Black box overlay in Mail on iOS

ever since update to iOS 26 I have been seeing a black box that pops up to cover half to 2/3 of my screen when I am viewing list of messages in mail or when I have an individual email opened. I believe this represents a bug in the app that started with iOS 26. I think the trigger is moving the phone from portrait to landscape and back to portrait view while mail is opened. This is obviously something that should not be a problem, but it is.

I can share a link to a short video of this that I posted on my Flickr. I do not want to share the link publicly with everyone for privacy.

I will also be sending feedback to Apple, but wanted to post here to see if anyone else has this problem in case it might be something specific to my phone settings or combination of apps.

iPhone 12 mini, iOS 26

Posted on Nov 20, 2025 2:48 PM

Top-ranking reply

SenHutz

Level 1

30 points

Posted on Nov 30, 2025 3:09 PM

I had the same issue in iOS 26 where a rectangle (solid color, white or black, depending upon whether light or dark mode) would obscure messages in Mail. As other user noted it was reproducible by shifting between portrait and landscape mode.

it seems to be related to accessibility settings, specifically reduce transparency. I had turned this on when 26 went live but turning it off now seems to remove the box issue in mail. Time to look for a new mail app.

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17 replies

Donot_Haveone Author

Level 1

131 points

Nov 22, 2025 11:34 AM in response to AlWeir

Dec 12, 2025 5:43 AM in response to Donot_Haveone

I'm having the exact issue you are describing--it seems to have started 2-3 months ago. I'm using an iPhone 16 Pro Max with iOS 26.1.

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Black box overlay in Mail on iOS