Connection between icon redraw bug and increasing system

[harkon]

I’m starting to believe there’s a connection between the app icon redraw bug and the rapidly growing system data.

Since my system data keeps increasing quickly on iOS 26.1 (even after restoring the iPhone twice), I tried to observe when the storage usage goes up. Every time the app icon redraw bug appears — when the icons briefly turn black and then rebuild — the system data increases by about 1–1.5 GB afterwards. Is anyone else seeing this? I think this mainly affects users who have lots of apps and many folders on their home screens.

 

[papbot]

I think this mainly affects users who have lots of apps and many folders on their home screens.

That’s the common denominator. I haven’t noticed any change in System storage related to this, as the redrawing always occurs on both my M5 iPad Pro and my 17 Pro Max phone. Following the suggestion from someone here, I went to the trouble of resetting my Home Screen layout from Settings, a very tedious and unhelpful task. However, right after I did this, there was no redrawing of any Home Screen icon. It tells you when you do the reset that it will eliminate your folders, which it definitely does. I went from 3 Home Screens to over 12 afterwards, but only individual icons, no folders, and no redrawing. But I don’t want 12 Home Screens to swipe through, so I reorganized everything back the way I wanted, deleting a lot of old web links and several apps that hadn’t been used in ages. I got everything down to only 2 Home Screens, but the redrawing resumed.

So all this is related to folders, how many you have, and how many items are contained in each. If you have few or none, you may never see the issues the rest of us do. I still maintain that Liquid Glass and maybe some other intensive feature of iOS 26 overtaxes even the latest devices, to the point they cannot cope with the folders and require a second or so to restore everything to the screen. That’s especially true after every device restart when you see how long it takes to restore every item back to the screen, I believe that affects everyone. That’s why I don’t expect this to improve in 26. Apple will have to drastically alter these visual changes, possibly in iOS 27, to deal with this if they choose to.

 

[harkon]

In my case the icon redraw is definitely related to the bloating systemdata. Every time the icon redrawing happens, systemdata increases by 1-2 GB! After starting with a freshly restored Backup my systemdata was at about 20GB. After using the phone today and experiencing the redraw bug a few times I am already at 32GB. Before restoring systemdata went up to 75GB.
This is really annoying. I hope thy do something hing about this and I am quit disappointed that there doesn’t seem to
Be any changes in the actual beta versions. I’m not a beta tester myself so I can’t report the problem…

 

[papbot]

In my case the icon redraw is definitely related to the bloating systemdata. Every time the icon redrawing happens, systemdata increases by 1-2 GB! After starting with a freshly restored Backup my systemdata was at about 20GB. After using the phone today and experiencing the redraw bug a few times I am already at 32GB. Before restoring systemdata went up to 75GB.
This is really annoying. I hope thy do something hing about this and I am quit disappointed that there doesn’t seem to
Be any changes in the actual beta versions. I’m not a beta tester myself so I can’t report the problem…

My iphone, 17PM, has 10.41GB of system data. It’s varied between that and may 14GB. On my iPP it’s 15.7GB, it’s hovered around that since I got it. So I can’t relate any of these issues to system data storage. If yours is that high I would suspect some specific to you issue. My icon and folder redrawing is severe on my iPP and somewhat intermittent on my phone, but when it occurs it makes it seem as if I’m using a 5 or 6 year old device.

 

[harkon]

May I ask perhaps if you have a lot of offline music downloaded on your phone? This is the case for me and perhaps the systemdata is related to this. On my iPad Pro if have lots af apps more than on my iPhone and system data is around 12GB.

 

[papbot]

May I ask perhaps if you have a lot of offline music downloaded on your phone? This is the case for me and perhaps the systemdata is related to this. On my iPad Pro if have lots af apps more than on my iPhone and system data is around 12GB.

Music is my largest storage item at 3.4G. System data just now is still 10.4G. I don’t think I’ve ever seen on any phone or ipad go over maybe 18G, if that much.

 

[kenta_]

Apple now assumes iOS and/or device is fast enough they no longer have to cache the springboard screens, and they just redraw the icons in the fly. Which is not working. Many times I’ll end up with blank icons, on apps that use dynamic icons, safari bookmarks or shortcuts..

iOS 26 is a complete sh!tshow. My iPhone 14PM/ios 17 feels way snappier (than my new 17PM)

 

[papbot]

Apple now assumes iOS and/or device is fast enough they no longer have to cache the springboard screens, and they just redraw the icons in the fly. Which is not working. Many times I’ll end up with blank icons, on apps that use dynamic icons, safari bookmarks or shortcuts..

View attachment 2584039

iOS 26 is a complete sh!tshow. My iPhone 14PM/ios 17 feels way snappier (than my new 17PM)

I actually find 26 to be subjectively faster on my devices. But the screen issues are quite aggravating as no other iOS caused this on any prior device. And for me the Safari issue of launching every bookmark in a folder when I just want to access one site really sets me off. Oddly that only happens on my iPad, not my phone.