Slow performance and lag after iOS 26 update on iPhone

Hi, this is not Apple Support. Apple and Apple Support do not participate here. Everyone posting and commenting are fellow Apple users, just like you. 

Please provide your feedback directly to Apple using the link I shared below.

Product Feedback - Apple

It's horrible. I mean I just bought an iPhone 17 pro and I have never experienced performance this bad on a brand new late model iPhone due to an update. I tested the 15 pro and 17 pro side by side with apple intelligence on and they seemed the same, maybe less heat generation on the 17 pro was noticeable. design choice for IOS 26 is even worse, it gives me a migraine. turning off Apple intelligence seems to help right now but I really hope these issues are addressed as in my perspective, they are causing a really bad user experience.

suchinjack ~ Your iPhone 13 Pro Max could be 4 years old and the long process of applying a major iOS upgrade to an iPhone with a weak, aging battery can be the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back." So...

Does your iPhone 13 Pro Max still have its original battery?

And what's the Maximum Capacity % here?...

Settings > Battery > Battery Health & Charging

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SAME

Apple Intelligence definitely is not ready to be released not to mention the fact that it’s a massive Battery hog Even with the battery having its own processor now… I turned off AI and the three reduce motion settings there’s Quite a few settings very deep that Will not auto populate when you search. Drill down on everything in accessibilities and turn off live listen that’s in At least three different settings. Other than me being in the middle of Of the US Cellular/Tmobile Tower issue that’s got me stuck on a US cellular tower that’s too busy; I can barely get a webpage to Load, horrible phone quality because the lines are so busy and the signal is weak where I live, And the phone is constantly trying to connect to a 5G tower so I’ve override that as well and locked into LTE as a work around everything else is working great after changing all the settings and Disabling AI. I also turned on reduce white point and move the slider all the way to the left, turned on true tone and moved it left of center, turrned cursor to large and not blinking. Apple copy paste their field test results into my account per my request after troubleshooting with them and they confirmed exactly what I already knew about the tower issue even though I was showing four bars 5G plus getting 148 MB on the download speed… Still horrible connection on the phone major interference drop calls And excessive lagging while loading a webpage.

Good luck

I upgraded iPhone 15 pro to iOS 26.1 ten days ago and safari is just DESTROYED. bookmarks and web navigates so slowly, lags exceed 6 to 10 seconds between click and action. I have gigabit fiber and eero 7 500 m WiFi speed so it’s definitely the operating system. Apple please fix ios26.1’s interminable lags.

2manmoshpit wrote:

I upgraded iPhone 15 pro to iOS 26.1 ten days ago and safari is just DESTROYED. bookmarks and web navigates so slowly, lags exceed 6 to 10 seconds between click and action. I have gigabit fiber and eero 7 500 m WiFi speed so it’s definitely the operating system. Apple please fix ios26.1’s interminable lags.

You are not addressing Apple here. This is a user-to-user forum. Apple is not reading your post.

You can let Apple know your thoughts here:

Product Feedback - Apple

I found that closing all apps after updating significantly reduces/eliminates lag.

To me, it seems like performance suffers when using an app that has remained open since pre-update. Closing and reopening an app after updating allows the app to factor in your current iOS version. After doing this once, you can continue using your lagfree updated phone as you normally would.

For information; I’m using an iPhone 14 Pro 512GB with ~380GB of unused storage running iOS 26.1 (23B85). My battery condition is currently at 81%, and it’s been ~12 hours since updating from iOS 18.6. I did not adjust any settings, including settings related to Apple Intelligence.

This works because after updating an app, your phone closes it and makes you reopen it.

A more general fix is therefore to close all apps once after updating. Afterwards you can continue using your phone as normal.

For more details you can check out my full solution here.

iPhone 14Pro here on iOS 26.1, 256GB.

Go to Settings > Search.

Turn off “Help Apple improve search”.

It changed a lot for me, phone is usable again. I guess it must have been setting up some encrypted connection with Apple servers every time search was available (any browser address input, in many apps etc). Before the change I practically couldn’t use safari. Now it’s smooth.

this platform won't resolve anything it seems like a venting out platform. no one form apple read this

tell them what you really think and your issues on this link. I did it and sent a feedback to them about how terrible the iPhone is. The more the merrier till some one takes notice

Product Feedback - Apple

Me too!!! Since the upgrade my screen has been less responsive and the performance has been very very slow. It took me 2 minutes, for example to click through and create this post. Clicking me too, signing in, and clicking continue. In a high wifi range. It’s just general responsiveness and the phone heats up and uses up battery faster. I thought updates were supposed to improve performance not degrade it. I have an iPhone 14 pro. Doesn’t feel old enough to perform so poorly.

I had the same horrible experiences with the software. It seems Apple Intelligence is trying to be a part of everything and just doesn't seem to know what it's doing. It influences connectivity to other devices, keyboard, apps, and creates difficulties with things that were never a problem before. When I turned off Apple Intelligence, my experience was at least significantly more palatable. I rather have no AI than bad AI. It was so bad I was looking at android ecosystem alternatives to iphone.

I have updated to every release and other iOS26 versions. Every one of them lags terribly, and is hugely buggy, even weeks after updating.

The ONLY ONLY partial solution is turning off Apple "Intelligence" which fixes most of the bugs, but not all.

... almost unusable for MONTHS now. This is not post-update machinations of a few hours or days. This is PERMANENT LAG and bugs. I have been using Apple products since 1985, and been a programmer since 1969. This is the worst software Apple has ever released. What a mess.

I disabled Apple Intelligence, And that seemed to initially help, but now the issues are back. Just simply scrolling on any app or any page is jittery and laggy. This is on an iPhone 15 Pro a phone that’s only two years old and that was the higher end. This is just completely unacceptable. Apple has got to issue a fix for this.