thoughts on iOS 26

I've just updated it and started using it, and have already run into a major issue. I rebooted my phone and Voiceover did not turn on when I turned my phone back on. I couldn't activate it with the accessibility shortcut either, I had to enter my pin with no voiceover assistance first, and then once my phone was unlocked, I could enable voiceover.

The copied speech option is wonderful.

I just wanted to share my experience as someone using an iPhone 13 updated to iOS 26. Overall, performance has been quite good — everything feels smooth, and VoiceOver navigation is very fast. Honestly, it doesn’t feel much different from newer models, which is impressive considering this is already an older device.

By the way, I also wanted to ask: does anyone know how to enable call screening on iOS 26? I couldn’t find the option in Settings.

Thanks!

Thankfully, it only happened once. I've restarted my phone again and all is well, but when I rebooted after the update, there was no speech and no way to enable Voiceover. Sounds like this may have been a wide-spread issue, although it wasn't listed here on Applevis; maybe it didn't happen with the betas? Perhaps they need to add it as a critical bug so that people aren't caught off guard like I was. If I'm being honest, all of the updates I've done today have been quirky to 1 degree or another, but the no VO on the phone issue was by far the most serious; it actually cost me $44, as I had to buy an emergency book of paratransit tickets. I mean... I guess it'll be good to have them around just in case, but it's something I never should have had to deal with. I'm just so thankful that my paratransit driver was able to unlock my phone; I hadn't had any luck entering my passcode without speech. Let's hope that whatever caused this problem gets resolved in the next iOS 26 update.

go to settings>apps>phone. change roter to headings, and flick down until you hear screen callers.

Good news, Gujarati language has officially added to the apples ecosystem, I was happy that the Gujarati language has been added, as I was waiting for it for quite some times now. I'm an American, but I always have wondered that there are so many Gujarati's in America, why Apple hasn't implemented their mother tongue, which is Gujarati. Unless, better late than never.

I upgraded to iOS 26, mainly because the last thing I need is for the app that works with my blood sugar monitor to eventually no longer be supported with iOS 18. I regretted updating the second my phone came back on. I launched safari, returning to a fanfiction I'd started reading just before updating. I use Alex as my main voice. I don't know what apple did with Alex, but he doesn't pause between sentences now, making reading anything longer than a sentence or two almost impossible. Also, my phone's volume seems quieter than it was on iOS 18, even after I restarted the phone. Now I'm stuck on an operating system I can't tolerate. I'm trying to find another voice I can use in place of Alex, but all the other voices seem to quiet, to the point where I have to blast my phone just to hear anything.

I am trying to change my primary VO Voice, and I can't get rid of the default Sumantha no matter what.
I had to download all of the voices which I was previously using, which I did successfully, but, changing primary voice is prooving to be a big challenge so far.
I am stuck with Tom so far.

Can you add a voice to the rotor and just use that as your 'primary'? It's pretty much what I have been doing throughout 18.x. Since you can't seem to have custom Rates for the Rotor voices, and I like my 'main' voice at 58%, while I actually use basic Samantha as a rotor voice for certain scenarios, at 70%.

HTH.

Hi, I don’t normally update the first day of an update, but the bugs are listed here are things that I don’t use so I felt OK to update. I think it’s pretty stable. I mean, I don’t have the biggest use case for a lot of these new features, but I have it so far. I don’t love the new layout of the Mail app, but I didn’t see anything in settings to change it back to classic view or anything so I guess I’ll just have to get used to it. We have a couple new Indian English voices, but the problem with the Guitar Voice at least is that it reads basically everything in English until you try to get to like the sliders for the pitch and speaking percentages in the clock numbers don’t read in English so I’m not really sure what that’s all about because they’re labeled as English India for her voice so I don’t know what’s going on with that but there’s also one weird thing too if there’s like two Samantha buttons for voiceover and then the difference between default and enhanced either they’re literally like two separate Samantha buttons one of them was just kind of there and doesn’t play a sample or anything. It’s just a button labeled Samantha and then there’s the regular normal Samantha button where we could player sample or selector so it’s a little weird. Also, when I updated my iPhone 15 it went back to Samantha deleted Karen premium and then I had to re-download Karen premium. She’s back now but I just thought that was weird. I updated my iPhone SE. It stayed on Kait enhanced. So I don’t know what’s up with that but something to be aware of. I’m just thankful that I didn’t lose any voice speech. And as soon as you guys have and that sounds really scary. But it doesn’t happen to anybody else because it’s a pretty significant bug. It’s an overall pretty cool update though I guess. Nothing like majorly fun this year unfortunately. And that little bird ringtone is so corny. I didn’t even sound like a bird. It sounds like a whistle. I kind of find it really annoying actually. I’m still using classic alert, tones and ringtones because I still don’t love the new ones. I’m just glad we have the old ones in the classic section. I’m glad the new voiceover sounds. Those are what makes the stability of the iOS I think. If they were all of a sudden change it, we wouldn’t exactly know what the new sounds would mean so I think it’s good the way it is. The liquid glass design doesn’t seem to be changing anything for a completely blind for us like me. I also use voice control. Both of this feature just seem to be working pretty well together still. Working pretty well

@Singer Girl,
I am glad to hear you did not lose speech on your SE3 with the update. I also use that version of iPhone as my daily, and have already read a few posts about this weird glitch.
I have an old iPhone SE 2020, I think I will attempt to update that one to iOS 26, just to play around with the new features. Think its still on iOS 16 or 17.

Will wait until iOS 26.1 before I update my daily. 😅

Last week did so, and no issues. Checked yesterday for update, did turn off beta but nothing. Did get update for watch OS, same thing beta is off yet got an update, getting it now.

I just did a test myself and I didn't experience the no VO after reboot thing at all.
Tried rebooting, VO works just fine.
Tried turning passcode on and then reboot, VO still works fine after reboot.
Edit: For your information I'm on an iPhone 15 Pro Max.

I've stayed away from the voices rotor, though, in case I run into problems. I've been dealing with the notifications bug for months now, so no surprises there. Sometimes I'm having trouble finding the back button. I haven't explored everything yet.

I updated my iPad Pro 2021 to iPadOS 26 instead of my phone so I could see if the bugs would bother me.
I also use the Alex voice. It does do a slight pause between sentences for me, but it seems to do a one to two second pause between paragraphs. I've tested this with Kindle books and websites. I don't know if it's that my iPad is four years old, but nothing is laggy for me, only the pause between paragraphs.
I guess I could get used to it, it's just kind of annoying because I have my speech rate set to 76 and the pause kind of makes reading slower.

iPad 9. Is OK.

But overall good update. Punjabi language... I guess it's better than nothing and there is so little development of tts in it so it's not entirely Apple's fault, but omg it's half baked still.
It's good in that sense that few ui change and mostly good new apps and functions. Hold assist doesn't work with paratransit in Montreal so that's sad, worst of all it's the exact same music they used in their demo. I haven't even tried the new phone layout.

Hello all,
After doing the update today I have lost all my keyboard feedback sounds. Has anyone else seen this and is there a fix for it? I am running iOS26 on an iPhone 15 plus.

A couple more things I've found that are awesome.

I like how you can now have any widgets you have on the lock screen on the bottom instead of right under the clock. I took out the quick actions in iOS 18, so quickly looking at my lock screen widgets (weather conditions and my move ring), are a lot easier.

Braille Access is awesome for writing long content because you don't have the translator slowing you down. I wrote a long journal entry,and just copy pasted from a Braille note into the journal app and it worked like a champ!

The journal app has some VO bugs though, like how it doesn't read the prompts anymore until you start an entry and that might not be what you want to write about.

But yeah, pro tip: if you're using a Braille display and need to write something substantial, like a long email, use Braille Access and then copy paste and delete the note when you're done.

Personal voice creation is awesome! I created my own personal voice on my iPhone and it's much easyer compared to previous versions of iOS. it scemes to be a little laggy on iOS when used with VoiceOver, but not that bad.

I updated last night and rebooted this evening. And now I can't get my VoiceOver to turn back on. I was in a chat with Apple support for about an hour trying many things, but still won't work. They are supposed to call me tomorrow morning. But I'm not even sure my phone will work. The rep had me restart a couple of times, try to use Siri, try to use control nearby devices using my Apple watch. But I don't even know if my phone is locked or unlocked. I live alone and really don't like having my phone not working. But at least, I have my series 8 Apple watch. I have an iPhone 15. Does anyone have any other ideas?

I know this may be a bit off topic, but how can you make a personal voice?

I made a new thread about this, but if you have already updated and rebooted, you won't be able to try my workaround.

I do have a question for you and anyone else that this has happened to. My question is, is it possible that after the reboot the volume just simply got turned way down?

Do remember that, media volume, also controls, VoiceOver volume.

Just a thought.

What I did was restore from a backup file on my computer.

No, the volume would not fix things.

The phone essentially was bricked.

I chose to update the phone rather than set up the phone from scratch and luckily it worked.

I was able to get speech working.

This is what worked for me, so do so at your own risk.

I prefer to backup to a computer because, well, let's just say I find it more reliable than the cloud for some of the voiceover settings.

Plus, for some things I'm oldschool lol.

You may have to set up a few things from scratch, such as signal and whatsapp, at least I had to, but it wasn't a big deal.

I was able to get speech back in the end.

So basically, with my method, everything was erased and restored.

If this means I don't get apps that are no longer in the app store, oh well.

I wouldn't call restoring from a backup a proper workaround, but rather an option of last resort, if all else fails.
This makes me wonder, why does this happens to some people but not others? Me myself I've not experienced it; turning passcode on doesn't seem to trigger this behavior for me either.