Slow performance and lag after iOS 26 update on iPhone

If the phone is working OK from last year, and starts lagging just after the update, the real issue here is iOS26.

My iPhone 12 is also very laggy since the update, and I am also experiencing APP crashes that I didn't see before the update.

I updated my IPhone 15 when the update first came out and I am still experiencing so much lag and battery drainage. I have to restart my phone sometimes because if I click an app it’ll just be a black screen as if it’s just stuck in trying to load which ever app I’ve selected. My son’s phone does the same. Neither phone had any previous issues. Now I can’t even use my phone without some form of glitch or lag. As I try to write this, my screen just keeps glitching up and down. As if I’m trying to scroll and type at the same time. I just want my phone to function like it did before this update.

I've been having the same issues as everyone else. After two hours on the phone with both regular support and senior advisors, we got nowhere. But my problems go beyond just lag and overheating. My calendar was completely wiped clean, the widget stopped showing appointments, and I couldn't even permanently delete files—they'd get stuck in the "recently deleted" folder. To top it off, iMessage would show "failed to send" even when the other person received the text.

The most frustrating part? The senior advisors were just as confused as I was. Their final advice was to just keep installing future updates and "hope" one fixes it.

My iPhone is getting a very bad sound lag. Ever since updating it’s been affected heavily. There was a sound lag for keyboard - when it sometimes disappears while typing and sometimes grows very loud - before, but now it’s across the entire system. Alarms now behave weird and my reminder at first vibrated and then had a sound with a 9 minute delay (it’s also not set to vibrate). Silence toggle reacts with a small delay like never before.

Screen locking sound behaves very strange and repeats itself.

Yes, also on my old 12 unlocking screen takes a longer moment and it shows darkened wallpaper but that’s because of the lack of Dynamic Island that shows Face ID icon.

At first there was lag for both my current and old iPhones but now it’s kinda most noticeable on my current iPhone since I use it most and have it not silenced. I hope next update fixes a lot of things and it gets more stable over time since it’s already been a while since the update and this kind of issue usually doesn’t happen to my iPhones

I have the same problem. iPhone 15 pro max.

By “slow”, I mean my keyboard isn’t that responsive anymore, when processes change, I’ll notice a micro stutter. It’s really strange to see this kind lacklustre UX responsiveness in an Apple product.

I updated a few days ago. Updated all my apps. Did a restart.

Battery at 87% health. Storage at 50%

Out of curiosity I went to an istore to check out the iPhone 17 pro, and to my surprise I noticed the same micro lag! Is ios26 a bad release??

My phone feels like a 4 year old Samsung now….

Good Morning everyone!

Another one here.

iPhone 14 256GB - 70GB free space

Battery capacity 87%

iOS 26.0.1

Imediately after upgrading to iOS26 seven days ago I faced performance issues, which I don’t have on any other, even older devices.

Clear indicator is the Home Assistant app (or calling Home Assistant in Safari or Chrome), which has terrible lags. Also this - not occurring on devices with iOS18 in the same environment.

I am really a fan, but what Apple is presenting here is just sad. Instead of sketching new icons, they should invest some time in integration testing.

Mac/Jim, you seem to be pretty well plugged in. This thread is swarming with really bad 26 bugs.

I have a healthy 15ProMax running 17.5 because that's the most recent ios my freestyle glucose monitor app is compatible with. But I'll soon be switching to Dexcom7 monitors, which claim compatibility with ios 26. If I can upgrade that would be great.

But this thread is really alarming. Are engineers working on the lag/battery/other issues and will apprpriate patches be available soon? If not, updating is too risky and doesn't seem worth it.

It’s the IOS26 update. I have the iPhone 17 pro and it’s doing the exact same thing. ughhh slow as heck, lag, freezing on the simplest task, heating fast and the battery life sucks. Glad I haven’t traded in my iPhone 13 Pro Max, nor have I done the update on it.

If it was the iOS update there would be a million posts about it, as there are 500 million users who have updated and presumably don’t have a problem. Have you read the thread to see how others have solved this?

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Further follow up on this issue from my own experience. I ended up returning my iPhone 15 Pro to Apple as I had it less than a month and the MagSafe charging functionality stopped working too as well as all of the issues with lag and unresponsiveness. I have now bought an iPhone 17 and I am not experiencing any issues although I have not yet activated Apple Intelligence.

Just an update to the iOS 26 update. So it’s been a month now since installing iOS 26 and compared to iOS 18 and all previous iOS versions this one is the worst. I can’t see anything it did to make my iPhone better. The lagging is still there. The battery still drains quickly and overheats. I’ve read through this whole forum several times and waited weeks for all the indexing to complete, I turned off Apple Intelligence, I turned off the reduce transparency display, I added the iOS 26.0.1 patch, I never dropped my phone, didn’t jailbreak it, bought it brand new from the actual apple store paid in full in person, always used a protective case, updated all the apps that I could and yet the problems and glitches and lag persists. Even going to the App Store or using Apple Maps or the weather app or the clock app all original apps nothing 3rd party outsourced doesnt work properly. Nothing works like it did with iOS 18. That worked perfectly. I have full bars reception data 5G there works. And now my phone is slow, glitchy and it’s not an upgrade. iOS 26 was a major downgrade. Probably should have waited to install after 26.2 or 26.3 was released. It shouldn’t take 4 weeks after installation to have it running smoothly. But I’m not a software engineer or developer so all I can compare it to is the 14 years of continuous use of other iPhones models and iOS versions. It’s hard to say it was working perfectly before the update and is now not working good after the update. And reading through all the comments and troubleshooting is like okay I did this and I did that and I am still experiencing lag and glitches so now what. Those issues weren’t there before. I guess it’s my fault for installing iOS 26. Maybe they should have just gone incremental improvements like from 18 to 19 to 20 instead of trying to leap ahead to 26.

Yes. I’m not getting all my calls or voicemails. My daughter called about 5 times. So she had to call me on Facebook Messenger. My focus will just come on and it wouldn’t let me turn it off. My hotpot just turns on.I went to settings to make sure it was off and it was. Couple hours later it just pop back on.

I’m having so my issues with this new Update 26.0.1

I also been asking a lot of other people with it. Some has and some hasn’t no issues with the new update.

Same here on the 17 Pro. It feels clumsy, slow, and unresponsive — not to mention the numerous bugs, like the disappearing message input line in Viber, iMessage, and others. Compared to the experience I had on my previous 14 Pro running the latest iOS 18, it honestly feels like a step back by seven years.

I've been having issues with lag ever since the update came out, to the point where some of my apps are taking almost 10 minutes to actually open correctly. No Apple Intelligence, no VPN profile, battery health isn't the issue either because I never had this issue before updating