Apple IOS 26 is AWFUL
 

I have been using Apple IOS 26/ IpadOS 26 for a few weeks.
My experience is it is AWFUL.
SLOW, lots of extra taps needed to get things done. Lots of changes that don't seem to add anything useful but make life with my ipad harder.

I had no choice as it came with a new ipad I got.

In padt was a revelation as "it just worked" so easily, espec compared to laptop.

So much so that I now am reluctant to use new ipad and use the old ipad with ios 18.

Can you supply examples of extra taps? I went from 18.x to 26.2 and can’t readily identify procedural changes.

Same here, although my experience is with the iOS version, not with the iPadOS one. The only example I can think of is that I have to use one extra tap to get to my overview of open tabs in Safari. If you want, you can go to the app settings and change that back to the old behaviour.

Note that the system may be a bit slower initially as it is 'learning' and indexing. It might improve over time.

Re extra taps I will have to watch myself over next few days to see where I do extra taps, but maybe it is just my frustration rather than reality.
I have not used the ios26 ipad for a few days but will go back to it and see.

If you can, head to an Apple store and compare with the display units.

Good idea - thanks for the suggestion. May get some help from a genius there. I am certainly not one.

"Genius" is the job title, not the qualification. Still, they may be able to help if there is some problem.

That could be worth doing. They can check whether your device is functioning as it should and can help you out with some tips, they are good at that.

I’ve noticed that when I want to tap an emoji on a photo in Facebook it now requires an extra 2 taps. In other words you have to tap on the actual photo.

That sounds like a Facebook issue, not an iOS issue.

Since upgrading to 26 on my iphone, I haven't noticed any degredation or slowing down.

I was initially reluctant to upgrade, and held off for several months, as I felt that there would be much change for little gain, because I don't use a lot of the capabilities - "liquid glass" seemed like the kind of interface that would consume power for no purpose. I assumed that I would have to waste a lot of time restoring apps to behave as I wanted and already had configured.

However, the reality was much better than expected, and very little input was needed to keep things as I like them. The most noticeable difference for me was with Safari and, having got used to the changes, I think it's better.

I don't like it. I have half a dozen Pprune tabs permanently open and reload them periodically to see what is new. Almost always the page reloads to a blank page and I have to touch the back button or the forward button then reload. Also slow getting around now. When operating systems update I don't want a prettier display, more menus or a hundred more emojis. I have grown up. Just keep my tablet secure and more efficient. Same goes for the phone.

Not a fan either. It’s really slow. I als seem to take several taps to get things to actually work.

My wife has just been speaking to her centenarian mother, who is complaining that she has downloaded Ios 26 and it’s now preventing her iPad from restarting!

If the iPad does not want to restart, it could be worth going through the steps outlined here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102642
I have seen threads on other forums with a similar sounding issue, it turned out to be an incompatible app on the iPad that messed up the update process. Removing the app sorted everything out, but finding out which app could be the challenge of course.

Thanks for that, I’ll pass it on.

How is everyone getting on with iOS 26 now that (hopefully) all the bugs have been ironed out ? I'm still on 18.7 as I just couldn't be bothered with changing after all the initial complaints of users in my social circle. I read that Apple aren't offering any more update sub-versions for the luddites that remain on 18.7, so it seems I will need to take the plunge soon, primarily due to security concerns. Any observations welcomed.

I have a work iPad. After the upgrade the 4G eSIM went offline and stayed offline. Our IT support was able to reset the SIM which sometimes worked for a while until I discovered that plugging in a physical SIM(and not using it) also kept the eSim alive.

That got fixed about 3 weeks ago and I haven't had a problem since.

To be honest I can't tell the difference.

Same here, I updated within days of iOS 26 becoming available and have not had any issues with it. Just works. As has been mentioned, there is not that much of a difference, but the security updates would certainly make it worth updating.

They seemed to have sorted out the issues with unresponsive screens and needing multiple taps or app close / open to be able to click the screen until the last update where they brought it back. Must have been popular 🙄

iOS 26 is truly awful.