iOS 26 Beta 1 Released

Relatively very usable for a first beta. There are some issues, of course. And I don’t think anything’s actually been fixed in terms of previous bugs. But a good place to start out.

I don't know for this one but for us this change will be major, whether it's good or not I am not sure yet. But basically from what I understand from a random live reaction to the keynote we will lose the big blocking popup for low battery at 20% and 10% and get a notification, I assume it will be time sensitive or something like that. One of the little info that's very important to know for us I think if this is true.

Anything new you noticed? or did you figure the accessibility reader thing out? Does it work with images?

Are there any differences with the way that voiceover runs using the new liquid glass design?

Do they have hold assist in beta one? I’ve noticed that things that are in beta one tend to wind up in the .0 release.

Warning! If you try to use your rotor in iPadOS26 to move an app to your dock, it will briefly take you to a black screen then drop you back on your lock screen after about 5 seconds.
Also, my iPad speaks the time in Spanish on my iPad lock screen, but everything else is in English, as it should be.

Interesting. I will wait for the 3 beta. Now you know the time in Spanish.

Hi,
To fix the fact that my iPad was speaking all information on the lock screen in Spanish, I had to reset all settings.
Now though, my messages app is crashing, when I try to open it.
I'm going to see if I can uninstall & reinstall it without data loss.
I'll keep this thread updated.

So far so good. Very impressive for a first beta in my mind.

If any of you testing have access to and still are using NE, please let me know if it still works in iOS 26, or is this the year we have to give it up?. Thanks in advance.

Has anyone tried high sample rate of Eloquence? If so, do you notice anything?

I've not installed this beta, does eloquence sound more like it didd in Talks or on a computer, if so, that would be awesome!

I actually like the battery notification thing, I don't think it will impact us that much, just another thing that will take a little getting used to.

It is close to talks or the computer.

Try it for a few minutes. the hiss is gone.

Wondering how the translucent widgets and items will affect low vision users who might need lots of contrast with less background visual distractions.

The description of this new UI didn't give me a clear idea of how this works or what it looks like.

Anyway, just curious.

--Pete

Stage manager is now on the iPad 9

And it doesn’t work well with voiceover

All buttons are labeled but the buttons to resize window and other options are super hard to find and you can’t really swipe to them

Here are some things I've notice. first off, eloquence community dictenary is boken. it used to work in previous versions, but it no longer works. hopefully they will fix it in future beta builds. apart from thatm not bad for a first beta. also, the Siri sounds has once again returned when you hold down the side button. thank you apple for fixing the issue.

I filed a FB for the Eloquence dictionary it is:
FB17843499 (eloquence community dictionary not working)

I’m unsure why or how it happened, but iMessage got disabled somehow on my iPad and this caused the messages app to crash. Haptics for notifications are much more subtle in iOS 26. I barely even notice them. I found a bug with personal voice. I remade mine And in doing so noticed that when it is in use, if you are on the lock screen, with device language set to US English, that is not what you get. Earlier, my iPad ended up in Spanish, then after that, it ended up in some other language that I couldn’t even understand, but was able to enter my passcode and then it reverted back to English once unlocked.

Does anyone know how to switch this back if you want? Thanks.

Havn't figured out a way to go to the old phone app either.

Please submit feedback. I'll do the same.

FB17846790 (actions such as delete not available for voiceover users in messages)
1 go to a conversation swipe up to delete but there is no delete option please restore these actions thank you.

list of 5 items
1. Open the Phone app.
2. Go to Headings.
3. Go to Calls heading.
4. Swipe right once to Filter.
5. Double tap Select Classic.

@ke8upe I think the personal voice not working on the lock screen is intended behavior. Before the phone is unlocked it doesn't know who is using it, so once you unlock with face or touch ID the phone authenticates you and can then use your personal voice.

Would be interesting to know how much smoother the new personal voices that can be created in less time are.

Sounds like for me for now, there are some deal breaking bugs. Hopefully they get resolved by the time I can hop on the public beta train if I decide to.

This is one of the most stable beta one releases I've seen. I'm very happy with it. Are there a few bugs? Sure but I'm sure they will be fixed.

As mentioned in the subject line voiceover is not announcing the files and folders when browsing through the files app especially when you go to the browse tab and try to browse through the files and folders that way.
Feedback number is FB17849419

does it has any new features for voiceover or new voices for voice over?

Interesting, I look forward to checking it out.

hi. After upgrading my iPhone 15 pro, iPad mini six and series 10 Apple Watch, each of the devices all lost speech even the VoiceOver was running. The only way I was able to get it up and running again was using AIRA. If I hadn't had more than one device, I wouldn't have been able to get the others working. Before the upgrade my voice was set to Jamie premium. To troubleshoot, I used the speak sample option on the list of voices to see which ones worked. When trying this on several premium voices, no sample was heard. I downloaded some of the ones where a sample was heard and these appear to work fine. The UK Siri voices had speech, but also had additional unnecessary speech before the expected text was heard and so pretty much unusable. I recommend those who haven't upgraded yet, to ensure they own use the low quality or enhanced versions of the voices. I think if you don't do this before upgrading, you may lose speech. Please cook those who have installed the update, try playing samples on some of the premium voices to see if you hear speech or not

The issue that has been described in the Files app only occurs when I have set it to display files in list view. with symbol view, it works for me.

Just a quick one, while testing everything in depth, going in and out of settings and things I noticed that the software update setting is no longer functional and just gives an error every time. Hopefully it can be fixed on Apple servers but I’d keep a PC close in case you need to update manually next time.

Regarding the battery notifications, when you have an iPhone with a Dynamic Island, you've ever had those notifications instead of full-screen hints. And they work just fine with VoiceOver.

Does this mean that we will no longer be getting the annoying pop up when our iPhone is low on battery? Even for devices with a notch?
I am aware that all dynamic island devices have no battery pop up from the start.
But what about devices with a notch like the 16e.
Edit Personally, find the pop-up to be very annoying

Hi,
Haven't seem them mentioned anywhere, so here is what I found so far regarding VoiceOver news:

1. When customizing VoiceOver commands, there is a new magic tap section. In here, so far there is one toggle, which allows you to disable magic tap starting media playback when nothing else is available. This could be useful to prevent accidental and undesirable media playback.
2. At the bottom of VoiceOver settings, there is a button allowing you to reset VoiceOver settings to their defaults. With the amount of VoiceOver customization possible now, I think this will be quite useful, especially when you are encountering something unexpected or odd happening only on your end.
3. The what's new in VoiceOver link seems to be missing. It may just come back once iOS 26 is closer to final release, or even once the RC is released, but for now it isn't available.
4. In VoiceOver's audio settings, you have a new always use Siri sounds toggle. If it is enabled, you will get the familiar Siri sound when invoking Siri, otherwise you can disable it to have no Siri sound.
5. Braille screen input has a single hand input mode now. I haven't explored it in detail yet, but there are three input modes, input columns, Slate and stylus and Slate and stylus reversed.
In addition to this new input mode, you can now customize all BSI commands used in command mode, by remapping the Braille dots used for each command.
6. As announced by Apple, the Braille access feature is also now introduced. I don't use a Braille display, so I can't really test it, but I can mention what is available. In Braille access, you can access BRF notes, Nemeth calculator, Braille notes, live captions, launch other apps. It is invoked with dots 7 and 8 together, or dots 7 and 8 with space if using an 8 dot table from anywhere.

As usual, don't take everything for granted and don't be excited about any new feature announced here. This is only the developer beta 1, and features can significantly change, or even entirely disappear if they aren't stable enough. While that second case is quite rare, it isn't unheard of either.

I have noticed that the software update is not working like it should as another commenter stated earlier on in this thread, so I submitted a feedback request and here is the feed back id if anyone wanted to help to alert apple about this issue here is the id FB17864879

I usually don't do this, but... If you have an iPhone 15 Pro, I do not recommend installing the iOS 26 Beta 1. This Reddit thread explains why and how to get out of that situation if you find yourself there. I personally know someone who experienced this on an iPhone 15 Pro, and the issue is every bit what the users on Reddit report.

I think the apple survers are having some issues like others mentioned. I tried eloquence but find that the click when you flick through the screens is louder and it puts me off so I'm sticking to alex.

the new phone layout is interesting, I think I'll put it back to the old way once the beta becomes the actual version everyone is using, it's a nice idea but I don't need all that, remind me in a certain amount of time stuff.

A change I've noticed is in verbocity, there's a controls button, there's now an option to have the control spoken first, I don't know why someone would want this, apart from perhaps if you're testing your app for accessibility? But it's there.

Hi

I also get that error when checking for an software update

How would i update using a computer? All i found said to shift left click update and it lets you choose the IPSWICH file, how do i do that with NVDA?

Hi Brad,

The issue with the VoiceOver sound effects being louder than Eloquence is also present in iOS 18. Here's what worked for me:

• Go to Settings> Accessibility> VoiceOver> Speech, and then either set an Eloquence voice as Primary or add it to your Roter.
  • If you already have an Eloquence voice in your Rotor, go to that voice and double-tap on it to edit the voice's configuration.
• Navigate to the 'Speech Volume' heading.
• Navigate to the slider for speech volume, one element to the right of the heading. VoiceOver should report that the slider is set to 1.
• Swipe up with one finger, as though to raise the volume. VoiceOver will still report that the volume level is set to 1, but in my experience, the volume of Eloquence increases nicely.

Michael, the trick you menchened does not seem to work for me, what could be the cause of this.

I'm wondering if anyone has had any luck using Braille access mode with a Mantis? I can get most things to work, but I can't save Braille notes. I somehow managed to save 2 notes, but after restarting my phone, I can no longer save Braille notes. If I use my Focus, I can save them with no problem at all. I'm not sure if I should report this as a bug or not. I'm not sure if Braille access is meant to work with the Mantis or not. I wonder if it's only meant to work with Perkins-style keyboards? Like I said, most features are working fine on the Mantis, so I'm not sure. The Mantis seems to automatically go into Braille input mode when you start Braille access. You do not have to press F12 to toggle it on or off.

I would absolutely report this.

I installed iOS 26 on iPhone 13 mini as soon as the phone booted up I can hear the clicks as a swipe left and right but VoiceOver is not working at all. Any suggestions please? Thank you

Hi

This is gonna not be easy to do but you might have to try changing voices, for me i lost speech but it came back after locking and unlocking my iPad a few times and speech came back, it was super laggy at first but it aventchually sorted it’s self out