missing like Apple Maps, Apple Podcasts, third-party iPhone apps, and more. We're sponsored this week by Backblaze. If you travel with your MacBook, you're carrying your digital life with you. iCloud keeps your files in sync across devices while Time Machine protects you locally. But what if while you're traveling, your MacBook is lost or damaged? Would you have an off-site backup? Well Backblaze runs automatically and creates a separate backup of your entire Mac in the cloud, including external drives. I've used Backblaze before and it's easy to use. You set it up once and you forget about it. So iCloud for sync, Time Machine for local backup, and Backblaze for off-site protection. Try it free at backblaze.com-9to-5Mac and get 20% off with code 9to5daily. My thanks to Backblaze for their support of the show. Next up today, iOS 26.4 launched last week with new features for Apple Music, Podcasts, and a whole lot more. One feature that Apple announced but that was kind of vague until now is something called iCloud Search. This feature makes iCloud on the web more useful thanks to the addition of Search. Most major tech companies prioritize web access for their services. For example, Google services are all optimized for the web with app versions typically secondary priorities. But the reverse has always been true for Apple. Apple prioritizes the apps on its platforms and while it sometimes offers web versions too, those interfaces tend to lag behind the native apps. But in iOS 26.4, Apple has a key update for iCloud.com specifically that makes the web version of iCloud more useful than before. Search is now available for files and photos. Starting in iOS 26.4, if you turn on data access for iCloud.com, you can also turn on a new Allow Search setting. This lets you search your files in iCloud Drive or your photos in iCloud Photos on iCloud.com. To help you find what you're looking for, when you type in the search field, you can see suggestions for things like file names, folder names, and document types for iCloud Drive and dates, people, and location for iCloud Photos. And of course, Apple says that when you search photos and drive on the web, your searches are encrypted and use on-device processing so no search history is kept on Apple servers. You can enable iCloud.com file and photos search on your iPhone by going to the Settings app and visiting your iCloud settings. The toggle needs to be manually enabled on each device that you want providing search results on iCloud.com. Anyone with an all-Apple setup probably won't need to use iCloud.com very often. For example, if you're mixed use and have, say, an iPhone and a Windows PC, this new feature is a welcome addition for having another place to search for your iCloud files. In other news today, Apple has released iOS 26.5 Beta 1 for developers. Most notably, right off the bat, the update doesn't include any of the highly anticipated new Siri and Apple Intelligence features. As we've talked about before, Apple reportedly targeted iOS 26.4 for the first new Siri and Apple Intelligence features powered by Google Gemini. iOS 26.4, of course, came and went without any of those features. So now that iOS 26.5 has been released without any of the features, we're expecting that all of the new Apple Intelligence and Siri capabilities have been pushed to iOS 27. iOS 27 is expected to be announced in June and shipped to the general public in September. But while those features are absent, there are a few changes in iOS 26.5 Beta 1 worth noting. Earlier this month, Apple announced that ads are coming to Apple Maps this summer. At the same time, the company announced a new suggested places feature. This new suggested places feature is live in iOS 26.5 Beta 1, and Apple says it displays recommendations based on what's trending nearby and your recent searches. The new suggested places feature appears when you tap inside the search box in the Apple Maps app. While ads themselves aren't yet live in Apple Maps, Apple is starting to lay the groundwork as part of iOS 26.5, with a new message saying, quote, Maps may show local ads based on your approximate location, current search terms, or view of the map while you search. Meanwhile, Apple started testing end-to-end encryption for RCS messages as part of the iOS 26.4 Beta. The feature, however, didn't actually ship as part of that update, and instead, Apple said it would come as part of a future iOS 26 release. iOS 26.5 Beta 1 includes end-to-end encryption for RCS messages once again. Apple has also updated its release notes to no longer suggest it's coming as part of a future update. This would suggest that RCS encryption will ship to everyone as part of iOS 26.5. Apple is also continuing to test changes in the European Union as part of iOS 26.5, including notifications, live activities, and proximity pairing for third-party accessories. There are also new options coming to App Store purchases, including one that will let users be billed monthly for a service but with a 12-month commitment. iOS 26.5 is currently available to developers for beta testing, but a public beta will likely be released as soon as later today or sometime later this week. You can hit the link in the show notes for a full look at everything new in iOS 26.5 Beta 1. That wraps up another episode of 9 to 5 Mac Daily. As always, you can find all of the latest Apple news on 9to5mac.com, follow along with me on threads at Chance H Miller, and we'll be back tomorrow for a new episode of 9 to 5 Mac Daily.