Well yesterday went as well as a train wreck for me with this stupid update. I remembered seeing that someone had issues with it looping or something, and I thought to myself-- hopefully that won't happen to me.
A little before 2PM I went to update--- seemed to be going well. Had my phone plugged in and it was at 100% battery. After an hour I noticed the phone wasn't actually updating. It froze at the full progress bar with the apple logo on it. I took it down to our office's tech desk and we couldn't figure out how to get it out of being frozen. The phone had been very hot so I was pretty concerned. They said to take it to the Apple Store, so I did.
Taking the metro was a pain in the butt now because my Apple Watch no longer wanted to behave. Couldn't use my metro card payments, or anything so I had to go get cash.
By the time I got to the mall with the store, it was still frozen, still hot, and no update. I got to the store itself around 5PM and just as I get to the entrance, it magically finished updating. Of. Flippin'. Course. That's how it always is. Battery was at maybe 20% max by this point.
The issue was-- it was absolutely impossible to do anything with the newly updated phone. It lagged harder than ever before, the app icons were non-responsive to being moved and the screen kept rubberbanding back and forth when I tried to navigate anything. They ran diagnostics and said nothing physically was wrong with the device (logic board was mentioned several times, and how it wasn't that) so it was the update/ios26.
They had to wipe everything. The whole thing. I was told my stuff would be back after logging into my account and downloading my apps again. Nooooope. I had to start all over again.
I spent all last night and this morning trying to get stuff put back together. My Apple Watch (newest one) was no longer recognizable and I had to wipe that and re-pair. I lost all my wallpapers, all my bookmarks and shortcuts, I lost all my settings, my accounts no longer wanted to work with the password apps I use, and now my older watch faces (the more readable ones) were gone and replaced with the obnoxious new layout. Older ring tones no longer will download, so those are gone. My financial cards had to be manually verified via phone, and it was just really frustrating.
Now Im dealing with trying to get photos to work the way I had it, and dealing with obnoxious notifications, settings, announced crap, and junk that pops up on a whim.
I wish iOS 26 had never been released. it's still to this day a miserable mess that makes me regret having gone with iPhones instead of android phones. Yesterday's update was figuratively and literally a hot mess (thought the device would melt down) and has further eroded my trust in Apple.
If you've not updated yet-- might wanna wait.
