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I absolutely loathe iOS 26

So far I really dont mind it on iPhone16+. Feels a bit fresher overall with all the subtle stuff, but I'm not in love with the new icons. They feel like a half baked jailbreak theme, but I like some of them. I guess as someone who used to customize for many years its an 'eh'

Battery life seems ok but I just updated last night.

iPad mini (7) has been mixed. The animations don't feel as fast as phone, I cannot wrap my head around the mail app or windowed multitasking mode (it even caused a bug where I couldn't launch any app or do anything until the battery dies, luckily whatever process it was stuck on chewed through battery so I could plug it in and reboot). But once the dust settled, not as bad but doesn't seem like super amazing either. Overall sort of indifferent at the moment.

In general, trying to get it to create themes from your photos LS/Home Screen took an ABSURD amount of time. What a bad experience.

Since going down the list,

watchOS I notice almost no difference. Exactograph and Flow are cool new faces, but I absolutely could use a few more.

Tahoe - small things but I like the more exaggerated corners, dark mode has nice outline, safari looks a bit more stylish.
Widgets on desktop. LOVE not having a distinct menu bar and one that goes with the wallpaper transparently.

Themed messages feels like a jailbreak tweak but I'm glad its there. I am a sucker for any visual differences functionality wise as long as it's optional.

ATV4k's: Notice almost no difference other than CC and see through stuff on buttons for native apps (just AppleTV+ for now? others are unchanged). But I do notice 2nd gen 4k feeling much more sluggish going through UI. They ought to fix that it's really ugly.

Also I wish the new keyboard worked consistently across all apps. nearly nothing but the native apple apps has the new keyboard. nOt sure that I love it either, but the inconsistency drives me nuts! what an oversight
 
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Martin Bland said:
An example of where the new UI is a practical improvement as well as being much more fun is the selected text popup. No more endless tapping to reach the indentation tool, instead a new menu playfully pops up.
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The fact that you can’t swipe through the text selection action menu anymore, and instead have to press the arrow for a secondary vertical menu to pop up for additional actions (even for something simple like Select All that I use fairly often) isn’t exactly an improvement. For one, the arrow is a much smaller hit target than the swipeable menu. Secondly, you have to move your finger farther to tap the arrow, and then to select from the vertical menu, while the swipeable menu was basically in place (while still allowing to use the arrow).

It would be simpler to just have a single vertical menu (like a regular context menu) in-place that is also swipeable, even if it covers part of the selected text (which I suppose is the original rationale for the horizontal menu).
 
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crizzly said:
There are some places where the new UI looks cool, but many places where it's broken. I see this release as very similar to iOS 7. Just like we saw with subsequent updates after iOS 7, iOS 26 will continue to get refined.
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Shouldn't they have waited until it's further 'refined' before releasing this clearly unfinished product? We're not paying bottom-of-the-barrel prices here...
 
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tomtattoo said:
after that I made a few appupdates.
Some apps - Firefox, Carrot - are now using the ios26 appicon with the outlines - even on 18.7!
I know have: 1. Apps without a dark icon 2. with the right dark ios18 icon and 3. apps with the outlines icon. Three different sort of icons in one iOS!
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Omg it isn’t just me ! I find that so annoying!
I choose to be iOS 18 because I like the look of it , and now I am having apps updating with the new liquid glass style on the apps !
It boggles the mind how that can happen surely they can sort it server side and only let through iOS 18 style app updates if your are that version for example.
This is why with my iPhone 16 pro max I am never upgrading the phone or updating it past iOS 18 because I don’t like the direction apple is going in , I hate to say it but Steve jobs would be turning in his grave if he saw what apple shipped ….
 
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williamipad2010 said:
Omg it isn’t just me ! I find that so annoying!
I choose to be iOS 18 because I like the look of it , and now I am having apps updating with the new liquid glass style on the apps !
It boggles the mind how that can happen surely they can sort it server side and only let through iOS 18 style app updates if your are that version for example.
This is why with my iPhone 16 pro max I am never upgrading the phone or updating it past iOS 18 because I don’t like the direction apple is going in , I hate to say it but Steve jobs would be turning in his grave if he saw what apple shipped ….
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Shortcut app is my new best friend. As a workaround.
In a few weeks my whole homescreen will be only shortcuts I think.
They have lost their minds without doubt.
 
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profmjh said:
Just “up”graded my iPhone to iOS 26 and I absolutely hate it. It’s visually the ugliest iOS Apple has ever produced. The icons all have a distracting (and non-sensical) edge to them. The blurred wallpapers look nothing like they used to.

It’s so ugly I’m thinking of cancelling my iPhone Air order and looking at Samsung options.
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Agree that it's ugly, but you can turn off the worst of it. Just setting 'reduce transparency' solves a ton of problems.

And honestly, this is a cycle Apple goes through. Flat, transparent, etc. Next round will be skewmorphic again :)
 
thadoggfather said:
Also I wish the new keyboard worked consistently across all apps. nearly nothing but the native apple apps has the new keyboard. nOt sure that I love it either, but the inconsistency drives me nuts! what an oversight
Click to expand...

The keyboard thing is intentional, apparently. Apps built using the latest Xcode targeting iOS 26 will supposedly get the new keyboard.
 
ProbablyDylan said:
The keyboard thing is intentional, apparently. Apps built using the latest Xcode targeting iOS 26 will supposedly get the new keyboard.
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How can inconsistent UI elements , and the most crucial ones like a keyboard, across the platform be a feature and not a bug (and not really a bug, just apps aren't ready for it)?

I get that its to force adoption but from end user perspective its disorienting
 
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Renegade 56 said:
I am on an intel based Mac 2020 27in should I upgrade or not?
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depends, if you are a developer you will want Xcode 26 (requires Tahoe aka macos26) , if not it gives you another year of security support , otherwise if you like the os 15 ui and willing to have an obsolete system a year earlier than absolutely necessary upgrade to 15.7 now, you should be able to upgrade to Tahoe in the future (hopefully the bugs will be tamer then)
 
thadoggfather said:
How can inconsistent UI elements , and the most crucial ones like a keyboard, across the platform be a feature and not a bug (and not really a bug, just apps aren't ready for it)?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't call it a feature. More like a compromise, so that apps that haven't been updated to leverage Liquid Glass don't look strange with a fancy glass keyboard over them. Sort of like how iOS 7 showed the old keyboard in skeuomorphic apps and the flat keyboard in updated apps.
 
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ProbablyDylan said:
I wouldn't call it a feature. More like a compromise, so that apps that haven't been updated to leverage Liquid Glass don't look strange with a fancy glass keyboard over them. Sort of like how iOS 7 showed the old keyboard in skeuomorphic apps and the flat keyboard in updated apps.
Click to expand...

I see. I still find it more incosntiwnt than just being retro fitted. I think most would agree but Apple gonna Apple
 
I haven’t installed it myself yet, but worked on devices with it. I thought I was being handed an android at first, I don’t want android, that is why I buy Apple “think different”.

I don’t think it will have any major dent in Apple customers, rather it will be the original type of Apple customer that starts to look for something different. I think these days they are in a minority (myself included). Even some of those will stay at Apple for other reasons.

Basically I don’t like it. I didn’t like iOS 7, I still miss the old style ios6. But thus far I haven’t found a good alternative.
 
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HouseLannister said:
Liquid Glass is a poorly thought out idea that was poorly executed, but it is really just a distraction so we all spend our time bickering about clear icons and don't realize that iOS 26 doesn't have that much that is new. Call screening is a nice to have, but the call features, ease of use, and actual implementation are still way behind Pixel. A lame ripoff of circle to search that is too fiddly for its own good. And an AI battery setting that no one has really tested to see how it improves anything and probably doesn't mitigate the extra battery drain this glass is creating. That's about it. It's one of the worst OSes Apple has launched for actual features.

And we are also too distracted by all this Vista design language to hold Apple to their earlier promises they still haven't delivered. We still haven't gotten the features of Apple Intelligence that iOS 18 promised. And the ones that did come out were very poor quality compared to what other AI can do. Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and others are iterating so fast and Apple hasn't even improved the initial features they launched with 18.1 and 18.2. Their AI photo erasing is the worst, their writing tools are the worst, and they still haven't demoed their More Personal Siri.

I know the UI stuff is still jank, but I really want them to move on already because they have much bigger problems they should be working on.
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We are the same! This is a stupid waste of everyone's time, especially mine. Poorly conceived, horrendously executed. Scrap it and go back to a time before Ive. Sad that is is what a multi TRILLION dollar company thinks we need/want. FU Apple!
 
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profmjh said:
Just “up”graded my iPhone to iOS 26 and I absolutely hate it. It’s visually the ugliest iOS Apple has ever produced. The icons all have a distracting (and non-sensical) edge to them. The blurred wallpapers look nothing like they used to.

It’s so ugly I’m thinking of cancelling my iPhone Air order and looking at Samsung options.
Click to expand...
Based on the title I expected to read a list of criticisms about what features are hard to use, obvious bugs and just general problems.

What I read is that you don’t think it looks pretty.
 
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So I reduced the transparency in the settings

Doesn't look good in light mode but it's fine on dark mode
 
Would it be a mistake to upgrade my iPhone SE 2, or is it considered (by users, not by Apple) too underpowered for iOS 26?
 
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