Hi all,
I haven't upgraded to iOS 26 yet because of what sounded like severe voiceover bugs when it was first released a few months ago. Have most of the bugs been fixed now? Btw I have an iPhone 16E if that matters at all.
Also, a friend who has upgraded told me that some things are in different places now but he wasn't specific, how can I find out about these changes?
Thanks.
Comments
I'd say wait for 26.2
I only have 26.1 on an old backup device, so I haven't really played with it much lately. There are a number of changes in IOS with this version. Some are major, some not so much.
A few things I can think of off of the top of my head:
• All search bars are at the bottom of the screen now. For example, in settings there used to be a search bar at the top of the screen... now it is at the bottom. It is like this in Mail and other apps as well. I do not believe this is changeable at this time.
• The bookmarks screen within Safari for iOS is a little crazy. I actually wrote a guide for this, though I am not sure if VoiceOver is reading everything in 26.1. Apparently Apple broke it in an earlier build.
My guide can be found here:
https://applevis.com/guides/navigating-bookmarks-safari-ios-26-voiceover-friendly-guide
• Scrolling in the mail application is clunky, and does not always work.
• You need to take an extra step when deleting individual messages from the Messages application.
There are other things, but I cannot think of them atm.
HTH.
thanks
Thanks Brian this is helpful. I don't use the mail app at all and rarely use safari, but I'll take your advice and wait for 26.2.
Issues with Messages and pronunciations
For the most part iOS 26 works fine, but any time someone sends a message with Siri or edits VoiceOver sees it as Replay, and none of my custom pronunciations work.
VO and notification
Whenever getting any notification and VO reads it, it stops in the middle and the screen locks. Same if you use Siri to send a message and she is reading it to you, it stops in the middle.
Issues
Scrolling in Mail isn't clunky, it's full on broken for many users.
If you rely on dark mode at all, it's pretty broken, with spots of glaring light popping up at random in menu bars and apps that didn't previously have issues. Turning off Apple Glass will show you just how much space is hogged by the pointless visuals and is honestly ugly as sin. Instead of search boxes and menu bars being in expected places, they always float around a little and some will appear in random places for no reason. If you have to use larger text, typing with the print keyboard will completely break many form fields so you can't enter text at all (the field is blocked by the screen going dark). There's a lot of visual bugs that destroy accessibility for those who need it with this update.
Definitely keep waiting.