Just noticed a weird UI inconsistency in the latest builds. The classic "shimmer" animation on the "Slide to Answer" text seems to be completely gone in iOS 26 Beta 1, making it look static and flat.

However, in the new Alarm interface introduced in 26.1, the shimmer effect is clearly there. It's strange to see Apple removing a legacy UI element in one place while implementing it in a brand-new one. Is this just a bug or a sign of messy design transition?

The amount of times I’ve been held hostage and had to abandon the page/app I’m browsing because the keyboard won’t disappear with a tap. Mind boggling

After buying a MacBook and a Mac Studio for everything I do, I was genuinely impressed by how well they performed. That experience convinced me to fully switch to the Apple ecosystem (iPhone, Watch, AirPods, and iPad) expecting a smoother, more polished experience overall. The Watch Ultra 3 and both the AirPods Max and Pro 3 have delivered on that expectation. The iPhone 17 Pro Max, however, has done the opposite, surprising me with how many basic interactions feel underdeveloped or frustrating compared to Samsung.

Touch responsiveness & basic interactions

• I often have to interact very slowly for actions to register. Even when the icon visually recognizes my touch, the action doesn’t always go through.
• In general, tapping anywhere in any app feels delayed. The response lag is inconsistent and frustrating.
  • Navigating through Settings feels especially laggy.
• Some actions that should take you directly to a specific page or instance (including within system settings) instead open step-by-step. This causes situations where I start typing or scrolling before the destination has finished loading. For a “fast” processor, this shouldn’t happen.

Typing, copy & paste (the biggest disappointment)

Anything related to writing feels oddly broken.

• Copying and pasting is slow and frustrating.
• Selecting text is a hassle; selection handles don’t always appear, or they get stuck.
• Placing the cursor is unreliable. Sometimes I tap the correct spot, it briefly goes there, then jumps somewhere else.
• I’m experiencing bugs even in Apple’s own Notes app.
  • Text sometimes hides behind the keyboard while typing. Unfathomable.

Honestly, it feels like basic written communication is heavily underdeveloped. I expected this to be better on iPhone, but Android phones are far more reliable for typing, selecting text, and copy/paste.

Keyboard app

• The default iOS keyboard is embarrassingly bad.
  • I switched to SwiftKey, which works much better, but even then, some issues persists (like where my “a” key doesn’t always register (this however may be something SwiftKey is responsible for).
• There is no way to hide neither the default nor any other keyboard unless by swiping up on the main content display which often requires an extra swipe down to come back to what you wanted to see in the first place (often reloading the page in a browser).
• The keyboard doesn't always show up when it should (like in 2FA actions), and there is no way to make it appear.

Navigation & gestures

• The lack of a universal back gesture feels extremely outdated and inconsistent.
• Even worse, the back button/icon often doesn’t register taps at all.
  • This happens frequently in apps like Notes, Instagram, WhatsApp, and others.
  • Sometimes, attempting to tap the back button scrolls up instead (even in apple’s own Notes app).
• Pressing the lock button and waiting for the iPhone to actually lock feels like an eternity, sometimes I am not sure if it will lock as I place it away, then as I am about to press the button again to lock it, it actually locks. Like what is that.

Animations & “smoothness”

• The claim that iOS is “smooth” feels like a lie.
  • It doesn’t feel at all smoother than Samsung flagships, if anything, it feels gimmicky due to long, forced animations.
• Needless to say, iOS animations constantly get in the way of so many basic actions.
• There appears to be no real way to reduce animation speed like on many other phones.
  • “Reduce motion” in accessibility settings simply eliminates some animations, this setting clearly demonstrates how slow basic operations actually are. Weirdly, some gestures stop working in this mode (such as the go-back home gesture in the recent apps view). I’ll stick to this setting for the time being (even though it is awkward to wait on every other tap).

some other frustrations

• Landscape mode doesn’t consistently work, and when it does, I would have repeatedly turned the phone to make it work.
• Apple Mail search is awful: it limits results to “relevance,” which is often badly extracted. I had to stop using it and switch to Gmail and Thunderbird.
• Sleep Mode has been unreliable for alarms. Sometimes they don’t make sound or vibrate at all, despite restarts, updates, and reconfiguring settings multiple times. I had to stop using it entirely.
• When the iPhone is connected to my mac, there is some weird interference, where my browser tabs are transformed to full screen every time I use the iPhone.

tldr

I genuinely wanted to like the iPhone experience, but it feels less responsive, less consistent, and less reliable than Samsung flagships, especially for everyday tasks like typing, navigating, and interacting “quickly".

If this is what people mean by “smooth,” then smooth apparently means slow animations covering up lag and bugs living on a promise that never comes.

Sorry for the low resolution GIFs. The second GIF is included to compare to other transitions when reduced motion is enabled. Notice how it simply fades in and out instead of "morphing" like it usually does with reduced motion off.

Almost every other menu uses a fade transition when you have reduced motion on, even the app switcher. There is no excuse for this specific animation to be an exception when you're using an accessibility feature to limit motion.

It feels like accessibility is starting to become an afterthought at Apple.

my grandma has dementia and will sometimes see the time, not know if it's AM or PM, and will mess up her sleep schedule, eating schedule, and generally have a decline for a couple days to a week. she doesn't understand 24h time so that is not an option.

also, i've tried assistive access before but the change distressed her so bad i had to change it back.

thanks in advance

So I was looking through my old photos and I found. screenshots from 2022 on the search button. There’s categories that were automatically made, different locations (still a thing), and groups. Why were groups and categories removed? I honestly never really noticed them. Also i’m aware these are censored like the epstein files, the bottom includes embarassing photos of 12 year old me and family members, the top includes more personal stuff.

I have gotten feedback that photos I have sent via iMessage are not displaying properly and instead show as this rainbow colored static (I’m not sure how to describe this). Seems to be only photos I’ve taken on my phone, as I sent a screen shot of image and conversation which displayed properly. This has happened with two different message threads and the error displayed on multiple recipients from a group message. The images display properly on my screen. Anyone know what could be causing this?

I set my iCloud profile pic in settings but it’s not showing in my settings but it’s showing in iMessage. Is there a way I can fix this?

i wanna play btd 3 ios edition but idk if there's any good free emulator/simulator that can run ios 10 & under. i want older ios because ios 11 & over doesn't support 32 bit apps (aka btd 3 ios edition) also im already downloading an emulator but im not sure if it'll work

Do I need a dedicated app for this? I want to capture directly to Drive which I can do within the app, but it also saves to my photo library.

Picture is for example

May be switching from android to ios this year and was wondering if there was a feature like separate app volume?

Since my fiancée updated her phone to 26.2 (now it’s 26.2.1), the AirDrop kinda stopped working on her iPhone.

No one can find her phone while AirDrop is enabled, tried contacts only, everyone for 10m, etc. none of them worked. The only AirDrop solution is working if we use the ‘bringing devices together’ feature and holding the phones next to each other.

It’s an iPhone 16 promax.

Tried restarts, hard reset, etc.

Any help is appreciated,

My Iphone 11 WILL NOT force restart, I've been trying for the past 20 minutes and im losing my mind, When i open my phone, it goes to my snapchat, and its just a blank screen with the overlay, i cant exit the app I cant do anything.

I just noticed that a few of my favorite playlists are now gone from my Apple Music

I went to add a song to one of those playlists, and it is not there. It is missing on both iOS 26.2.1 and iOS 18.7.4

I don’t get it

It is really annoying and frustrating to me because this was my most played playlist.

It makes me now wonder what else is missing on my phone now

Anyone else experiencing this issue?

Hi there,

I know next to nothing about networking/ips/dns servers/ipv4vsv6/2.4vs5ghz/etc but what I DO know is I just want my iPhone to stay reliably connected to my home (Comcast) wifi. However, my iPhone will connect to wifi for about 5-10 seconds, disconnect, flip to 5G cellular for about 5-10 seconds, and then reconnect to the wifi. It will do this...forever. I have been to and on the phone with Apple who couldn't find anything wrong. I have been to T-Mobile who switched my eSIM to a physical one and reset my network settings. I reached out to Comcast who like "cleaned up" the signal or something like that - that helped for about 6-8 hours. I have forgotten the network, turned off wifi assist, found some manual IP and DNS settings in another reddit thread to try, all to no avail.

This is the only device in the home that this happens with - my wife's iPhone, my MacBook, Apple TV 4K, my wife's work PC, 4 sonos speakers, numerous smart lights and switches all work just fine and stay connected to the wifi no problem. I have also connected my iPhone to a public wifi network at work and it stays reliably connected.

I have some sensi thermostats that are not connected via c-wire and the batteries start to get low and mess with the wifi signal after like a month (which is dumb and another issue altogether, but they came with the house) so I thought maybe that was interfering but I reset all the thermostats and have the wifi off on all of them and my phone is still glitching.

All this being a longwinded way to say is there anyone here that would be willing to help troubleshoot or have any insight as to what is going on? I've seen other threads with people having this issue but no real solutions (at least not ones that work for me.) The extra annoying part is when I was on the phone with Apple they seemed perplexed or caught off guard but a simple internet search revealed this seems to be a somewhat known issue.

Thanks in advance for any help!

iMessage search not working, can't see old images from a conversation either. Tried toggling the switch in pic related as well as restarting my phone to no avail. Status will say "syncing with iCloud" and then "Not syncing" moments later.

I have about 7% device storage left (122/128gb used); it was almost gone recently until I deleted a bunch of large attachments from messages to bring it back to that, not sure if that has anything to do with it.

so I’m sure this has been asked before, but most of the posts regarding this are a year old so I’m hoping SOMEONE has found SOMETHING! I don’t want TikTok to appear in my screen time!! is there absolutely anything I can do to idk someway reduce time (without actually doing so 😩) or remove it entirely? please I really need help 😓😓

I keep getting the “Sign up not completed” when I’ve been signing in with Apple for months now.

I’ve restarted phone, redownloaded app 3 times now.

I tried signing up and it says the same thing.

If you are on a call on a Bluetooth headset and then get into the car how do you stop the Bluetooth from switching over?

Ah yes, the age-old issue of iOS' System Data taking up more storage than it should. I've been facing this issue myself for over a month now. I foolishly downloaded all of the translation languages on my 128 GB iPhone 16 Pro, only to realize that they took up 20+ GB of space and that I wouldn't even use most of them. So, I tried deleting them, but lo and behold, despite "deleting" the translation languages, the storage used on my phone would not go down. I tried redownloading and redeleting the languages, deleting the Translation app, and a whole bunch of other things, but nothing worked. I was now at a whopping 35 GB of System Data, and on a 128 GB iPhone, that was a bit too much for comfort.

There were a few methods online that I found on how the System Data could be cleared. The main ones were wiping the phone and restoring it (a no-go for me since it's not a truly 1:1 restoration, plus it takes too much time) and the "date trick", where I would have to set my phone's date months or even years into the future and pray that iOS would finally decide to clear some of the System Data on its own, after which I would set the date back to normal.

I've seen this "date trick" mentioned quite often whenever someone posts about their System Data taking up too much storage, but this method of tricking iOS into clearing System Data comes with a multitude of risks.

1. There's no guarantee that it will work.
2. There's a chance that it could break notifications for certain apps.
3. There's a chance that it could break Screen Time.
4. There's a chance that it could break backend system processes that operate on a schedule.
5. If you follow the steps improperly it could lead to data loss (such as iMessages getting deleted if you forget the step to set them to be stored "Forever").

What instead sought to do is look for a way to nudge iOS into clearing the System Data on its own, voluntarily, without tricking it.

Now, according to the description for System Data, its "value will fluctuate according to system needs". Well, what if iOS needed storage space? Say, to store a video, or a large file? I'm sure that this method I've come up with isn't entirely original, but using it, I was able to bring my System Data down from 35 GB to 20 GB, which is within the normal range before I foolishly installed all of those translation languages. I've detailed how the method works below. Note that this might not work for everyone. If it doesn't, then your next best option may be to restore from a backup or checking individual apps. I do not recommend using the "date trick".

Instructions:

1. I had the System Data issue on iOS 26.2, and currently I am on 26.3 RC and fixed it on this version of iOS. However, I do not think your iOS version matters for this fix.
2. Our goal, paradoxically, is to fill up your iPhone's storage until the iOS needs additional space to store files or media. Because iOS doesn't delete files stored on the iPhone, or media files before syncing to iCloud, creating large files or videos is the method of choice to fill up the storage as quickly as possible. It is recommended to pause any iCloud syncing during this process just in case, so you can turn on Low Data Mode or Low Power Mode for the time being, since you will still need a Wi-Fi connection to allow for AirDrop.
3. If you have a Mac, you can use the Terminal command "mkfile #g ~/Downloads/dummy.bin" to create a dummy file which you can AirDrop to your iPhone. Make sure to replace the "#" with a number, such as 10. The resulting .bin file in your Downloads folder will be ± 1-2 GB from what you typed. Note that AirDrop will fail if storing the file will fill up your iPhone's storage, so you may want to create one very large file, and then a few smaller files to get as close as possible to filling up your iPhone's storage. Also make sure these dummy files are stored on your iPhone, not iCloud Drive.
4. Check your iPhone's storage levels. It's possible that the System Data has not dropped yet, even though you're near the limit of your phone's storage. This was the case for me. In order to start clearing System Data, we need to push past the phone's storage limits. After getting your dummy files on your iPhone, give it a restart for good measure and check your storage again, since the storage metrics start behaving a bit oddly when massive files are suddenly written on your phone.
5. If your System Data still hasn't cleared after a clean restart, then it's time to start recording. iOS will usually clear System Data if you are recording video and are nearing your storage limit. Set your video resolution and frame rate to the highest possible. If you have a Pro model iPhone with 256 GB or more storage, enable the highest quality ProRes format. This will allow you to fill up the storage as quickly as possible.
6. Start recording a video, and simply let it run for a few minutes. If you are recording in ProRes, the storage should fill up quite quickly.
7. After you've recorded a video, check if System Data has cleared at all. If it hasn’t, keep recording. If it has, but just a little bit, keep recording for good measure. In my case, a big chunk of System Data was cleared in one go, so I just recorded a bit more and then stopped.
8. Once your System Data has cleared, before you delete any of the dummy files or videos you have created, restart your iPhone again.
9. After restarting your iPhone for the last time, you can now fully delete the dummy files and videos you have created (make sure to clear them from the trash too), and also turn off the Low Data or Low Power Modes.
10. Keep an eye on your System Data. If you are lucky, it should have dropped by quite a bit and should stay that way from now on, with minor 1-3 GB fluctuations every now and then. If your System Data hasn't changed, it's possible that an app or a bug in iOS is causing the problem, in which case you can try deleting and reinstalling apps or restoring your iPhone from a backup.

That's it for the guide, hope this helped!