iOS 26 finally fixes low-res screen recordings for iPhone users

Apple iPhone

Apple added native screen recording to iOS way back in 2017 with iOS 11, saving people from the awkward days of plugging devices into a Mac just to capture video. But there was always one big catch: resolution. No matter how sharp your iPhone’s display, recordings maxed out at 1920 pixels on the long edge. On today’s flagships, that meant footage looked like a blurry, compressed downgrade.

iOS 26 changes that. In its latest beta, Apple has quietly upgraded screen recording so that it now captures at the full native resolution of your device. On the iPhone 16 Pro Max, for instance, recordings jump from 884×1920 to a crisp 1320×2868 — finally matching the panel. The result is dramatically sharper captures that look like what you actually see on-screen.

The upgrade doesn’t come at a huge storage penalty either. A 12-second clip that used to weigh in at 18.9 MB now lands at 24.2 MB — a modest increase given the resolution bump. That balance suggests Apple has also improved compression to keep file sizes in check.

It’s a small tweak, but one that will matter to anyone making tutorials, sharing gameplay, or demoing apps. Screen recording has gone from “good enough” to something you might actually want to publish without apology. For a feature that hadn’t evolved since its debut, iOS 26 finally makes it feel current.

Apple didn’t hype the change on stage, but for content creators, it’s one of the more useful quiet upgrades this year.