Floating Search Bar Overlay Bug on Safari and Chrome After iOS 26 Update

This issue is with the bottom toolbar if you tap the search bar option scroll to the bottom hit the three dots and hide toolbar the blank box disappears however you have to repeat this process every webpage you go on

I was able to somewhat resolve the issue on my iPhone Mini 13 by turning off Reduce Motion and Reduce Transparency. These options are both found within the Accessibility menu within Settings. Reduce Motion can be found under Motion and Reduce Transparency can be found under Display & Text Sizes.

The fix isn’t perfect. The webpage still dims, making it difficult to see the input boxes - but I can at least see them now, where before I couldn’t see the webpage, input boxes, or what I was typing at all.

Hopefully Apple will find this thread and actually do something about it. They’ve already scaled back so much of Liquid Glass, it’s clear that it’s still very buggy and folks are not receptive to it.

I’m surprised more people aren’t having this issue.

The “fix” I’ve found is to rotate the phone horizontally so safari goes to landscape mode, then when I rotate back vertically the translucent box or whatever is gone, and I can use/scroll the website normally again while still typing text in the search bar or text box.

Strangely, I had reduce motion turned OFF and experienced the same floating advertisement/control/random web element issue. I turned reduce motion back ON and the problem appears to have resolved. Perhaps toggling it off and on might work.

Unfortunately it’s not just limited to your phone it’s a software problem that is affecting all models of iPhone, it only happened when I upgraded to beta 21 and the only temporary fix that you’ll have to do on every web page is go into the webpage settings and click on hide toolbar

Thanks mate. That’s a great temporary fix, until they bug fix Safari.

I’ve also found that turning OFF: Accessibility > Motion > Prefer Cross Fade Transitions.

Turn ON:

Accessibility > Motion > Reduce Motion

This also works if you don’t like all the nauseating motion effects, but still want a workaround to the Safari issue.

Most likely it is a WebKit bug. You can report it to Apple using the link I shared below.

Product Feedback - Apple

Same here. It’s those annoying extra bars that a lot of websites have. Sometimes you can dismiss these with the X. My experience is that they too tend to float to the middle of the screen, when scrolling down; then off you scroll up, it floats to the bottom of the screen, where it was originally.

Quitting and opening the browser, will give temporary relief to the problem; then it will reappear again.

This appears to be a webkit bug for touch screen devices only. I haven’t seen this on my MacBook Pro with Tahoe on it.

The only way around this is go into your webpage options and scroll to the bottom press the 3 dots then hit hide toolbar as this is definitely an issue with the bottom toolbar

A quick fix for me is I rotate my phone, let screen switch, then rotate back. Not a permanent fix but does quickly work on my 17pro.

Hopefully Apple will find this thread and actually do something about it.

Nope, this is a user to user forum, Apple isn't here.

You can make a suggestion to Apple here -

Feedback - iPhone - Apple

I have a very similar situation but specifically when any search bar is opened another inactive search bar opens directly on top of safaris normal functioning bar completely covering and blocking 100% of safaris and you cannot see any of what you’re typing…..the totally useless bar has an up and arriw on the left end and a checkmark on the right side end and when you click or touch any of the 3 it does absolutely nothing…sometimes it allows you to scroll the page up but it’s tricky cuz only a sliver of the page right above the useless bar will make it scroll…it’s very frustrating?

Yes, definitely experiencing this and other issues with Safari under iOS 26, which is fast making switching to a computer mandatory since many web sites have become unusable. If I could go back to 18, I would.

Do you have your screen zoomed or the text size englarged? Do you have a screenshot so I can see exactly what’s happening?

I can see “Welcome to Apple Support Community” pop-up in the middle of the screen on this website.