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Apple Releases First iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 Public Betas

beanbaguk said:
I’ve owned 8 generations of iPhone. I’ve participated in public betas since Apple offered them. I don’t ever recall my phone running this slow with an upgrade. All on the most powerful iPhone ever…it was an observation on my part that has amusingly and predictably ruffled some feathers.
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Did you wait for the indexing to finish?

This current beta seems to perform mostly fine to me, other than a rendering bug on the lockscreen -- though, I queued up the update shortly after it dropped and then just stowed my phone for the rest of the workday, so it was quietly installing and indexing sight unseen. (My employer tends to frown on cell phone use at work.)

Only 7 gens of iPhones, here... and I've likewise been using Apple's betas for quite awhile -- actually, since well before iPhones were a thing, starting with that very first Mac OS X Public Beta, back-in-the-day. The worst performance hit I ever observed was on my iPhone 6, when "batterygate" dropped. Since I was using the beta at the time, I just assumed they would fix it before final release... and then, they inexplicably didn't. That performance hit was immediately noticeable, and didn't go away until I replaced it with an iPhone X.
 
Beta 4 battery life on my iPhone 16 pro seems to be back to near-ios18 levels so far yesterday and so far part of today. Beta 1 to 3 was horrendous. The heating up of the phone during beta 3 was super annoying, so glad to see this.
 
kitt9000 said:
... The heating up of the phone during beta 3 was super annoying, so glad to see this.
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Now, that's a really interesting observation. While you were using iOS 26b3, I was using the iOS 18.6 beta... and I also observed some significant heating, though I didn't think much of it at the time. I wonder if the cause was common between the two betas?
 
dontwalkhand said:
I have HomeKit and it all seems fine, I have matter, zigbee, Scrypted, and Home Assistant running. Try starting simple like rebooting your HomePods and Apple TVs. (I am not going to update Apple TVs and HomePods until public release as these are the home hubs and has to remain reliable).
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That was my issue. I had an issue at the begining of the betas and I thought updating my Apple TVs was a smart thing to do because then everything would be on the same OS...Nope. Worst idea I have ever had. Now when I update, I loose automations and have to recreate them or some of my devices put them selves back into the, "Default room" or ungroup them selves. Lol. It is really frustrating. But, it's the beta ride...it's what I signed up for I guess.
 
Just installed iPadOS 26 Public Beta. First impressions: It sucks. First, you must choose between one of 3 ways to handle multasking. This is so confusing—you only need one good way.

Second, it appears the quick-and-easy side-by-side windowing capability has been taken away. I hope I’m wrong, but I can’t get it to work in any of the three ways to handle multitasking. That feature was so handy and I used it often, and was one of the few features that was superior to MacOS.
 
I never used Stage Manager in 18 but after a few days experimenting with 26 it is becoming clear that it solves some issues with multitasking in 26. I am learning how to use it for common side by side and slide over type applications. It takes away having to rebuild common side by side setups every time. You can 'slide' Stage Manager in from the left, jump to another layout and move between layouts quickly enough. Still learning here. It is a fun process!
 
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Working well on my 13 Mini too. Some of the buttons look comically large on my small screen! I like Automix in the music app but it doesn't seem to work for songs I've purchased (or ripped from a CD) instead of streaming directly from Apple Music.
 
MCKLMT said:
It's only beta 4. We have at least 1 month to wait before to see the final release. A lot of things will be modified.
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And I trust that come September most of the lag, stutters and glitches will have been ironed out! But in its current state here in b4… unacceptable performance on my 16 Pro Max, which led me back to 18.5.
 
3 days in on my M2 iPad Air and I am quite liking it, no concerns about liquid glass for me, no noticeable performance issues and battery life appears similar to before.
 
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MCKLMT said:
It's only beta 4. We have at least 1 month to wait before to see the final release. A lot of things will be modified.
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I’d say it is ALREADY b4! people don’t realise 1month is not that much in term of software engineering, even for large teams at apple. and the time they spend fixing inconsistencies and legibility in design across the system is time lost for more useful features. Craig really needs to go.
 
joshwithachance said:
This software is 100% NOT ready for public beta consumption...
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I don't agree. The point of a beta is not to look picture perfect; it's to give adventurous souls a chance to see what's coming and to test it out for themselves. It seems to me that the key factors for something called a "public" beta (as opposed to a "developer" beta) are that 1) no safety concerns exist when using the beta, and 2) users generally don't lose anything important as a result of whatever bugs are left. So far, I see those as achieved goals with this beta.

There are quite obviously still some bugs and some rough edges; I've encountered several myself. If there weren't any remaining issues to resolve, we'd be calling it the final production release.
 
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Dizzy714 said:
Question that’s probably been answered a million times. If you update to the beta, is doing a complete restore the only way to roll back to iOS 18? Secondly, if you decide to stay on the beta until official release, can you update to the official iOS 26 without restoring?
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I’m pretty sure that the restore has to be done from a device (MBP or desktop) and not the cloud.
 
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Subliminal87 said:
Does restarting fix this??

Makes me nervous to finish the install on mine.
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Not the OP, but answer is no. My wife's ipad kept crashing after updating to IOS 26 public beta. I needed to put it in recovery mode (factory reset) and restore from a backup.
 
abcmax said:
It can't be worse than iOS 18, right? 😆
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I have been using iPhone since 3GS
Now iOS 18.5 turn iPhone into a brick with intermittent no service (on 2 different carriers, esim and physical sim)
My AppleCare+ is useless, as apple support claim my hardware is perfectly normal
 
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