It probably won’t improve consistency, and rather introduce more quirks, due to adding support for the foldable. I wouldn’t expect major changes regarding aesthetics, in particular since the “design language” is now also tied to iPadOS and macOS.
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My Rollback to iOS 18
- Thread starter Crowlover0815
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The rather dreadful Camera Control button nearly prevented me from purchasing an iPhone 16 Pro Max. Because I truly needed a new phone I persisted.
I always use a case and fortunately I discovered the Spigen Ultra Hybrid T Mag Fit case with a precision Camera Control button that eliminates the cutout and makes the side of the case flush.
With that problem solved I turned off the Camera Control button, which completely eliminated accidental presses. Nonetheless this "feature" seems to have been born out of boredom or desperation on Apples part.
Apple is remiss in not offering a new iPhone Mini, it served an important slice of the market. Although not a top seller, it seems like it was popular enough to keep it in the lineup.
My unpleasant experience with iOS 26 on my iPhone 16 Pro Max thus far, continues to kill productivity.
What happened to the Apple refrain “It Just Works”
Hello Apple, anybody home?
I can say iPhone 17PM/iOS 26 is way slower than my iPhone 14PM/ios 17. Springboard refresh is 2-3 seconds as you swipe thru them. I have one page of folder and bookmarks, and you can see each icon being drawn one by one. Didn’t do this on any previous phones/os. Apple never heard of caching?!?
Some people take it way too seriously. Personally, I don't think iOS 26 changed enough to justify all the hate at a point to buy a phone with a previous OS in it. If you care that much for appearance and how your phone look, maybe you should consider switching to an Android phone. For me, iOS 26 at its core is basically the same as before and as long as I'm able to do what I'm usually do with my phone without problems, I don't really bother.
The only thing that I can understand someone isn't liking 26 is the readability issue depending of the wallpaper you use, but otherwise, I think some people over-react way too much about this.
The only thing that I can understand someone isn't liking 26 is the readability issue depending of the wallpaper you use, but otherwise, I think some people over-react way too much about this.
Your decision isn’t silly or unnecessary. I went to the Apple Store to check out the iPhone 17s and MacBooks. iOS 26 and MacOS 26 is incredibly difficult to use for anyone with a visual or neurological disability. The Accessibility settings do hardly anything at all to improve legibility and the dithering that is clearly being used to render the UI is somehow even worse than Sequoia, which looks positively comfortable compared to Tahoe.
I’m flicker sensitive (it can cause seizures) but usually I can use an iPhone for a few minutes while setting up Accessibility options. I could barely make it through settings without getting dizzy and enabling the disable PWM toggle (which did nothing) and the reduce transparency and motion. The 17 series was visibly pulsating in and out of focus from the 99.50% PWN flicker modulation depth. The Liquid Glass effect merely adds insult to injury.
*for context I use an iPhone 13 on iOS 15.6.1 all day with no problems. iOS 16 and 17 were bad in terms of dithering, but a family member’s iPhone 13 is on iOS 18 and it seems mostly fine.*
I really don’t know who this is for, and why Apple doesn’t have an option to revert to older iOS themes and styles. I think the fact that they stopped signing iOS 18 less than a week after iOS 26 went live tells you everything you need to know.
I feel like my days in the Apple ecosystem and as a professional user is coming to an end, especially if this is the route they intend to take for the next decade. It’s not a matter of preference for people like me, but rather a matter of being able to even use the devices at all on ‘26 without damaging my health. To say I’m disappointed would be putting it mildly.
They’ve changed the way the entire UI is rendered and added more dithering in the display pipeline, as they did in certain versions of iOS 16 and 17. iOS 18 seemed to rely less on this flicker technique to render P3 color. So for many it’s not preference but rather a consequence of the design choices for iOS and MacOS 26.
Liquid Glass is a serious accessibility issue for those with visual and neurological disabilities or sensitivities, and the reduce transparency and motion options are insufficient. I don’t have a problem with the idea of Liquid Glass - I actually loved Windows Vista - but it is executed very poorly.
Apple could largely resolve this by adding options to disable GPU dithering system wide like the program Stillcolor does on MacOS, and by allowing users to disable Liquid Glass and instead use lower powered themes and UI, like on iOS 18 and versions before. This is a solvable problem, but as many of us who have been asking for Accessibility options to disable PWM and dithering the past 5 years can attest, Apple refuses to acknowledge the problem, yet alone solve it. The PWM smoothing feature was a nice attempt, but you can’t smooth out 480Hz PWM with 99% modulation depth.
Good point. But what Apple was too stupid to realize is that all this useless unnecessary MAJOR changes will also make some go immediately to Android and never look back.
Precisely. This "update" is so bad it is dangerous. Pathetic, Apple!
This has been the trend since Apple Silicon, and earlier, OLED. It’s a deep dive, but Apple has been resorting to spatiotemporal dithering via the Apple Silicon GPU to push 10-bit color AKA “P3 wide color” on all their devices. MacOS has been 10-bit for a while now, but pre-Apple Silicon certain GPU and hardware combinations wouldn’t apply dithering as often. Now, it is constant.
It wouldn’t be a problem if the displays were true 10-bit like the Pro Display XDR, but every MacBook and iPad is 8-bit. So we have the fun of FRC (a form of temporal dithering) being applied by the panel itself via the TCON which you cannot affect via user space because it is encrypted and locked. Some users get around this by using a true 8-bit external monitor. OLED seems less affected by this because the panels are closer to 10-bit, but unfortunately PWM is the norm here, so you’re still getting flicker.
So why does this matter? Apple’s dithering algorithm is introducing a 15Hz flicker over 4 frames per refresh cycle on a 60Hz display. It’s even worse on 120Hz. This is a really, really low flicker that is within the medically established risk for seizures, approximately 15-30Hz. Epileptics are encouraged to use high refresh rate screens (higher than 100Hz), so it’s wild that Apple is utilizing this with no accessibility option to disable it. FRC is a little higher at about 30Hz, on average, so still low.
Dithering isn’t *always* on depending on when the GPU or TCON is telling the device to dither. This is why some users say they update iOS or MacOS and suddenly they’re having headaches or migraines or even seizures. They revert to their old OS version and they’re fine. We’ve seen this play out for years. Apple has even introduced it into sub versions of an iOS generation - say iOS 1X.3 for example - which further proves it is a command that can be disabled. Stillcolor is a program made to disable GPU dithering on Apple Silicon Macs, check out this video showing it in real time:
Liquid Glass is likely engaging the dithering algorithm almost constantly, like Mac has, in order to render the UI. It’s the only thing that makes sense, coupled with the animations, transitions, and translucent scheme. Even if you’re not flicker sensitive, it’s hard on the eyes just from the lack of stable contrast alone. This is going to be even worse on LCD devices because they need to utilize more software tricks to render the wide color gamut as they are all 8-bit.
There’s a lot more going on we still have to analyze, but these are the most aggravating variables from what I’ve identified.
Precisely!
The nature of my work requires I carry an Android and an iPhone, both of which I enjoy. Until recently.
While both flagship phones have their pros and cons, this latest iteration of iOS is far and away the most annoying I've encountered in ten years. It’s so bad that it makes the Android OS look positively brilliant.
Although I appreciate the excellent hardware Apple produces, iOS 26 has destroyed the once enjoyable user experience.
I expect to upgrade to iOS 26 late in the cycle (spring/summer) or not at all, skipping it for iOS 27. I’ve found that every OS maker falls into the trap of overdoing things (UI/UX, design) from time to time and it takes them a while to walk things back to a reasonable place. I do not expect iOS 26 to be any different.
iPadOS 26, on the other hand, will likely be on my device in a few weeks, since it adds features of interest to me, not just a mess of an UI… and I’ll have to live with it.
iPadOS 26, on the other hand, will likely be on my device in a few weeks, since it adds features of interest to me, not just a mess of an UI… and I’ll have to live with it.
Don’t give them ideas…They will make the entire interface like glass and use the camera to make the background translucent.
(I hope not).
Thank you for the detailed explanations, especially regarding the problems sensitive people have with PWM and so on.
I'm not that sensitive to PWM, but with iOS26, my eyes are more tired after a day than they were with iOS18.
Unfortunately, I also have iPad OS26 installed on my iPad Pro, but I won't be switching to a new iPad Pro with iOS18 because I don't use the device much compared to my iPhone, and I really hope that Apple will at least let users turn off the exaggerated glass effects.
Apart from the skewed app icons and borders, there are enough areas for Apple to work on with iOS26.
However, if Apple sticks with Liquid Glass, switching to Samsung would still be an option, even though I'm not an Android fan, but Samsung's One UI 8 is really nice to look at.
I'm not that sensitive to PWM, but with iOS26, my eyes are more tired after a day than they were with iOS18.
Unfortunately, I also have iPad OS26 installed on my iPad Pro, but I won't be switching to a new iPad Pro with iOS18 because I don't use the device much compared to my iPhone, and I really hope that Apple will at least let users turn off the exaggerated glass effects.
Apart from the skewed app icons and borders, there are enough areas for Apple to work on with iOS26.
However, if Apple sticks with Liquid Glass, switching to Samsung would still be an option, even though I'm not an Android fan, but Samsung's One UI 8 is really nice to look at.
Frankly I’m not even sure what the point of this redesign is.
Apple had to know it would be massively controversial AND that it has readability issues. And they also had to know that it destroys battery life, not even the 17 series can cope with the animations.
Implementing an irreversible change like this one is bound to bring about pretty much nothing but controversy.
It’s just a shame for those who don’t like it and are stuck, even if they should’ve known that this was the case.
Viel Glück, dass nicht noch mehr von 26 in 18 überschwappt.
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Congratulations on upgrading to iOS 18 despite some app icons having that ugly liquid glass theme
Ah, Swiss. I was ignorant thinking he was German just because of Einstellungen.Swiss spotted
And TWINT. And ParkingPay. And Coop. And Migros. And Digitec. It could have been my homescreen.The SBB rail app gave it away.
😉
You can still buy old stock of iPhone 16 with iOS 18. It can extend a bit.
The good news for those of us who prefer 18 is that 26.1 reduces some of the worst effects of 26.0. I don’t hate my iPad gen9 test unit anymore! A bunch of inconsistencies in the “frost” effect remain that must be addressed.
I’ll upgrade all my iPads at 26.4. My 13.mini—nope.
I’ll upgrade all my iPads at 26.4. My 13.mini—nope.
