thoughts on iOS 26

I've just updated it and started using it, and have already run into a major issue. I rebooted my phone and Voiceover did not turn on when I turned my phone back on. I couldn't activate it with the accessibility shortcut either, I had to enter my pin with no voiceover assistance first, and then once my phone was unlocked, I could enable voiceover.

The copied speech option is wonderful.

I just wanted to share my experience as someone using an iPhone 13 updated to iOS 26. Overall, performance has been quite good — everything feels smooth, and VoiceOver navigation is very fast. Honestly, it doesn’t feel much different from newer models, which is impressive considering this is already an older device.

By the way, I also wanted to ask: does anyone know how to enable call screening on iOS 26? I couldn’t find the option in Settings.

Thanks!

Thankfully, it only happened once. I've restarted my phone again and all is well, but when I rebooted after the update, there was no speech and no way to enable Voiceover. Sounds like this may have been a wide-spread issue, although it wasn't listed here on Applevis; maybe it didn't happen with the betas? Perhaps they need to add it as a critical bug so that people aren't caught off guard like I was. If I'm being honest, all of the updates I've done today have been quirky to 1 degree or another, but the no VO on the phone issue was by far the most serious; it actually cost me $44, as I had to buy an emergency book of paratransit tickets. I mean... I guess it'll be good to have them around just in case, but it's something I never should have had to deal with. I'm just so thankful that my paratransit driver was able to unlock my phone; I hadn't had any luck entering my passcode without speech. Let's hope that whatever caused this problem gets resolved in the next iOS 26 update.

go to settings>apps>phone. change roter to headings, and flick down until you hear screen callers.

Good news, Gujarati language has officially added to the apples ecosystem, I was happy that the Gujarati language has been added, as I was waiting for it for quite some times now. I'm an American, but I always have wondered that there are so many Gujarati's in America, why Apple hasn't implemented their mother tongue, which is Gujarati. Unless, better late than never.

I upgraded to iOS 26, mainly because the last thing I need is for the app that works with my blood sugar monitor to eventually no longer be supported with iOS 18. I regretted updating the second my phone came back on. I launched safari, returning to a fanfiction I'd started reading just before updating. I use Alex as my main voice. I don't know what apple did with Alex, but he doesn't pause between sentences now, making reading anything longer than a sentence or two almost impossible. Also, my phone's volume seems quieter than it was on iOS 18, even after I restarted the phone. Now I'm stuck on an operating system I can't tolerate. I'm trying to find another voice I can use in place of Alex, but all the other voices seem to quiet, to the point where I have to blast my phone just to hear anything.

I am trying to change my primary VO Voice, and I can't get rid of the default Sumantha no matter what.
I had to download all of the voices which I was previously using, which I did successfully, but, changing primary voice is prooving to be a big challenge so far.
I am stuck with Tom so far.

Can you add a voice to the rotor and just use that as your 'primary'? It's pretty much what I have been doing throughout 18.x. Since you can't seem to have custom Rates for the Rotor voices, and I like my 'main' voice at 58%, while I actually use basic Samantha as a rotor voice for certain scenarios, at 70%.

HTH.

Hi, I don’t normally update the first day of an update, but the bugs are listed here are things that I don’t use so I felt OK to update. I think it’s pretty stable. I mean, I don’t have the biggest use case for a lot of these new features, but I have it so far. I don’t love the new layout of the Mail app, but I didn’t see anything in settings to change it back to classic view or anything so I guess I’ll just have to get used to it. We have a couple new Indian English voices, but the problem with the Guitar Voice at least is that it reads basically everything in English until you try to get to like the sliders for the pitch and speaking percentages in the clock numbers don’t read in English so I’m not really sure what that’s all about because they’re labeled as English India for her voice so I don’t know what’s going on with that but there’s also one weird thing too if there’s like two Samantha buttons for voiceover and then the difference between default and enhanced either they’re literally like two separate Samantha buttons one of them was just kind of there and doesn’t play a sample or anything. It’s just a button labeled Samantha and then there’s the regular normal Samantha button where we could player sample or selector so it’s a little weird. Also, when I updated my iPhone 15 it went back to Samantha deleted Karen premium and then I had to re-download Karen premium. She’s back now but I just thought that was weird. I updated my iPhone SE. It stayed on Kait enhanced. So I don’t know what’s up with that but something to be aware of. I’m just thankful that I didn’t lose any voice speech. And as soon as you guys have and that sounds really scary. But it doesn’t happen to anybody else because it’s a pretty significant bug. It’s an overall pretty cool update though I guess. Nothing like majorly fun this year unfortunately. And that little bird ringtone is so corny. I didn’t even sound like a bird. It sounds like a whistle. I kind of find it really annoying actually. I’m still using classic alert, tones and ringtones because I still don’t love the new ones. I’m just glad we have the old ones in the classic section. I’m glad the new voiceover sounds. Those are what makes the stability of the iOS I think. If they were all of a sudden change it, we wouldn’t exactly know what the new sounds would mean so I think it’s good the way it is. The liquid glass design doesn’t seem to be changing anything for a completely blind for us like me. I also use voice control. Both of this feature just seem to be working pretty well together still. Working pretty well

@Singer Girl,
I am glad to hear you did not lose speech on your SE3 with the update. I also use that version of iPhone as my daily, and have already read a few posts about this weird glitch.
I have an old iPhone SE 2020, I think I will attempt to update that one to iOS 26, just to play around with the new features. Think its still on iOS 16 or 17.

Will wait until iOS 26.1 before I update my daily. 😅

Last week did so, and no issues. Checked yesterday for update, did turn off beta but nothing. Did get update for watch OS, same thing beta is off yet got an update, getting it now.

I just did a test myself and I didn't experience the no VO after reboot thing at all.
Tried rebooting, VO works just fine.
Tried turning passcode on and then reboot, VO still works fine after reboot.
Edit: For your information I'm on an iPhone 15 Pro Max.

I've stayed away from the voices rotor, though, in case I run into problems. I've been dealing with the notifications bug for months now, so no surprises there. Sometimes I'm having trouble finding the back button. I haven't explored everything yet.

I updated my iPad Pro 2021 to iPadOS 26 instead of my phone so I could see if the bugs would bother me.
I also use the Alex voice. It does do a slight pause between sentences for me, but it seems to do a one to two second pause between paragraphs. I've tested this with Kindle books and websites. I don't know if it's that my iPad is four years old, but nothing is laggy for me, only the pause between paragraphs.
I guess I could get used to it, it's just kind of annoying because I have my speech rate set to 76 and the pause kind of makes reading slower.

iPad 9. Is OK.