Pro tip for anyone wanting to avoid liquid [gl]ass and install iOS 18.7.3: Apple is actively hiding 18.7.3 on most iPhones, despite the update showing on iPads. Perhaps a mistake, perhaps an attempt to force 26 onto users.
Simply select "iOS 18 Developer Beta" under beta updates (might need a developer account) and it will allow you to install it. The update currently offered is the production release.
Wow. I'm still on 18.7.1, saw the update to 18.7.2 yesterday (100% sure on this), but didn't want to install it at that moment as I needed the phone, and deferred the update to today.
Now I don't see any iOS 18 updates at all, only the iOS 26 prompts. What a dick move, Apple. Especially if this is a) a security update, and b) iOS 26 is known to run poorly on older phones like mine.
If your phone is laggy after liquid glass, Enabling "Reduce Motion" from Accessibility/Motion makes my 2020 iphone se much better. You can also disable transparency for even more frames, but it makes some UIs look particularly bad (because everything is transparent in frutiger aero/liquid glass)
Reduce Motion does give you the unfortunate side effect of realizing how much dead time there is between processing buttons. Many actions have a visible pause without apparent activity. I assume the software has a hardcoded delay for the animation or the program literally takes noticeable amount of time to process the action.
But may break Safari, in which case you’ll have to close safari, toggle the setting and open it again. The navbars float in the middle of webpages otherwise.
I can’t handle the swipe up to switch apps gesture with reduced motion it becomes too jarring. I set the glass to “tinted” and that’s about it. I wish they had a stronger disablement of just the glass.
Getting an iPhone model that comes with iOS 26 and cannot be downgraded: what a blunder. It’s not about Liquid Glass per se, more the ability to use your phone without being distracted by constant visual glitches and impaired keyboard typing experience.
I would say it's almost certainly a mistake or some side-effect of their system that rolls out updates where they don't happen exactly simultaneously.
Remember that Apple is also pushing that update out to serve their iPhones that cannot get iOS 26. Even if I was to maximize my cynicism, I don't think they presently use security point releases in the manner you are describing.
I don't think we can really ascertain intent, Apple has a long history of "the feature update IS the security update".
This partly relies on the "just update bro" attitude of sufficient fanbois to achieve upgrade momentum. Otherwise, let's be honest, no one would update, ever, our phones are too personal to be changing constantly.
This "bug" has been there for 2-3 days now. If it was a bug with their software delivery system, I assume it would have been fixed by now, it's affecting many people (with plenty of message board complaints to prove it).
Yes. Following a transition period of 2-3 months after each new major OS version, they withhold security updates for older OS versions from devices that could update to the new major version. The current 18.7.3 will likely be the last iOS 18 update made available to iPhone 11 and up, while the iPhone XS and XR, which can’t update to iOS 26, will continue to receive further security updates for iOS 18. This mode of operation has been the case for many years now.
Yes. Until a few years ago after a new major iOS version was released (eg. 26 for this year) the last major version (eg. 18 for this year) stopped getting updates, at least for phones that had access to the newer version. That changed a few years ago so that there was a period of overlap where both got updated.
For instance, look at the release history for iOS 12 and 13:
Nice though cosmetics are the least of my issues with 26. Usability really tanked across the OS, crap ton of baffling choices that make it much harder and unintuitive to use.
It's unfortunate that Apple has taught me (and I assume others as well) over the last 15 years that the best practice is to never install a major OS update.
It seems clear to me that they use OS updates as a way to eventually slow your device down so the lag becomes so annoying that you want to purchase a new device.
(Edit: And the really obnoxious part is that they force you to receive upgrade prompts every single day and you can't disable it.)
Unfortunately they have other ways to deprecate your device: App Stores won't work, apps won't talk to their backend with older versions or just straight up won't launch. Even Homebrew stopped supporting my 2015 Macbook I have for personal use.
Right, I think that was the point being made: I've had a closet of Apple hardware with no technical problems, but made useless due to Apple's software decisions.
With older Apple hardware you can usually find a working OS image, but Apple specifically is very strict with minimum OS versions for apps and deprecating APIs so that older iOS and macOS versions end up unable to install any software that hasn't had an older version archived somewhere, even if there's no real reason it shouldn't run on the hardware. You can only get older compatible versions of apps in the App Store if you happened to have purchased them before, again for no real reason other than inconvenience
> that older iOS and macOS versions end up unable to install any software that hasn't had an older version archived somewhere
iOS, sure. After a certain point, you need to be fine with simple functionality (but, I’ll add, more than adequate for most users, which means someone else could find use and value for what you treat as junk).
But macOS? What software? Everything I’m thinking of is graphics adjacent and significantly benefits from faster hardware. For almost everything else, a browser suffices.
I downgraded an old Macbook last year to see if I could get it running fast again. I couldn't install all sorts of things. So many things that I gave up.
No, what Apple made into junk by remotely flipping a switch. On an older iOS, you cannot log into your Apple ID any more, which then means you cannot update the OS any more. So you cannot upgrade, but you also cannot use the old OS for anything that requires you to be logged into your Apple account (which is practically everything). But you still get nagged at every turn that you need to log in and upgrade!
I don't know where this whole "Apple is slowing down my device" comes from, but it is misguided at best, and outright false at worst. My decades old iPod Touch, for example, still works today without performance issues. My oldest iPhones have no performance issues either, and they are (respectively) 9 and 10 years old. Do they still receive updates? Of course not! Neither do any of the other devices I have from the same era. My PC, built around the same time, doesn't even support Windows 11, and hasn't received a single BIOS update since 2020.
Apple was slowing down phones for a while, however, the general public entirely misunderstood why: At a certain point, the battery could not maintain the voltages required to keep the phone operating properly at all (if you understand silicon, you will understand why...CPU needs 1.5v, battery can provide 1.4v...and boom!), so Apple did the most graceful thing they could and they down clocked the phones rather than letting them abruptly turn off. That led to millions of people in a certain era of iPhone being able to use their phones...just more slowly...vs not being able to use them the second voltage > supply voltage...which basically means any remotely demanding app. They were (rightfully) sued because they made the change without informing the user first. They didn't have to touch the phones, period. They tried to allow the phones to be used/data recovered from gracefully.
Don't misunderstand me, I am not willing to defend the practices of any business at all, especially Apple (I've worked from, and walked away from, some despicable companies in my time as an engineer), however Apple went above and beyond to let folks continue to use their devices. If you think otherwise, I've a box full of android and non Android phones and tablets that the likes of Google, Samsung, LG, HTC, etc. all quickly abandoned.
For comparison, the Google Pixel 3a (among others) was released the same year and saw it's last major OS update in 2022. iPhone 11? Still receives updates to this day. No, they aren't slowing the phone down. Trust me, my non technical spouse would have complained super loudly by now. More importantly, I, as her tech support person would've. She is on 26.2 right now.
There is a time and place to bash Apple, however hardware/software support definitely isn't the place. If you think that the current OS/update you have installed is purposefully and intentionally slowing your phone in order to push you to update, please feel free to publish your testing and results...and make sure you isolate every other variable like filling up internal storage, running 50,000 apps at once, expecting any application made within the past 6-7 years to peform at top speed, etc.
Also make sure you aren't falling for things such as confirmation bias or worse: you simply parrot what others say because your decade old phone, much like your decade old PC,feels slower now than it did a decade ago, when apps and games were simpler, and didn't embed entire browser engines in order to display content.
Cheers, btw, and I mean no disrespect to anyone. Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays.
I have a 4 year old M1 macbook pro running macos 12. It runs as good as when it was new. So you honestly think that if I upgrade it to macos 26 it wont start lagging? I am extremely confident that it will. Even without changing the other software running on it.
Honestly, the closet I mentioned were late PPC to mid Intel era. Those machines (putting aside the architecture changes) regularly outlived their ability to practically run the latest Mac OS, full stop. I am not even willing to say that wasn't intentional, because it was so conspicuous. Perhaps it wasn't 'designed' to do that, but minimally, I can say Apple did not maintain what I would consider minimum performance standards for the hardware they claimed their OS to support.
Maybe that's ancient history now, but from what it sounds like, they still have users that distrust their releases. When you say "I don't know where this is coming from" then a few lines later describe the known practice and the reason, well there you are. I guess it's a brand trust thing, and it sticks.
Like my brother printer's software. It kept pestering me to apply updates, and when I did, my non-genuine cartridges stopped working. So, never update the printer's software.
Damn. I bought brother just so I wouldn't be locked into overpriced cartridges. Although what I've been doing now is to reuse the starter cartridge, add some very inexpensive third-party toner to it, and reset the pages counter. It has worked well for the past few years.
They are not anymore, aim to buy an old used model. You can look up online to find out when they started their scammy behavior and which models to target.
13Mini+Lockdown mode user reporting here: I did a battery upgrade alongside the iOS 26 upgrade, and regretted switching to iOS26. It slowed down things wayy to much, the keyboard often lagged by dozens of keystrokes, and the camera app stopped working with 26.1.
I gave up yesterday, and disabled lockdown mode (and upgraded to 26.2). Seems fine now, but liquid glass is still a usability nightmare.
Apple users not updating major OSes goes back to the 90s with System 7. It's a seemingly weird habit that some formed even as exposure to vulnerabilities increased.
> It seems clear to me that they use OS updates as a way to eventually slow your device down
This sounds like an exaggeration of what happens after an upgrade: iOS has to re-index your entire phone for Spotlight, etc. Same thing for Photos if there have been changes.
Depending on which phone and the amount of storage, your phone can feel kind of sluggish for a while until the background indexing is done.
If you update before you go to sleep, your device will be fine in the morning.
I literally went out and bought the latest iPhone after my 4.5 years old, perfectly working iPhone 12 was forced to update to iOS 26.2 overnight, and next day was not usable anymore. It turned so slow that I went to an apple store and bought the latest.
I don't think so. There is always a cutoff for the last major version they recommend for any hardware. Why is the cutoff always after it lags the device severely and not -before- that happens?
> Apple today released iOS 26.2, iPadOS 26.2, and macOS 26.2
For those as confused as me, I'm on macOS 15.6.1, and it seems for the next version they aligned everything and I do indeed see an update for "macOS Tahoe 26.2". However, I also see a Sequoia 15.7.3 update dated at the same time and together in the same upgrade blog post (and for Sonoma 14.8.3, kudos), so for those that doesn't seem to want to do the jump now into Liquid Glass, that seems available:
There appears to be a dark pattern occurring where the Tahoe update is selected by default and you need to uncheck it to just install the security update.
Is there a new technological space race between Microsoft and Apple, to see who can engineer more dark patterns into their software, forcing unwanted updates onto its users?
These techniques used to be exclusive to spyware distributors.
"Leon Cowle was brave enough to try this out, and, it turns out, just clicking the 'Update Now' button next to Sequoia will, thankfully, do the right thing: install the Sequoia 15.7.2 update, not Tahoe."
This suggests someone forgot to update the "ⓘ" text. Not a dark pattern.
No, I would certainly say it is. Checking the blog post linked in this thread, I find selecting a different version to be both hidden and also have (intentionally?) bad UX. That is exactly what a dark pattern is: making a surprising choice (major upgrade) the default while hiding away the less disruptive or even non-disruptive choice (minor upgrade).
Nothing stops Apple from advertising both at the same level.
That's ridiculous. Like, not even rising to the level of being worth arguing about. There's an entire book that defines dark pattern, you should probably go read it if you intend to use the phrase.
No, because following major software updates is the right thing for 99% of people, not staying behind on a previous major version with security updates.
You have to think about UX for 99%, not just for HNers who might know what a 15.7.3 is.
> No, because following major software updates is the right thing for 99% of people
Not if we aren’t talking about security updates. In this case the previous version of iOS also has the same security updates so ‘updating’ to a new version is completely up to the user, with no difference in security posture either way. Tricking users into updating for what are in the tech company’s opinion ‘new features’ is by definition a dark pattern.
If there are security updates, then actually staying on the old OS is probably better for 99% of users. Constant change is almost impossible for most people to deal with.
Having a default choice is not itself a dark pattern. Offering a free update to the latest version of the project, and a choice to update a branch release instead, does not constitute a dark pattern.
“Access user data” “see apps user has installed” “gain root access”.
Maybe worth staying on to jailbreak or if you hate IOS Aero edition. Icons are blurry now. Slow usage. Going to beta 18.7.3 Then maybe android. Idk about these new UI changes that are forced with no absolute removal.
I have a powerful MacBook Pro M2 Max with 32 GB of RAM. I updated it to macOS 26 since that it became a lot slower than my MacBook Air M1 with just 16 GB of RAM that I left on macOS Sequoia 15.7.x… What an irony given that my MacBook Pro has way better hardware specs.
There is a bug in Electron caused by the use of a private API that slows down macOS 26 significantly. It’s fixed in Electron but not all Electron apps have updated to the new version yet. Apparently it’s fixed in macOS 26.2
So far all of the comments are about the glass ui...I'm glad the bugs were squashed. Nice! But am curious what the metric is for determining when to push out security updates. Did they have 19 accumulated and were like "hey let's just wait til 1 more comes through"?
The vulnerabilities listed[0] look pretty severe. I've got a 2016 iPhoneSE running iOS 15. It receives the odd security update (last one was on September 15 this year), but I imagine if these vulnerabilities aren't backported it would be pretty insecure. Currently my bank still supports iOS 15 but I wonder for how much longer?
Do I understand correctly that they just switched to calver, but called the 2025 release "version 26" for marketing reasons (like year numbers for car models)?
My iPhone 12 mini was bugging me about it the other day. I declined it. I don't want liquid glass and whatever else it does to make that phone feel slower and less usable. I refuse to buy a newer iPhone. They are all too big.
12 mini user here. Phone is just as slow and usable as prior to updating to 26. (Immediately after updating was slow for a little while which scared me initially, but I think it was just still doing some background stuff related to updating).
13 mini here too and last iPhone/smartphone I will buy.
Settings > Accessibility > Motion > Reduce motion and Settings > Accessibility > Display and text size > Reduce transparency make it usable-ish. There is hundreds of ms lag at times inexplicably w/touch and upwards of a second plus when connected to CarPlay. But I can't blame iOS 26. I have to reboot this thing sometimes weekly, sometimes less frequent than that since iOS 18. I can no longer justify spending hundreds of dollars on things that don't meet my standard of "works" even if it's 2025.
Security updates are typically available for the most current 2 OS versions, and 18 is still officially supported, perhaps until 2026 or 2027. 18.7.3 exists with similar security updates as 26.2. It may not show up on iPhone as an update option without being on the beta 18 channel because they're trying to force people onto 26 using dark patterns, but it shows up on iPadOS without any additional magic.
Thanks for your support. I also find these dark patterns unacceptable and even as a technical person one needs forums to figure out why it only shows the 26.2 update very prominently and not the relevant one. x
We can argue over whether 3 extra taps to access counts as "acceptable" or not, but it's clearly not enough of a hurdle to be considered "not available". Otherwise you might as well count iOS 26 as not being available either, because that needs at least 4 taps to install (settings -> about -> software updates -> install -> enter pin -> ok).
I wish they fixed the keyboard focus and UI shifts around that. It's one of the most buggy things I've ever seen, oftentimes I can't even see what I'm typing because everything is offset in weird and incorrect ways.
The pre 26.2 less-glassy options were bearable because they were mostly like pre-Tahoe. The post 26.2 less-glassy options are now so shit that I’m using glassy mode, despite it being also ugly, distracting and harder to read than ever before. Apple have absolutely trashed their OS and their “Apple make good UIs” pedigree. It’s such a disappoibtment. I hope they come to their senses in the next major release round.
Thanks for that link. Before reading I was in the process of migrating all my stuff from a Windows7 machine, deduping archives and identifying software that I may still need to run in a VM somewhere or on a tablet. I had considered flipping to Apple devices since I have an iPhone but have never pulled the trigger on any of that. I was considering iMacs instead of a Linux box for a more seamless interface with the phone.
After reading that article where it is apparent that Apple has intentionally used terms that sound similar to obscure what the customer is actually gaining when they upgrade versus update and they intentionally omit the part about older devices not getting all the security updates that are pushed in the updates. I now have some clarity.
I can focus on moving to Linux and in time will be ditching the iPhone. Should've done this years ago.
> Note: Because of dependency on architecture and system changes to any current version of Apple operating systems (for example, macOS 26, iOS 26, and so on), not all known security issues are addressed in previous versions (for example, macOS 15, iOS 18, and so on).
You will not think about liquid glass after a day, especially if you turn on the new options. There's no need for everyone here to contort themselves into not installing these updates. The new features in all the OS upgrades are very much worth it.
You're not going to add text message spam filtering to your phone because they changed the border radius or blur or whatever?
> You will not think about liquid glass after a day, especially if you turn on the new options.
I wouldn’t say so. The “Increase Contrast” and “Show Borders” accessibility options make liquid glass just bearable to me, but the new UI design is still ungracefully buggy and unnecessarily hard(er) to use. (See e.g. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/liquid-glass/ for a detailed discussion.)
Sure, life goes on. However, considering the price tag of an iPhone/iPad, I understand how iOS 26 is off-putting to so many people – despite all the other new features.
And I think everyone agrees that it is your choice to install IOS 26 on your phone.
Personally I will skip IOS 26 and stay on IOS 18 and maybe upgrade to IOS 27 when it comes out next year (if by then all the bad UI decisions have been reversed).
I had a play around with a friend's phone who was updated to IOS 26 and honestly It just doesnt work for me in it's current state.
It’s not worth skipping an upgrade, it’s just misleading to describe iOS 26 as an upgrade. My iPhone 16 pro can’t manage a stable frame rate on the Home Screen anymore. And nearly every screen has a bug.
- If I scroll a web page, and then decide to close it, I have to wait 'til the browser finishes scrolling the page before it'll open the menu with the close button
- every single time I watch a video my eye is drawn to the fucking stupid glass-y diffraction patterns and away from the content I was watching, or the play/pause icon I was interacting with
- every single time I use the home screen on iOS, or CMD+tab in macOS, my eye is drawn to the glass-y highlights around the icons, distracting me from whatever I was trying to do and causing me to think about the OS (and how much I hate the new look)
- I keep noticing the stupidly wide rounded corners on apps
- I keep noticing how the glassy icons and controls and stuff don't consistently change color with dark/light mode. They sometimes change if the content behind them is light/dark (which you'd think is a contrast improvement but it wouldn't be necessary if they had boxed out the toolbars like before). Often half the buttons have changed to contrast with the background and half haven't. This makes all the icons harder to read because I have to interpret the whole set to work out why it's suddenly slightly confusing
- I keep noticing how the toolbar icons have this insane shadows making them appear about 5meters closer to my face than the rest of the scree, which pulls my attention away from whatever I was looking at
- I keep noticing how some icons have those annoying highlighted edges and some don't and wondering why that is, and if they'll all come in sync...
- ... and the glassy-highlighted icons look like shit because the highlights are all the same (same color, same angle, same spread around the edges of the icons), which wouldn't happen if they were actual physical things under natural illumination
- since iOS 26.2, the increase contrast and reduce transparency modes have got worse: they seriously mess with the colors, in many case the light/dark relationship is inverted from what would be most useful (I can't think of examples now - it was so annoying I actually switched back to glassy to allow my eye a sense of comfort when using the thing, and now I try to put up with the "eye candy" distractions instead). I used to have "increase contrast" turned on with the last several major iOS versions. The new scheme has made it slightly harder to use the phone.
And I'm not even getting to how everything is harder to read, harder to see. It's _dreadful_ and they should fire everyone from the C-level who signed it off downwards.
I definitely still notice the (inconsistent? Only occasional? Which makes it even worse) parts of my UI that now look like something from a circa 2001 Java (specifically—not flash, it’s the “cool” Java aesthetic of the time with its image blurring and filtering an such, not the differently-bad “cool” flash aesthetic) applet gfx-heavy web site menu.
Plus there’s the pile of outright visual bugs and glitches. Like my keyboard opening with one size, then after a moment resizing itself a few pixels narrower because it initially rendered a little too big and off center to the right, like a badly-designed webpage. Every single time I open it. Including to write and edit this comment.
I also notice that I had to turn a bunch of accessibility features on so I wouldn’t constantly see animations with tons of dropped frames making me feel like I’m playing a bad port of a 3D PlayStation 2 game on a Gameboy Advance.
On work devices I've been using iOS 26 since early betas and macOS 26 for a few weeks now, and I still think about the user experience degradation. On the bright side — it makes me appreciate iOS 18 and macOS 15 more.
At this point I'm not contorting myself into skipping an update; I'm looking at exiting the entire Apple ecosystem. I don't want Liquid Glass to be my computing experience for the next numerous years.
I installed iPadOS 26 specifically for the new windowing features. I like the glass look as a concept. But the actual implementation of it is total dogshit. I cannot go a day without seeing the OS render black-on-black or white-on-white text, especially in the status indicators at the top of the device. There are so many little things regarding automatic color contrast in UIKit that are just poorly thought out or broken.
The thing is, Liquid Glass is already using a shader to render the refraction effect on top of the other UI layers. But - at least from my own developer experiments - it doesn't actually use anything graphical to determine what background color it needs to contrast against[1]. Instead, it looks through the view hierarchy for a view on the same edge as the toolbar the widget is in, and then grabs some undocumented[0] property from that view to determine its background. This fails if there's a split. Build, say, a toolbar layout and put two views inside of it, split 50% vertically with one having a black background and the other white. Put items in your toolbar on both left and right sides. They will either be all black or all white, only contrasting with half the screen.
[0] Or, at least, I have yet to find out what this property is.
[1] Hell, for icons and text they could XOR the alpha mask with the underlying pixels, or a blurred version thereof, to make text that will always contrast.
Pro tip for anyone wanting to avoid liquid [gl]ass and install iOS 18.7.3: Apple is actively hiding 18.7.3 on most iPhones, despite the update showing on iPads. Perhaps a mistake, perhaps an attempt to force 26 onto users.
Simply select "iOS 18 Developer Beta" under beta updates (might need a developer account) and it will allow you to install it. The update currently offered is the production release.
Wow. I'm still on 18.7.1, saw the update to 18.7.2 yesterday (100% sure on this), but didn't want to install it at that moment as I needed the phone, and deferred the update to today.
Now I don't see any iOS 18 updates at all, only the iOS 26 prompts. What a dick move, Apple. Especially if this is a) a security update, and b) iOS 26 is known to run poorly on older phones like mine.
Thanks for the workaround!
If your phone is laggy after liquid glass, Enabling "Reduce Motion" from Accessibility/Motion makes my 2020 iphone se much better. You can also disable transparency for even more frames, but it makes some UIs look particularly bad (because everything is transparent in frutiger aero/liquid glass)
Reduce Motion does give you the unfortunate side effect of realizing how much dead time there is between processing buttons. Many actions have a visible pause without apparent activity. I assume the software has a hardcoded delay for the animation or the program literally takes noticeable amount of time to process the action.
In the days of jailbreaking, a popular tweak was to reduce the animation delay, so this is definitely a thing iOS does.
I tried this on iPhone 17 (regular), the phone became more or less unusable. ~500-2000ms lag when changing or closing an application.
The liquidglass experience was bad, but reduce motion was unusable.
But may break Safari, in which case you’ll have to close safari, toggle the setting and open it again. The navbars float in the middle of webpages otherwise.
I can’t handle the swipe up to switch apps gesture with reduced motion it becomes too jarring. I set the glass to “tinted” and that’s about it. I wish they had a stronger disablement of just the glass.
Getting an iPhone model that comes with iOS 26 and cannot be downgraded: what a blunder. It’s not about Liquid Glass per se, more the ability to use your phone without being distracted by constant visual glitches and impaired keyboard typing experience.
The keyboard is already poor on iOS 18; does it regress even further?
It worked well for me until iOS 26. Dictation improved, keyboard typing did the opposite.
You're right. This worked for me. I'm now offered 18.7.3 and wasn't before.
It is also available as a public beta, which you can register for at https://beta.apple.com/
Thank you! Done. Here's hoping they continue to give v18 sec updates until v26+ UX and perf are fixed...
It’s available as a public beta, no need for a developer account.
I would say it's almost certainly a mistake or some side-effect of their system that rolls out updates where they don't happen exactly simultaneously.
Remember that Apple is also pushing that update out to serve their iPhones that cannot get iOS 26. Even if I was to maximize my cynicism, I don't think they presently use security point releases in the manner you are describing.
I don't think we can really ascertain intent, Apple has a long history of "the feature update IS the security update".
This partly relies on the "just update bro" attitude of sufficient fanbois to achieve upgrade momentum. Otherwise, let's be honest, no one would update, ever, our phones are too personal to be changing constantly.
This "bug" has been there for 2-3 days now. If it was a bug with their software delivery system, I assume it would have been fixed by now, it's affecting many people (with plenty of message board complaints to prove it).
> Apple has a long history of "the feature update IS the security update".
Do they?
Yes. Following a transition period of 2-3 months after each new major OS version, they withhold security updates for older OS versions from devices that could update to the new major version. The current 18.7.3 will likely be the last iOS 18 update made available to iPhone 11 and up, while the iPhone XS and XR, which can’t update to iOS 26, will continue to receive further security updates for iOS 18. This mode of operation has been the case for many years now.
Yes. Until a few years ago after a new major iOS version was released (eg. 26 for this year) the last major version (eg. 18 for this year) stopped getting updates, at least for phones that had access to the newer version. That changed a few years ago so that there was a period of overlap where both got updated.
For instance, look at the release history for iOS 12 and 13:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_12#Version_history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_13#Release_history
After 13 was released (September 19, 2019) there were no more updates for iOS 12, at least for the devices that support iOS 13.
Also, 26.2 lets you choose a "Tinted" (vs. Clear) style that effectively addresses the primary cosmetic criticism of Liquid Glass.
Nice though cosmetics are the least of my issues with 26. Usability really tanked across the OS, crap ton of baffling choices that make it much harder and unintuitive to use.
This has been a thing since 26.1 I believe.
I believe so, too. I’ve updated to 26.2 today and haven’t seen any changes on the interface front.
It doesn't address the UI elements that used to be on an opaque pane, and now are floating above a busy, blurred mess.
It's unfortunate that Apple has taught me (and I assume others as well) over the last 15 years that the best practice is to never install a major OS update.
It seems clear to me that they use OS updates as a way to eventually slow your device down so the lag becomes so annoying that you want to purchase a new device.
(Edit: And the really obnoxious part is that they force you to receive upgrade prompts every single day and you can't disable it.)
Unfortunately they have other ways to deprecate your device: App Stores won't work, apps won't talk to their backend with older versions or just straight up won't launch. Even Homebrew stopped supporting my 2015 Macbook I have for personal use.
> they have other ways to deprecate your device
This is a wild take for a company known for the long lives of its devices.
Right, I think that was the point being made: I've had a closet of Apple hardware with no technical problems, but made useless due to Apple's software decisions.
> I've had a closet of Apple hardware with no technical problems, but made useless due to Apple's software decisions
You can do this to any product. (As can you undo it by wiping and reinstalling an old image.)
With older Apple hardware you can usually find a working OS image, but Apple specifically is very strict with minimum OS versions for apps and deprecating APIs so that older iOS and macOS versions end up unable to install any software that hasn't had an older version archived somewhere, even if there's no real reason it shouldn't run on the hardware. You can only get older compatible versions of apps in the App Store if you happened to have purchased them before, again for no real reason other than inconvenience
> that older iOS and macOS versions end up unable to install any software that hasn't had an older version archived somewhere
iOS, sure. After a certain point, you need to be fine with simple functionality (but, I’ll add, more than adequate for most users, which means someone else could find use and value for what you treat as junk).
But macOS? What software? Everything I’m thinking of is graphics adjacent and significantly benefits from faster hardware. For almost everything else, a browser suffices.
I downgraded an old Macbook last year to see if I could get it running fast again. I couldn't install all sorts of things. So many things that I gave up.
> for what you treat as junk
No, what Apple made into junk by remotely flipping a switch. On an older iOS, you cannot log into your Apple ID any more, which then means you cannot update the OS any more. So you cannot upgrade, but you also cannot use the old OS for anything that requires you to be logged into your Apple account (which is practically everything). But you still get nagged at every turn that you need to log in and upgrade!
I don't know where this whole "Apple is slowing down my device" comes from, but it is misguided at best, and outright false at worst. My decades old iPod Touch, for example, still works today without performance issues. My oldest iPhones have no performance issues either, and they are (respectively) 9 and 10 years old. Do they still receive updates? Of course not! Neither do any of the other devices I have from the same era. My PC, built around the same time, doesn't even support Windows 11, and hasn't received a single BIOS update since 2020.
Apple was slowing down phones for a while, however, the general public entirely misunderstood why: At a certain point, the battery could not maintain the voltages required to keep the phone operating properly at all (if you understand silicon, you will understand why...CPU needs 1.5v, battery can provide 1.4v...and boom!), so Apple did the most graceful thing they could and they down clocked the phones rather than letting them abruptly turn off. That led to millions of people in a certain era of iPhone being able to use their phones...just more slowly...vs not being able to use them the second voltage > supply voltage...which basically means any remotely demanding app. They were (rightfully) sued because they made the change without informing the user first. They didn't have to touch the phones, period. They tried to allow the phones to be used/data recovered from gracefully.
Don't misunderstand me, I am not willing to defend the practices of any business at all, especially Apple (I've worked from, and walked away from, some despicable companies in my time as an engineer), however Apple went above and beyond to let folks continue to use their devices. If you think otherwise, I've a box full of android and non Android phones and tablets that the likes of Google, Samsung, LG, HTC, etc. all quickly abandoned.
For comparison, the Google Pixel 3a (among others) was released the same year and saw it's last major OS update in 2022. iPhone 11? Still receives updates to this day. No, they aren't slowing the phone down. Trust me, my non technical spouse would have complained super loudly by now. More importantly, I, as her tech support person would've. She is on 26.2 right now.
There is a time and place to bash Apple, however hardware/software support definitely isn't the place. If you think that the current OS/update you have installed is purposefully and intentionally slowing your phone in order to push you to update, please feel free to publish your testing and results...and make sure you isolate every other variable like filling up internal storage, running 50,000 apps at once, expecting any application made within the past 6-7 years to peform at top speed, etc.
Also make sure you aren't falling for things such as confirmation bias or worse: you simply parrot what others say because your decade old phone, much like your decade old PC,feels slower now than it did a decade ago, when apps and games were simpler, and didn't embed entire browser engines in order to display content.
Cheers, btw, and I mean no disrespect to anyone. Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays.
I have a 4 year old M1 macbook pro running macos 12. It runs as good as when it was new. So you honestly think that if I upgrade it to macos 26 it wont start lagging? I am extremely confident that it will. Even without changing the other software running on it.
Probably for a day or two as various indexes and caches are rebuilt in the background, and then not.
I use 26.x on an "original" 8GB M1 MacBook Air and it's as fine as it ever was.
(I also have a MBP, various Mac Mini's and other desktops, so it's not that I'm just used to everything being slow).
Honestly, the closet I mentioned were late PPC to mid Intel era. Those machines (putting aside the architecture changes) regularly outlived their ability to practically run the latest Mac OS, full stop. I am not even willing to say that wasn't intentional, because it was so conspicuous. Perhaps it wasn't 'designed' to do that, but minimally, I can say Apple did not maintain what I would consider minimum performance standards for the hardware they claimed their OS to support.
Maybe that's ancient history now, but from what it sounds like, they still have users that distrust their releases. When you say "I don't know where this is coming from" then a few lines later describe the known practice and the reason, well there you are. I guess it's a brand trust thing, and it sticks.
These two things are not exclusive:
- Apple used to provide updates for longer than the rest of the industry.
- Apple has a history of using updates to make old devices less usable (see battery-gate or the current issue with Liquid glass).
Nothing wild there.
Other companies are now catching up on supports because the EU made longer support window mandatory. We will see how this pans out for Apple.
Like my brother printer's software. It kept pestering me to apply updates, and when I did, my non-genuine cartridges stopped working. So, never update the printer's software.
Damn. I bought brother just so I wouldn't be locked into overpriced cartridges. Although what I've been doing now is to reuse the starter cartridge, add some very inexpensive third-party toner to it, and reset the pages counter. It has worked well for the past few years.
My HP scanner software updated and took away all the advanced options and required a login with a Facebook account to scan. Never again HP
wow I thought brother was a respectable brand. thanks for sharing this.
They are not anymore, aim to buy an old used model. You can look up online to find out when they started their scammy behavior and which models to target.
> I assume others as well
Running iOS 17.6.1 on my iPhone 13 mini right now. I've got a backup iPhone 13 mini new in the box with the factory OS still installed (just in case).
I'm hoping my devices can hold out longer than Apple can remain irrational.
>Running iOS 17.6.1 on my iPhone 13 mini right now.
You really shouldn't. There are dozens of RCE exploits, some of which were found in the wild, that you're missing out patches for.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/100100
Personally I run lockdown mode and hope for the best.
It sounds like 26.2 might be approaching usable status on the mini but I'd want a battery replacement too.
13Mini+Lockdown mode user reporting here: I did a battery upgrade alongside the iOS 26 upgrade, and regretted switching to iOS26. It slowed down things wayy to much, the keyboard often lagged by dozens of keystrokes, and the camera app stopped working with 26.1.
I gave up yesterday, and disabled lockdown mode (and upgraded to 26.2). Seems fine now, but liquid glass is still a usability nightmare.
> And the really obnoxious part is that they force you to receive upgrade prompts every single day and you can't disable it
Enable iOS 18 Developer Beta and the nag screens go away.
I just enabled it. Thanks for the tip.
I did this to install 18.7.3 on an iPhone that was only presenting 26.2 without any other option.
Software that doesn't allow you to downgrade should be just as much a no-no as software that doesn't have Undo functionality.
Apple users not updating major OSes goes back to the 90s with System 7. It's a seemingly weird habit that some formed even as exposure to vulnerabilities increased.
That's a totally reasonable practice, I would say x.2 releases are mostly fine and have the rough edges polishes.
> It seems clear to me that they use OS updates as a way to eventually slow your device down
This sounds like an exaggeration of what happens after an upgrade: iOS has to re-index your entire phone for Spotlight, etc. Same thing for Photos if there have been changes.
Depending on which phone and the amount of storage, your phone can feel kind of sluggish for a while until the background indexing is done.
If you update before you go to sleep, your device will be fine in the morning.
I literally went out and bought the latest iPhone after my 4.5 years old, perfectly working iPhone 12 was forced to update to iOS 26.2 overnight, and next day was not usable anymore. It turned so slow that I went to an apple store and bought the latest.
How long did you give it? Often various indexes are rebuilt after a major update and that can take a while. It’s running fine on my iPhone 11.
Wow, you're loyal!
This is sarcasm right?
Your theory is real but its not the main purpose, it’s a happy accident for Apple. Otherwise there’d be a class action.
I don't think so. There is always a cutoff for the last major version they recommend for any hardware. Why is the cutoff always after it lags the device severely and not -before- that happens?
I mean, they got a class action before for turning on CPU throttling after a major update without informing the user, to "preserve battery health".
> Apple today released iOS 26.2, iPadOS 26.2, and macOS 26.2
For those as confused as me, I'm on macOS 15.6.1, and it seems for the next version they aligned everything and I do indeed see an update for "macOS Tahoe 26.2". However, I also see a Sequoia 15.7.3 update dated at the same time and together in the same upgrade blog post (and for Sonoma 14.8.3, kudos), so for those that doesn't seem to want to do the jump now into Liquid Glass, that seems available:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/100100
Note: I had to click the [i], then unselect the "macOS Tahoe 26.2" and select the "macOS Sequoia 15.7.3" manually to avoid a full upgrade.
There appears to be a dark pattern occurring where the Tahoe update is selected by default and you need to uncheck it to just install the security update.
Is there a new technological space race between Microsoft and Apple, to see who can engineer more dark patterns into their software, forcing unwanted updates onto its users?
These techniques used to be exclusive to spyware distributors.
Yes, it’s “spyware” to want you to update an OS. That’s definitely the definition of that. Good job for decoding conspiracy.
Details: https://daringfireball.net/2025/11/software_update_tahoe_con...
"Leon Cowle was brave enough to try this out, and, it turns out, just clicking the 'Update Now' button next to Sequoia will, thankfully, do the right thing: install the Sequoia 15.7.2 update, not Tahoe."
This suggests someone forgot to update the "ⓘ" text. Not a dark pattern.
It’s the same on iPad. You get a notification about 18.7.3 being available, but when tapping on it, the update screen preselects 26.2.
Offering the most recent update first is not a "dark pattern".
That is not what "dark pattern" means.
No, I would certainly say it is. Checking the blog post linked in this thread, I find selecting a different version to be both hidden and also have (intentionally?) bad UX. That is exactly what a dark pattern is: making a surprising choice (major upgrade) the default while hiding away the less disruptive or even non-disruptive choice (minor upgrade).
Nothing stops Apple from advertising both at the same level.
That's ridiculous. Like, not even rising to the level of being worth arguing about. There's an entire book that defines dark pattern, you should probably go read it if you intend to use the phrase.
Uh, yeah it is?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern
No, because following major software updates is the right thing for 99% of people, not staying behind on a previous major version with security updates.
You have to think about UX for 99%, not just for HNers who might know what a 15.7.3 is.
> No, because following major software updates is the right thing for 99% of people
Not if we aren’t talking about security updates. In this case the previous version of iOS also has the same security updates so ‘updating’ to a new version is completely up to the user, with no difference in security posture either way. Tricking users into updating for what are in the tech company’s opinion ‘new features’ is by definition a dark pattern.
If there are security updates, then actually staying on the old OS is probably better for 99% of users. Constant change is almost impossible for most people to deal with.
Having a default choice is not itself a dark pattern. Offering a free update to the latest version of the project, and a choice to update a branch release instead, does not constitute a dark pattern.
The dark pattern emerges when you mislead the user about what they’re clicking. Deception in the UI is by definition a dark pattern.
Weird hill for you to die on given that dark patterns have been specifically legislated for in many jurisdictions and have a clear definition.
How can I install iOS 18.7.3? The settings app only shows 26.2 which I do not want to install.
Give it a couple days for 18.7.3 to show up (I’m trying this myself) or download the ipsw for ios 18.7.3 and use a computer to install.
I don't believe an IPSW for 18.7.3 was released except for devices that couldn't upgrade to iOS 26. I believe this is done to prevent downgrades.
Apple doesn’t provide IPSWs once the next major version has launched. OTA is the only option.
You can also join the iOS 18 public beta to get the update.
How do you do that? And do you need an AppleID to do so?
If you have the tolerance for betas, indeed
Someone above said that the 18.7.3 you can install as beta is in fact the production build. Disable beta access after that update.
Correct, both are the same build (22H217). BetaWiki has this build labeled as both the RC and the actual release: https://betawiki.net/wiki/IOS_18
Somehow my phone auto-updated to iOS 26. My advice is don't do it. Litreally everything is worse.
Apple use to put function first, then form followed, then polished till it was a natural experience.
Please review the vulnerability list. https://support.apple.com/en-us/125885
“Access user data” “see apps user has installed” “gain root access”.
Maybe worth staying on to jailbreak or if you hate IOS Aero edition. Icons are blurry now. Slow usage. Going to beta 18.7.3 Then maybe android. Idk about these new UI changes that are forced with no absolute removal.
I have a powerful MacBook Pro M2 Max with 32 GB of RAM. I updated it to macOS 26 since that it became a lot slower than my MacBook Air M1 with just 16 GB of RAM that I left on macOS Sequoia 15.7.x… What an irony given that my MacBook Pro has way better hardware specs.
Do you happen to have an app on this list open (https://avarayr.github.io/shamelectron/) ?
There is a bug in Electron caused by the use of a private API that slows down macOS 26 significantly. It’s fixed in Electron but not all Electron apps have updated to the new version yet. Apparently it’s fixed in macOS 26.2
I do know about it! I even did a few PRs in the past :) https://github.com/avarayr/shamelectron/pulls?q=is%3Apr+auth...
They do it on purpose and they're being very blatant about it now
Someone will maybe come along and tell you it's just "indexing" slowing it down and to wait a few weeks lol. That's the common gaslighting method
So far all of the comments are about the glass ui...I'm glad the bugs were squashed. Nice! But am curious what the metric is for determining when to push out security updates. Did they have 19 accumulated and were like "hey let's just wait til 1 more comes through"?
They roll out critical security updates immediately. Either through the app, or RSR fixes.
Then they have more or less monthly security updates, and bundle some into minor releases to not force too many updates which require rebooting.
Give me ios emoji
Backport please? I don’t want glass ui
See discussion elsewhere in this thread on updating to 15.7.3:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46264741
The vulnerabilities listed[0] look pretty severe. I've got a 2016 iPhoneSE running iOS 15. It receives the odd security update (last one was on September 15 this year), but I imagine if these vulnerabilities aren't backported it would be pretty insecure. Currently my bank still supports iOS 15 but I wonder for how much longer?
[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/125885
I don't have one of these devices.
Do I understand correctly that they just switched to calver, but called the 2025 release "version 26" for marketing reasons (like year numbers for car models)?
There are plenty of examples of software with year-based version numbers that are released in the Fall prior to that year.
Liquid Glass is now mandatory if you care about security. Sigh.
I wanted to like it too, but some of the new UI modals of iOS 26 are just awful.
It's not, iOS 18.7.3 also released https://support.apple.com/en-us/125885
It is not available. The release is 2 days old and the download is not showing up on the phone.
My iPhone 12 mini was bugging me about it the other day. I declined it. I don't want liquid glass and whatever else it does to make that phone feel slower and less usable. I refuse to buy a newer iPhone. They are all too big.
12 mini user here. Phone is just as slow and usable as prior to updating to 26. (Immediately after updating was slow for a little while which scared me initially, but I think it was just still doing some background stuff related to updating).
13 mini here too and last iPhone/smartphone I will buy.
Settings > Accessibility > Motion > Reduce motion and Settings > Accessibility > Display and text size > Reduce transparency make it usable-ish. There is hundreds of ms lag at times inexplicably w/touch and upwards of a second plus when connected to CarPlay. But I can't blame iOS 26. I have to reboot this thing sometimes weekly, sometimes less frequent than that since iOS 18. I can no longer justify spending hundreds of dollars on things that don't meet my standard of "works" even if it's 2025.
Wrong. Enable 18 beta, refresh, install 18.7.3, disable beta. Problem solved.
Security updates are typically available for the most current 2 OS versions, and 18 is still officially supported, perhaps until 2026 or 2027. 18.7.3 exists with similar security updates as 26.2. It may not show up on iPhone as an update option without being on the beta 18 channel because they're trying to force people onto 26 using dark patterns, but it shows up on iPadOS without any additional magic.
Genuinely didn’t know it was hidden behind a beta flag. Ty for this!
This worked for me, thanks.
Having to toggle the beta is not acceptable and the parent is right to class that as not available
Thanks for your support. I also find these dark patterns unacceptable and even as a technical person one needs forums to figure out why it only shows the 26.2 update very prominently and not the relevant one. x
We can argue over whether 3 extra taps to access counts as "acceptable" or not, but it's clearly not enough of a hurdle to be considered "not available". Otherwise you might as well count iOS 26 as not being available either, because that needs at least 4 taps to install (settings -> about -> software updates -> install -> enter pin -> ok).
It's about being a hidden trick, and you know it.
Way to move the goalposts. The comments prior to your comment were:
>Liquid Glass is now mandatory if you care about security.
and
>It is not available. [...] the download is not showing up on the phone.
I stand corrected on this front
IOS 26 is even less acceptable, so pick your poison.
Let's not labour the definition of acceptable to derail the conversation further
Some parts have improved: It's nice that alarms are now slide to cancel. Safari's UI however is now 98% mystery meat.
At least they added an option to make it less glassy.
I wish they fixed the keyboard focus and UI shifts around that. It's one of the most buggy things I've ever seen, oftentimes I can't even see what I'm typing because everything is offset in weird and incorrect ways.
The pre 26.2 less-glassy options were bearable because they were mostly like pre-Tahoe. The post 26.2 less-glassy options are now so shit that I’m using glassy mode, despite it being also ugly, distracting and harder to read than ever before. Apple have absolutely trashed their OS and their “Apple make good UIs” pedigree. It’s such a disappoibtment. I hope they come to their senses in the next major release round.
Given the news a few days ago about the changes in UI design leadership at Apple (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46142843), there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
>Liquid Glass is now mandatory if you care about security. Sigh.
Long live frutiger aero
Not sure why you are so downvoted, because indeed Apple only does full security updates for the very newest (now 26): https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/10/apple-clarifies-secu...
Thanks for that link. Before reading I was in the process of migrating all my stuff from a Windows7 machine, deduping archives and identifying software that I may still need to run in a VM somewhere or on a tablet. I had considered flipping to Apple devices since I have an iPhone but have never pulled the trigger on any of that. I was considering iMacs instead of a Linux box for a more seamless interface with the phone.
After reading that article where it is apparent that Apple has intentionally used terms that sound similar to obscure what the customer is actually gaining when they upgrade versus update and they intentionally omit the part about older devices not getting all the security updates that are pushed in the updates. I now have some clarity.
I can focus on moving to Linux and in time will be ditching the iPhone. Should've done this years ago.
Because it's factually incorrect.
Ars Technica, a clickbait aggregator whom should have been banned from this site long ago, is hardly a reliable source.
As far as I know, it is factually correct.
https://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/apples-poor-patchin...
https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/about-software-up...
> Note: Because of dependency on architecture and system changes to any current version of Apple operating systems (for example, macOS 26, iOS 26, and so on), not all known security issues are addressed in previous versions (for example, macOS 15, iOS 18, and so on).
You will not think about liquid glass after a day, especially if you turn on the new options. There's no need for everyone here to contort themselves into not installing these updates. The new features in all the OS upgrades are very much worth it.
You're not going to add text message spam filtering to your phone because they changed the border radius or blur or whatever?
> You will not think about liquid glass after a day, especially if you turn on the new options.
I wouldn’t say so. The “Increase Contrast” and “Show Borders” accessibility options make liquid glass just bearable to me, but the new UI design is still ungracefully buggy and unnecessarily hard(er) to use. (See e.g. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/liquid-glass/ for a detailed discussion.)
Sure, life goes on. However, considering the price tag of an iPhone/iPad, I understand how iOS 26 is off-putting to so many people – despite all the other new features.
I think it’s fine to be mad about it, I have some qualms. I just think it’s not worth skipping an upgrade.
It’s not like we’re hearing people who stay on older versions falling for malware left and right. The general risk seems to be very low.
I'm not saying to not upgrade for security reasons, I'm saying to upgrade for feature reasons.
I see. In my book, iOS 26 has added a much larger amount of misfeatures than features.
I'm not saying to not upgrade for security reasons, I'm saying to upgrade for feature resasons.
And I think everyone agrees that it is your choice to install IOS 26 on your phone.
Personally I will skip IOS 26 and stay on IOS 18 and maybe upgrade to IOS 27 when it comes out next year (if by then all the bad UI decisions have been reversed).
I had a play around with a friend's phone who was updated to IOS 26 and honestly It just doesnt work for me in it's current state.
It’s not worth skipping an upgrade, it’s just misleading to describe iOS 26 as an upgrade. My iPhone 16 pro can’t manage a stable frame rate on the Home Screen anymore. And nearly every screen has a bug.
What new features?
I notice it all the damn time.
- If I scroll a web page, and then decide to close it, I have to wait 'til the browser finishes scrolling the page before it'll open the menu with the close button
- every single time I watch a video my eye is drawn to the fucking stupid glass-y diffraction patterns and away from the content I was watching, or the play/pause icon I was interacting with
- every single time I use the home screen on iOS, or CMD+tab in macOS, my eye is drawn to the glass-y highlights around the icons, distracting me from whatever I was trying to do and causing me to think about the OS (and how much I hate the new look)
- I keep noticing the stupidly wide rounded corners on apps
- I keep noticing how the glassy icons and controls and stuff don't consistently change color with dark/light mode. They sometimes change if the content behind them is light/dark (which you'd think is a contrast improvement but it wouldn't be necessary if they had boxed out the toolbars like before). Often half the buttons have changed to contrast with the background and half haven't. This makes all the icons harder to read because I have to interpret the whole set to work out why it's suddenly slightly confusing
- I keep noticing how the toolbar icons have this insane shadows making them appear about 5meters closer to my face than the rest of the scree, which pulls my attention away from whatever I was looking at
- I keep noticing how some icons have those annoying highlighted edges and some don't and wondering why that is, and if they'll all come in sync...
- ... and the glassy-highlighted icons look like shit because the highlights are all the same (same color, same angle, same spread around the edges of the icons), which wouldn't happen if they were actual physical things under natural illumination
- since iOS 26.2, the increase contrast and reduce transparency modes have got worse: they seriously mess with the colors, in many case the light/dark relationship is inverted from what would be most useful (I can't think of examples now - it was so annoying I actually switched back to glassy to allow my eye a sense of comfort when using the thing, and now I try to put up with the "eye candy" distractions instead). I used to have "increase contrast" turned on with the last several major iOS versions. The new scheme has made it slightly harder to use the phone.
And I'm not even getting to how everything is harder to read, harder to see. It's _dreadful_ and they should fire everyone from the C-level who signed it off downwards.
I definitely still notice the (inconsistent? Only occasional? Which makes it even worse) parts of my UI that now look like something from a circa 2001 Java (specifically—not flash, it’s the “cool” Java aesthetic of the time with its image blurring and filtering an such, not the differently-bad “cool” flash aesthetic) applet gfx-heavy web site menu.
Plus there’s the pile of outright visual bugs and glitches. Like my keyboard opening with one size, then after a moment resizing itself a few pixels narrower because it initially rendered a little too big and off center to the right, like a badly-designed webpage. Every single time I open it. Including to write and edit this comment.
I also notice that I had to turn a bunch of accessibility features on so I wouldn’t constantly see animations with tons of dropped frames making me feel like I’m playing a bad port of a 3D PlayStation 2 game on a Gameboy Advance.
On work devices I've been using iOS 26 since early betas and macOS 26 for a few weeks now, and I still think about the user experience degradation. On the bright side — it makes me appreciate iOS 18 and macOS 15 more.
At this point I'm not contorting myself into skipping an update; I'm looking at exiting the entire Apple ecosystem. I don't want Liquid Glass to be my computing experience for the next numerous years.
Exactly. I don’t even notice it.
Which new options do you mean?
I installed iPadOS 26 specifically for the new windowing features. I like the glass look as a concept. But the actual implementation of it is total dogshit. I cannot go a day without seeing the OS render black-on-black or white-on-white text, especially in the status indicators at the top of the device. There are so many little things regarding automatic color contrast in UIKit that are just poorly thought out or broken.
The thing is, Liquid Glass is already using a shader to render the refraction effect on top of the other UI layers. But - at least from my own developer experiments - it doesn't actually use anything graphical to determine what background color it needs to contrast against[1]. Instead, it looks through the view hierarchy for a view on the same edge as the toolbar the widget is in, and then grabs some undocumented[0] property from that view to determine its background. This fails if there's a split. Build, say, a toolbar layout and put two views inside of it, split 50% vertically with one having a black background and the other white. Put items in your toolbar on both left and right sides. They will either be all black or all white, only contrasting with half the screen.
[0] Or, at least, I have yet to find out what this property is.
[1] Hell, for icons and text they could XOR the alpha mask with the underlying pixels, or a blurred version thereof, to make text that will always contrast.