What is Preview on iOS 26? What it does & how to Use it

Preview is Apple’s new, built-in PDF and image app for iPhone and iPad in iOS/iPadOS 26. Think of it as the macOS Preview you already know—now on mobile—so you can open, mark up, sign, fill, combine, and share PDFs and images without third-party tools.



What is Preview?



Preview is a first-party Apple app designed for viewing and lightly editing PDFs and images (JPG, PNG, HEIC, TIFF, etc.). It centralizes tasks that used to be scattered across Files, Photos, Markup, and third-party apps. On iPad, it also plays nicely with Apple Pencil for precise annotations.



Why Apple added it



Until now, iPhone and iPad could display PDFs and annotate with Markup, but there wasn’t a single, obvious place to handle all the everyday PDF chores—opening, signing, filling forms, combining pages, exporting, and sharing. Preview unifies those basics under one roof and aligns iOS/iPadOS with the long-standing macOS experience.



What Preview can do




Open & view PDFs and common image formats



Annotate with Markup (pen, highlighter, shapes, text notes, arrows)



Sign documents with a saved signature (finger on iPhone, Pencil on iPad)



Fill forms (type into fields, check boxes, add text where needed)



Reorder, rotate, or delete pages in a PDF



Combine/merge PDFs (bring pages from another file)



Scan to PDF using the camera and clean up the scan



Export & share (flatten annotations, share via Messages, Mail, AirDrop, etc.)



iCloud Drive integration so your edits sync across devices





Tip: Preview is meant for everyday edits. For heavy PDF authoring (advanced OCR, redaction at scale, complex form creation), you’ll still want a pro tool.




Where to find it




Home Screen / App Library: Look for the Preview icon and open it like any app.



From Files or Mail: Tap a PDF ➝ Open in Preview (or Share ➝ Open in Preview).



Spotlight: Swipe down on the Home Screen and search “Preview.”