{"id":315419,"date":"2025-12-14T10:31:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T10:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/315419\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T10:31:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T10:31:13","slug":"apple-wallet-order-tracking-improved-with-ios-26-but-its-still-missing-something","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/315419\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Wallet order tracking improved with iOS 26, but it’s still missing something"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\"Apple<\/p>\n

With iOS 26 this year, Apple announced an incredibly promising improvement <\/a>to the order tracking feature in the Wallet app. With on-device Apple Intelligence models, the company planned to identify<\/a> orders in your email to provide tracking updates, eliminating the need for retailers to need to support their proprietary feature.<\/p>\n

I was really optimistic about this improvement, but after using it for the past couple months, it honestly feels a dull band-aid solution that never should\u2019ve been implemented. Here\u2019s why.<\/p>\n

History of Apple Wallet order tracking<\/p>\n

With iOS 16, Apple introduced order tracking<\/a> in Apple Wallet. It relied on partner merchants supporting the feature, and if you paid with Apple Pay, it would automatically appear in the wallet app. With iOS 17, Apple added manual integration, but at the end of the day it still relied on the same merchants supporting it. Over the years, it never gained much traction \u2013 due to the broad lack of merchant support.<\/p>\n

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That changed with iOS 26, where Apple announced that they\u2019d be utilizing Apple Intelligence to identify order details from your emails.<\/p>\n

This sounded great, since you\u2019d no longer be limited to the small number of merchants that support the feature. In reality though, it doesn\u2019t actually improve the feature that much, and in my opinion it just makes it worse.<\/p>\n

The shortfalls<\/p>\n

The real problem ultimately comes down to one thing: Apple chose to rely on scanning your emails for order updates, rather than just extracting the tracking number and providing real-time updates.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s annoying, because ultimately Apple\u2019s email scanning rarely provides me of important information. It relies on the merchant sending you an email for each important order update. If your merchant only sends you one email when it ships and another when it delivers, you don\u2019t really get that much out of it. <\/p>\n

Plus, you can often get a flood of notifications if several packages will arrive on the same day, because the feature relies on Mail app background refreshes. It also often gets confused by in-store pickup orders, stating that something was \u201cshipped\u201d when it was in fact ready for pickup.<\/p>\n

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Wrap up<\/p>\n

I will say, tracking packages based on email confirmations is an incredibly smart idea \u2013 and it seemed promising. It\u2019s unfortunate that Apple chose the less useful approach of relying on continued email updates, rather than just using proper package tracking APIs to track the package once the tracking number was provided.<\/p>\n

In the end, I\u2019ve ended turning off order notifications in the Wallet app. It\u2019s hard to find this feature not spammy.<\/p>\n

I imagine Apple took this approach because people would accuse them of sherlocking all of the package tracking apps on the App Store. Perhaps that\u2019s fair, but the feature that they did choose to release feels incredibly underbaked for Apple \u2013 at least to me.<\/p>\n

The best holiday discounts for Apple products:<\/p>\n

Follow Michael:\u00a0X\/Twitter<\/a>,\u00a0Bluesky<\/a>,\u00a0Instagram<\/a><\/p>\n

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