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.
I've given up hope on a bug-free environment
VO volume sometimes bugs out and suddenly changes, it sometimes stick to announcing 1 image description for every single icon that it comes across next, gets slow and laggy on touchscreen keyboard in some apps, and probably few other bugs I am forgetting at this moment. They all are still there on my 15 pro max.
I haven't managed to submit feedback yet on any of above. Haven't got the time, too busy between work, music and reading Applevis.
Also, Whatsapp poles are broken, can't vote on a pole.
I will wait
Thanks for all of the replies all, I don't do mail on the phone but it sounds like there's still enough vo bugs elsewhere that I'll wait and see if more of those bugs get squashed before upgrading.
Went back to standard typing mode
Honestly the keyboard appears to be so glitchy on iOS 26 that I just switched everything back to Standard Typing mode, where I have to confirm all the keystrokes with a double-tap, because with all the annoying glitches, I find myself having to correct far less mistakes this way. I have also realized that enabling Screen Curtain and disabling Speech with this typing mode makes it a lot safer to enter my passcode in public by flicking my finger left and right and double-tapping to confirm with a very low chance of anyone actually learning the code even if my actions are captured on camera, especially with a complex passcode with lots of numbers, lowercase and uppercase letters, and symbols.
Another annoying issue that I have been noticing specifically in SwiftUI since it launched on iOS 13 is that Text views draw very small accessibility elements, since those views in particular only extend to take up as much space as they absolutely need, so even in a full-screen OK button the accessibility element will always be as tiny as the smallest possible axis-aligned rectangle containing the visual OK text. This wasn't too noticeable in earlier versions of iOS because SwiftUI was new and not many first-party applications were taking advantage of it yet, but I guess that the interface change resulted in lots of stuff getting rewritten in SwiftUI and making this problem a lot more prevalent.