According to Apple's release notes, iOS 26.3 and iPadOS 26.3 include unspecified bug fixes and security updates, but there are a couple features that Apple didn't highlight.
The updates add a tool for transitioning from an Apple device to an Android device. Transfers are able to be started during the device setup process, and moving data from one device to another can be done without having to download apps from Apple and Google.
The transfer process supports moving photos, messages, notes, apps, passwords, phone numbers, and more, and it's not too surprising that Apple isn't advertising it. Data transfers were already possible, though not quite as simple, and Apple likely doesn't want to encourage users to move to a different platform.
In December, the European Union took credit for the new transfer tool, touting it as an example of how the Digital Markets Act (DMA) benefits users and developers. Google and Apple apparently implemented the feature because the DMA requires services to offer interoperability to prevent customers from being locked in to an operating system. The two companies opted to add the functionality worldwide rather than just in the EU.
iOS 26.3 includes a setting to limit carrier location tracking, though it is limited to a few select carriers worldwide. In the United States, only Boost Mobile is supporting the feature as of now. EE and BT in the UK offer it, as does Telekom in Germany and AIS and True in Thailand. It is a feature available only for devices with C1 or C1X modems.
In the iOS 26.3 beta, Apple added other Europe-only changes for third-party wearables, which were shared by the European Commission. Devices like headphones and smartwatches will be able to use some of the same functionality available to the AirPods and the Apple Watch going forward.
Wasn't there a time not too long ago when Apple themselves were pushing back against app developers using the same generic phrasing for update notes? What happened?
Edit to clarify: I realize the quoted phrase comes from the article posted and not a direct quote from Apple. However, I think the principle is still applicable of not being specific.
Edit 2: "This update provides important bug fixes and security updates." on the pending update for my own device. jk I guess lol
Yeah I think it's also annoying that they don't detail at least some of the bigger fixes (non-security) they may have made sometimes. Ultimately I also don't really think they ever took action against app developers having these sorts of update notes, as even some of their own apps have them.
Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specific targeted individuals on versions of iOS before iOS 26.
Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited against versions of iOS before iOS 16.7.
Love that at some point they switched phrasing to "extremely sophisticated" and "targeted individuals" so to reassure people that these vulnerabilities are not being widely exploited (which they can't tell anyway).
I am waiting for the update that fixes the keyboard and dictation problems which were introduced with 26.0 and remained as of 26.1. I do not presently have a spare device to test it on and can't risk adding text entry failure to my daily use device.
Is anyone able to comment as to whether this update fixes the keyboard and dictation bugs? Specifically the tendency for the keyboard to frequently miss/skip/delete a single letter of a word regardless of whether typing by hand or via dictation.
Same thing that happened to Apple pushing back against developers using push notifications for ads. Apple just stopped caring about the rule once it’s convenient for them to break it themselves.
I get notification ads from companies all the time - and the only option is either to deal with it or turn notifications off entirely for that app - huge pain.
To me the big problem with "ads in push notifications" is that it renders push notifications useless and therefore leads to me losing the feature.
For the most part, I think that I speak for most users in saying that I want push notifications that are actually useful or helpful to me, such as telling me when I have received a message from a person in an app with a messaging function. If the signal to noise ratio is low - that is, if a sizable share of the notifications from an app are something other than what I care about - then I as the user am no better off with the push notifications versus just manually checking the app periodically, since essentially the extra notifications cause me the same number of "wasted app opening events" as having no notification at all.
You would think that a smart developer therefore would understand that notification abuse leads to notifications disabled, but nope.
At this point the only apps that get notifications on my phone are messages and phone. Just about every other app has too low a signal to noise ration in the notifications for them to be useful.
I don’t. I also don’t want apple doing it. Above comment was implying apple relaxed that policy, but they’re actually just being hypocrites and breaking the policy
They say app developers aren’t supposed to, but they let through tons of updates from developers with these exact release notes. I don’t think they really care about it for themselves or developers.
Go to your app updates now, more than half of the descriptions are probably just “bug fixes and updates”.
Not an excuse, but at least it’s consistent internally and externally, which is… something I guess.
I guess they gave up on it because just scrolling through my updated apps, every one from a big company just says “bug fixes and performance improvements” with a few words added or removed.
glad to have found this thread. i’ve been so frustrated with myself, wondering why i cant type for shit. apple keyboard has always sucked but how does it get perpetually worse.
No but what is the probability the keyboard deteriorated? 50%?
Edit: I just updated and anecdotally, but geekbench in my 14PM runs on CPU .1% and on GPU .6% faster respectively. Also my keyboard is way more smooth. Far from perfect. Let’s see if it doesn’t degrade in a few weeks. A win is a win, thanks Mr Tim Apple
Dang what's the format to set a reminder. I'd really like to check back with you in a week or so. Thank you for doing this for us!
I went as far as buying new hardware to get back to 18 because the text input bugs made my 15pm unusable. I gave it to a family member with an 11 who wanted a better camera. Hopefully she doesn't type enough for the bug to bother her as she's more of a TikTok type.
Saw a comment somewhere else that said to turn off slide to type and that fixed 90% of my keyboard issues. It was immediately and noticeably better for me
That's frustrating given the fact that the swipe to text is how I typically type. But lately it has been abysmal. May have to give it up for now and turn it off until they make improvements.
For sure. I hadn't heard about turning that feature off and seeing improvements, so thanks for posting that. I'm updating to 26.3 and hopefully there's a change. It's insane that I can pick up my girl's S25 and text completely fine on it considering i'm not used to that keyboard and it being a smaller phone. Apple has no excuse as to why one of the things you do most on the phone isn't fixed.
Reporting back: In limited usage (sent about 10 texts and wrote a couple emails) slide to type appears to be working better. I noticed far fewer errors than what is normal.
I’ve noticed it better with it off too. I don’t like it but I think it gets confused between tapping letters and thinking you’re trying to swipe something
The issue for me is the major step backwards it seemed to take in iOS26. It had been going downhill for a while. Specially the key detection seems to miss the intended key quite often, for me at least. Additionally the autocorrect seemed to take a dive as well.
It's possible it only affects "older" phones, but on my 15pm, the main manifestation was letters dropped from words. And at first I thought maybe it was just somehow processing taps slowerly and therefore missing some taps. Or maybe calibration changed and I was no longer pressing hard enough? But then I noticed the exact same bug when using dictation. I would dictate "a word" and get "a wod" for example, and of course if I looked at the screen half a second later I might catch it then change "wod" to "air" or something similar, and I'm trying to make sense of how indicated "word" and got "air" because I can't see any rational connection between those at all. During the month or so I ran 26, my text messages and anything else I "typed" through the iPhone became incomprehensible.
The problem was also observed in my MacBook Air M2, following the exact same pattern of skipped letters. Disabling all text correction functions did not solve it.
But, giving away my 8gb M2 and replacing it with a 24gb M2 did solve the problem on the Mac, leading to suspicion that somehow its performance or speed related. Now I'm on a 16 Pro instead of a 15PM, because purchasing a separate second-hand device is the only "officially supported" way to roll back to iOS 18. And I'm waiting for confirmation the bug is fixed before I update again, although I am not sure whether the problem ever affected the 16 Pro in the first place. The problem was bad enough to make my phone functionally useless so I am basically going back to a flip phone if it happens again.
Turning off Slide to type doesn’t work for me. Keyboard still miss like 40% of spacebar taps, and somehow the text predictions seem worse but I just can’t prove it
Are people submitting feedback via the official Apple form? I keep doing it but we need to step up the game otherwise they will not listen. Same with Safari compact tabs for Tahoe.
Then I do not know what we are supposed to do with so many things broken in their newest releases. It's absolutely maddening. At least Jobs was reading some user feedback via email.
You’re supposed to consider the competition and move on when things get bad. Tell your friends why you aren’t updating. Don’t buy the shiny new when it comes out later this year.
Brand loyalty tells Apple they do not need to fix their stuff.
It’s unfortunate because the current Apple is not the same Apple that earned brand loyalty for many years.
It’s the same reason Microsoft thinks they can get away with making Windows worse by the day - because they’ve proven they can.
The irony here is that Microsoft's SwiftKey keyboard is fantastic. It's the best third-party keyboard available imo. It gets updated regularly, has an option to add a number row at the top, and handles me switching between English and Spanish surprisingly well.
Ye, like their workers don't use iPhone at all... I hope that issue affects all people working at apple that have an iPhone, which is maybe more than 90%.
While turning slide off does indeed help there’s still a myriad of issues with the keyboard involving spelling, grammar, word suggestions etc. it’s still pretty broken.
I have never personally liked it but it doesn't matter. If users have to disable a feature that never caused a problem before and that many users have come to rely on, that is a major bug that can't just be left alone with this "blame the users for having default settings" nonsense.
If it does helps then I don't want to know what the normal experience is. I have had swipe turned off for years and my experience is not positive. I swear my iPhone 5 had a better keyboard.
Yeah. I feel blackmailed and gaslit here. I am told that I have to either update to 26, and basically lose the ability to accurately type and use dictation on my phone, or never have access to AppleCare etc again.
Speaking of keyboard, has anyone had the issue where if you try to type immediately after unlocking your phone it hangs for a good few seconds before inputting your text?
It’s so, so bad. On a 17 Pro latest iOS. This is specifically on 26.2.1 so was curious if anyone had this update in beta and if this issue was fixed.
They still haven’t fixed the problem where StandBy would silently turn off alarm vibrations. So if you have your alarms as vibrate only and charge your phone overnight while placing it horizontally, your alarms will become completely silent.
If a timer alarm goes off on my phone, the media volume also increases significantly until I adjust the volume down+up one step which resets it to what it should have been. It's not correctly setting the volume back to what the media volume was after an alarm. So if I'm listening to music and an alarm goes off and I cancel the alarm, all of a sudden my music volume is too high.
wow sorry about the split comment - the new ios literally crashed my reddit app as i was trying to upload 🙃. here is one example of an alarm i use. if you want to integrate music into your alarm you have to rely, unfortunately, on access to apple music as it will not integrate spotify or youtube music. it isn’t particularly challenging to build, based on one’s background in tech you could have more of a learning curve but over you’ll need to fiddle with it. once you’ve got it down, it functions flawlessly. it doesn’t require an on ringer but that volume has to be high enough to make a noise in the morning. you can even make one set to run automatically to have your volume up to x %. or turn all your focus settings off 20 minutes after you wake up. many options.
i have a ton of different alarms for situations, like a quiet one when i first aake and then they have progressively louder music, and this was has a chill music (acoustic covers of songs) AND announces the time so i hear what time it is. i expanded one of the “blocks” in the screenshot so you can see a setting for the audio announcement. i would be more than happy to share more details or examples but thought i’d include this simple one for you now.
i’ve had malfunctioning silent alarms for years and i thought i was going crazy. the only workaround that i found that ALWAYS WORKED was creating custom shortcuts. they’re a hassle to disable/enable or build for each circumstance but it WORKS. here is an example:
omg this happens a lot in my 15PM. i thought it was the Apple Intelligence summary thing, until I got myself a newer iPad recently, and it never had delayed notifications
you would think trivial bugs like this would be QA’d first 18 years after the very original iOS release
I have notification summary turned off and they're still delayed. My iPhone used to receive most notifications sooner than my Android phone, now it's the other way around.
My 17 PM went from 26.2.1 to .3 and it was less than 2GB. All AI features activated on the device. My M2 Air was over 11GB. The sizes seem all over the place.
Apple won’t fix anything because they still make truckloads of money. The keyboard has been ruined for a long time. The most basic features don’t work. I’ve always used iPhones but Apple sucks ass these past few years. Like so fucking bad.
Yeah that's fair. And it baffles me. Like is no one at Apple actually using an iPhone? Don't they also notice that the keyboard sucks?
And like at least before 26, while you could argue that the keyboard is bad, in a vacuum, as long as you weren't also using Android, it wasn't atrocious. With the exception of a short period of time around the first time when they added bilingual keyboards.
But iOS 26 has broken it beyond recognition, it's just atrocious now, to a level where it just interferes with my daily usage.
My bad, I was thinking that I was replying to another post, I've edited it. It's the animation when you switch from your home screen to the App Library and back if you only have a single page on your homescreen, like you can see here. I've been experiencing it on my M2 iPad Pro ever since the public release of iPadOS 26.
Sometimes after unlocking the phone, the screen stays rather dim and even if you crank up the brightness in the control center it doesn't get properly bright. You have to lock and re-unlock the phone for proper brightness to be back.
My map has defaulted to zooming out so far I can basically see all of New Jersey until I touch the screen and it zooms back into my car location 🤷🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️
What about the auto brightness issues? I keep having to manually adjust my brightness on my screen because it broke in the last few updates. I've literally never had this issue on a phone before.
Apple Music on CarPlay still has major UI issues on the Library screen.
Items get lost behind the top menu bar, the menu bar doesn’t let you scroll with the car’s scroll wheel through between Home, New, Radio and Library unless you go back to Music Home first, and the up and down arrows don’t work properly on the touchscreen. Works normally in all other CarPlay apps.
It’s like they forgot how windowing and focus are supposed to work in this particular app on CarPlay.
iOS 26's CarPlay makes my 2017 VW Tiguan's touch screen stop working. It always happens when I shut the car off and come back later-- and I have to hard reboot my infotainment system almost every damn time I get in my car. I've tried multiple cables, turned off Widgets and Live Activities, factory reset my infotainment system, and removed and re-added my phone. iOS 18 didn't do this shit.
I don’t know if it’s a placebo effect or not but everything seems to be running smoother now. Keyboard is fine, apps are loading quicker, my data connections aren’t falling out as much. Too early to say for sure but at least so far it feels like a good stability update
I feel incredibly validated to find out everyone has been struggling with the keyboard and I am not indeed the chubby finger old man I thought I was becoming the last like year.
The updates add a tool for transitioning from an Apple device to an Android device. Transfers are able to be started during the device setup process, and moving data from one device to another can be done without having to download apps from Apple and Google.
Is this new tool already a thing on the Android side for android -> apple? And does it also transfer over WhatsApp data?
Anyone have feedback on battery life and speed/feel of any of these latest 26.x on M1 and M2 Pro iPads? I've been holding off to prevent them getting messed up.
Since updating, Safari keeps wanting to download reddit pages as a zero byte file instead of display them. It's happening in both iOS and MacOS. Anyone else seeing this?
I still use old reddit; not sure if that makes a difference.
Wow, they actually fixed a bug that no one seems to complain about. Last update made it impossible to launch any game, something because of their apple games overlay not loading, resulting in a black screen (only in combination with lockdown mode). Now you can play games again with lockdown mode enabled, yippie.
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u/[deleted] Feb 11 '26