My iPad is slow and laggy after iPadOS 26 update

Hello~ Do you have a technical question for us?

~Katana-San~

I won’t to update it now

It is NOT the iPad because mine is also doing the exact same things as theirs.

Since recent iOS update my iPad is lagging. I’ve shut down several times, cleared cache etc.

it freezes and lags . Not a great experience.

not sure what to do next. Help

No problems here… iPad, Apple Watch and iPhone all work perfectly on iOS 26.1.

Four days have gone by, and I expect the problem of slow performance should resolve itself by now. Photo app, especially, is very slow. The same is true with several other apps.

No it happened to my iPad too happening hit now as I type downloaded iOS/ipadOS 26 on my phone and iPad on phone it’s completely fine but iPad is really not great

It's been weeks and it's still not fixed

This one has worked for me like a charm.

Thank you so much!

Seems no fix.

I tried for my 2020 iPad Pro 12.9 inch, but it still stuck, I restored and it’s still the same as it was.

Hello~ I agree with *David M Brewer*. You can’t downgrade to a lower iOS as it’s not supported anyway. You may find that a restart or forced restart helps…

Force restart iPhone - Apple Support

~Katana-San~

Or, just give it 3-4 days to finish indexing the files from the update that are being performed in the background. There is also optimizations work going on for your photos with object detection algorithms. Those background processes do consume CPU resources, but that should be completed shortly. Best to leave it plugged in when not in use.

Katana-San wrote:

Hello~ I agree with *David M Brewer*. You can’t downgrade to a lower iOS as it’s not supported anyway. You may find that a restart or forced restart helps…

Force restart iPhone - Apple Support

~Katana-San~

There is a misconception about doing a source restart. You should only do a force restart if the device or computer is not responsive. If you can still restart or shut down is the better way to go. If you do a force restart on on a device or computer that is still responsive you can corrupt the hard drive if something in the background is being written to the hard drive. Best to restart the normal way if you can.

It’s not just you, it’s really quite bad. I’m honestly not sure how it passed QC.

The ProRes display on my new-ish (6 months) iPad Pro is slowing to a CRAWL at about 26-48 FPS (it varies slightly) while scrolling, animating, or even just swiping between Home Screen pages. This is a far cry from the 120 it should be (and was previously). Seems like a segment of code was poorly written somewhere in the UI thread because it does speed back up every few seconds before slowing again.

Some have mentioned a reset or wipe may fix it, since my iPad is for development purposes I have wiped it numerous times and the issue persists, so YMMV.

[Edited by Moderator]