Slow performance and lag after iOS 26 update on iPhone

I used apple support which was very helpful. It took a while but what finally fixed it was to delete VPN apps on iphone 13

While this is apparently resolved, what does Apple suggest for VPN if on public wifi?

sma333 wrote:

I used apple support which was very helpful. It took a while but what finally fixed it was to delete VPN apps on iphone 13

While this is apparently resolved, what does Apple suggest for VPN if on public wifi?

Apple has no opinion on VPN. Experienced users in this forum do, however. First, you don’t need VPN on public Wi-Fi, because all communication to and from an iPhone is end to end encrypted. Your iPhone also “lies” about its Wi-Fi address when connecting to unknown networks, so your iPhone can’t be tracked by its Wi-Fi address. Using VPN is LESS secure that no VPN, because when you use VPN there is a middleman, the VPN provider, who knows everywhere you connect to, and thus can track your usage and sell that information to anyone who wants to track you. While all VPN providers deny they do this, several have been caught doing so. Avast, for example, has paid multimillions of dollars in fines for doing it repeatedly, after court settlements where they denied it. And even if your VPN provider is “honest”, it can be hacked, as NordVPN was recently.

Knowing this, if you still want to be less secure by using VPN go ahead and reinstall it. The problem you are most likely having is explained here: An important and frequently overlooked fact is that when you install VPN it configures itself to the specific hardware, OS version and network that the device uses. If any of those change it can break the VPN. So any time you change any of these you may need to delete the VPN app and profile, restart your device, then add them back (if you still want to use VPN) so it can configure itself to the new environment.

Here's more detail about: VPN - What you need to know

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.

Battery saver mode INTENTIONALLY slows down your iPhone to extend the life of the battery.

For low bandwidth: Do you have a 3rd party VPN installed, even if you are not using it? If so, delete the VPN profile in Settings/General/VPN & Device Management/VPN, then restart your device. Don't just turn it off; delete the profile. If that fixes it, you can try reinstalling VPN, but probably shouldn't.

Rapp_J wrote:

Wrong. It's been way more than 3-5 days. It's been like 2 weeks, and my phone is still lagging significantly.

Did you read the post I replied to? The user updated an hour ago and Apple states clearly that you should be experiencing lag, battery drain, and heat for a couple days as seen in their Support Article. That is what is expected.

For your case, you have not provided any information that would be helpful:

• Did you Reset Settings?
• Have you performed a Factory Reset?
• What is your Battery Health?
• Is this in a specific app?
• Is this while browsing the internet?
• Do you have a VPN installed?

Without any information, you have a couple of choices:

• Schedule an appointment at Apple for diagnostics.
• Wait for the next release of iOS 26.1. It is currently in beta, so we cannot comment on the issues that have been resolved as it is a violation of the terms of use for being a beta tester.

Almightyadil I did the same: turned off low power mode and the problem was solved for me. iPhone 14PM iOS 26.0.1.

the bad thing still is that I can’t use low power mode anymore. That is a bummer because I use it many hours a day if not all day.

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

THANK You for recommending turning off Apple Intelligence. That was a huge help.

My battery health is 87%

Have a ton of storage

And wanted to see if I could reset to an old version because this new ios being slow was brutal. Turning off the AI helped a ton so far.

Hi can someone help me out here

I’ve been using iPhone 13mini for so long and after the iOS 26 update my battery is draining super fast and my phone is getting so hot it’s been a week. I’ve alrdy turned off most of the settings but it’s still the same. Until today my phone was extremely hot and prompt a notification to turn off my phone and caused a siren sound like that. What am I suppose to do 😭

iPhone 13pro. Had 77 battery left. Had Apple replace battery. Reset all my settings as they suggested that too. Turned off all Siri suggestions. Reduced transparency and toggled it 100 times to make sure. Don’t use lower power mode. Have plenty of storage left. I’ll give it a few days.

[Edited by Moderator]

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

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.

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.