iOS 26.2 fixes 20 security vulnerabilities, 2 actively exploited
98 comments
·December 14, 2025schmuckonwheels
Pro tip for anyone wanting to avoid liquid [gl]ass and install iOS 18.7.3: Apple is actively hiding 18.7.3 on most iPhones, despite the update showing on iPads. Perhaps a mistake, perhaps an attempt to force 26 onto users.
Simply select "iOS 18 Developer Beta" under beta updates (might need a developer account) and it will allow you to install it. The update currently offered is the production release.
kruuuder
Wow. I'm still on 18.7.1, saw the update to 18.7.2 yesterday (100% sure on this), but didn't want to install it at that moment as I needed the phone, and deferred the update to today.
Now I don't see any iOS 18 updates at all, only the iOS 26 prompts. What a dick move, Apple. Especially if this is a) a security update, and b) iOS 26 is known to run poorly on older phones like mine.
Thanks for the workaround!
layer8
It’s available as a public beta, no need for a developer account.
formerly_proven
Mine doesn't offer this option, only via the Apple ID - which it tells me is ineligible, because I'm not in the Developer/Beta Program. However, that entire beta software updates page seems to be completely hidden from the normal UI - you can only get there through the hidden search function.
neko_ranger
If your phone is laggy after liquid glass, Enabling "Reduce Motion" from Accessibility/Motion makes my 2020 iphone se much better. You can also disable transparency for even more frames, but it makes some UIs look particularly bad (because everything is transparent in frutiger aero/liquid glass)
culopatin
But may break Safari, in which case you’ll have to close safari, toggle the setting and open it again. The navbars float in the middle of webpages otherwise.
mat_b
You're right. This worked for me. I'm now offered 18.7.3 and wasn't before.
tech234a
It is also available as a public beta, which you can register for at https://beta.apple.com/
dangus
I would say it's almost certainly a mistake or some side-effect of their system that rolls out updates where they don't happen exactly simultaneously.
Remember that Apple is also pushing that update out to serve their iPhones that cannot get iOS 26. Even if I was to maximize my cynicism, I don't think they presently use security point releases in the manner you are describing.
schmuckonwheels
I don't think we can really ascertain intent, Apple has a long history of "the feature update IS the security update".
This partly relies on the "just update bro" attitude of sufficient fanbois to achieve upgrade momentum. Otherwise, let's be honest, no one would update, ever, our phones are too personal to be changing constantly.
This "bug" has been there for 2-3 days now. If it was a bug with their software delivery system, I assume it would have been fixed by now, it's affecting many people (with plenty of message board complaints to prove it).
nozzlegear
> Apple has a long history of "the feature update IS the security update".
Do they?
CharlesW
Also, 26.2 lets you choose a "Tinted" (vs. Clear) style that effectively addresses the primary cosmetic criticism of Liquid Glass.
loloquwowndueo
Nice though cosmetics are the least of my issues with 26. Usability really tanked across the OS, crap ton of baffling choices that make it much harder and unintuitive to use.
newdee
This has been a thing since 26.1 I believe.
mat_b
It's unfortunate that Apple has taught me (and I assume others as well) over the last 15 years that the best practice is to never install a major OS update.
It seems clear to me that they use OS updates as a way to eventually slow your device down so the lag becomes so annoying that you want to purchase a new device.
(Edit: And the really obnoxious part is that they force you to receive upgrade prompts every single day and you can't disable it.)
htamas
Unfortunately they have other ways to deprecate your device: App Stores won't work, apps won't talk to their backend with older versions or just straight up won't launch. Even Homebrew stopped supporting my 2015 Macbook I have for personal use.
torcete
Like my brother printer's software. It kept pestering me to apply updates, and when I did, my non-genuine cartridges stopped working. So, never update the printer's software.
bob1029
> I assume others as well
Running iOS 17.6.1 on my iPhone 13 mini right now. I've got a backup iPhone 13 mini new in the box with the factory OS still installed (just in case).
I'm hoping my devices can hold out longer than Apple can remain irrational.
gruez
>Running iOS 17.6.1 on my iPhone 13 mini right now.
You really shouldn't. There are dozens of RCE exploits, some of which were found in the wild, that you're missing out patches for.
nivea3066
Personally I run lockdown mode and hope for the best.
It sounds like 26.2 might be approaching usable status on the mini but I'd want a battery replacement too.
aschobel
That's a totally reasonable practice, I would say x.2 releases are mostly fine and have the rough edges polishes.
p_ing
Apple users not updating major OSes goes back to the 90s with System 7. It's a seemingly weird habit that some formed even as exposure to vulnerabilities increased.
schmuckonwheels
> And the really obnoxious part is that they force you to receive upgrade prompts every single day and you can't disable it
Enable iOS 18 Developer Beta and the nag screens go away.
mat_b
I just enabled it. Thanks for the tip.
burnt-resistor
I did this to install 18.7.3 on an iPhone that was only presenting 26.2 without any other option.
null
piyuv
Your theory is real but its not the main purpose, it’s a happy accident for Apple. Otherwise there’d be a class action.
mat_b
I don't think so. There is always a cutoff for the last major version they recommend for any hardware. Why is the cutoff always after it lags the device severely and not -before- that happens?
Daedren
I mean, they got a class action before for turning on CPU throttling after a major update without informing the user, to "preserve battery health".
franciscop
> Apple today released iOS 26.2, iPadOS 26.2, and macOS 26.2
For those as confused as me, I'm on macOS 15.6.1, and it seems for the next version they aligned everything and I do indeed see an update for "macOS Tahoe 26.2". However, I also see a Sequoia 15.7.3 update dated at the same time and together in the same upgrade blog post (and for Sonoma 14.8.3, kudos), so for those that doesn't seem to want to do the jump now into Liquid Glass, that seems available:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/100100
Note: I had to click the [i], then unselect the "macOS Tahoe 26.2" and select the "macOS Sequoia 15.7.3" manually to avoid a full upgrade.
plodman
There appears to be a dark pattern occurring where the Tahoe update is selected by default and you need to uncheck it to just install the security update.
LeoPanthera
Offering the most recent update first is not a "dark pattern".
schmuckonwheels
Is there a new technological space race between Microsoft and Apple, to see who can engineer more dark patterns into their software, forcing unwanted updates onto its users?
These techniques used to be exclusive to spyware distributors.
jeffbee
That is not what "dark pattern" means.
fuzzy2
No, I would certainly say it is. Checking the blog post linked in this thread, I find selecting a different version to be both hidden and also have (intentionally?) bad UX. That is exactly what a dark pattern is: making a surprising choice (major upgrade) the default while hiding away the less disruptive or even non-disruptive choice (minor upgrade).
Nothing stops Apple from advertising both at the same level.
null
avazhi
Uh, yeah it is?
void-pointer
How can I install iOS 18.7.3? The settings app only shows 26.2 which I do not want to install.
jagged-chisel
Give it a couple days for 18.7.3 to show up (I’m trying this myself) or download the ipsw for ios 18.7.3 and use a computer to install.
tech234a
I don't believe an IPSW for 18.7.3 was released except for devices that couldn't upgrade to iOS 26. I believe this is done to prevent downgrades.
void-pointer
You can also join the iOS 18 public beta to get the update.
zahlman
I don't have one of these devices.
Do I understand correctly that they just switched to calver, but called the 2025 release "version 26" for marketing reasons (like year numbers for car models)?
exabrial
Somehow my phone auto-updated to iOS 26. My advice is don't do it. Litreally everything is worse.
Apple use to put function first, then form followed, then polished till it was a natural experience.
temp0826
So far all of the comments are about the glass ui...I'm glad the bugs were squashed. Nice! But am curious what the metric is for determining when to push out security updates. Did they have 19 accumulated and were like "hey let's just wait til 1 more comes through"?
tiger3
Backport please? I don’t want glass ui
wilg
You will not think about liquid glass after a day, especially if you turn on the new options. There's no need for everyone here to contort themselves into not installing these updates. The new features in all the OS upgrades are very much worth it.
You're not going to add text message spam filtering to your phone because they changed the border radius or blur or whatever?
the_other
I notice it all the damn time.
- If I scroll a web page, and then decide to close it, I have to wait 'til the browser finishes scrolling the page before it'll open the menu with the close button
- every single time I watch a video my eye is drawn to the fucking stupid glass-y diffraction patterns and away from the content I was watching, or the play/pause icon I was interacting with
- every single time I use the home screen on iOS, or CMD+tab in macOS, my eye is drawn to the glass-y highlights around the icons, distracting me from whatever I was trying to do and causing me to think about the OS (and how much I hate the new look)
- I keep noticing the stupidly wide rounded corners on apps
- I keep noticing how the glassy icons and controls and stuff don't consistently change color with dark/light mode. They sometimes change if the content behind them is light/dark (which you'd think is a contrast improvement but it wouldn't be necessary if they had boxed out the toolbars like before). Often half the buttons have changed to contrast with the background and half haven't. This makes all the icons harder to read because I have to interpret the whole set to work out why it's suddenly slightly confusing
- I keep noticing how some icons have those annoying highlighted edges and some don't and wondering why that is, and if they'll all come in sync...
- ... and the glassy-highlighted icons look like shit because the highlights are all the same (same color, same angle, same spread around the edges of the icons), which wouldn't happen if they were actual physical things under natural illumination
And I'm not even getting to how everything is harder to read, harder to see. It's _dreadful_ and they should fire everyone from the C-level who signed it off downwards.
phantasmish
I definitely still notice the (inconsistent? Only occasional? Which makes it even worse) parts of my UI that now look like something from a circa 2001 Java (specifically—not flash, it’s the “cool” Java aesthetic of the time with its image blurring and filtering an such, not the differently-bad “cool” flash aesthetic) applet gfx-heavy web site menu.
Plus there’s the pile of outright visual bugs and glitches. Like my keyboard opening with one size, then after a moment resizing itself a few pixels narrower because it initially rendered a little too big and off center to the right, like a badly-designed webpage. Every single time I open it. Including to write and edit this comment.
I also notice that I had to turn a bunch of accessibility features on so I wouldn’t constantly see animations with tons of dropped frames making me feel like I’m playing a bad port of a 3D PlayStation 2 game on a Gameboy Advance.
jotaen
> You will not think about liquid glass after a day, especially if you turn on the new options.
I wouldn’t say so. The “Increase Contrast” and “Show Borders” accessibility options make liquid glass just bearable to me, but the new UI design is still ungracefully buggy and unnecessarily hard(er) to use. (See e.g. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/liquid-glass/ for a detailed discussion.)
Sure, life goes on. However, considering the price tag of an iPhone/iPad, I understand how iOS 26 is off-putting to so many people – despite all the other new features.
wilg
I think it’s fine to be mad about it, I have some qualms. I just think it’s not worth skipping an upgrade.
ronnier
Exactly. I don’t even notice it.
kmeisthax
I installed iPadOS 26 specifically for the new windowing features. I like the glass look as a concept. But the actual implementation of it is total dogshit. I cannot go a day without seeing the OS render black-on-black or white-on-white text, especially in the status indicators at the top of the device. There are so many little things regarding automatic color contrast in UIKit that are just poorly thought out or broken.
The thing is, Liquid Glass is already using a shader to render the refraction effect on top of the other UI layers. But - at least from my own developer experiments - it doesn't actually use anything graphical to determine what background color it needs to contrast against[1]. Instead, it looks through the view hierarchy for a view on the same edge as the toolbar the widget is in, and then grabs some undocumented[0] property from that view to determine its background. This fails if there's a split. Build, say, a toolbar layout and put two views inside of it, split 50% vertically with one having a black background and the other white. Put items in your toolbar on both left and right sides. They will either be all black or all white, only contrasting with half the screen.
[0] Or, at least, I have yet to find out what this property is.
[1] Hell, for icons and text they could XOR the alpha mask with the underlying pixels, or a blurred version thereof, to make text that will always contrast.
metmac
Liquid Glass is now mandatory if you care about security. Sigh.
I wanted to like it too, but some of the new UI modals of iOS 26 are just awful.
dchest
It's not, iOS 18.7.3 also released https://support.apple.com/en-us/125885
bflesch
It is not available. The release is 2 days old and the download is not showing up on the phone.
SoftTalker
My iPhone 12 mini was bugging me about it the other day. I declined it. I don't want liquid glass and whatever else it does to make that phone feel slower and less usable. I refuse to buy a newer iPhone. They are all too big.
burnt-resistor
Wrong. Enable 18 beta, refresh, install 18.7.3, disable beta. Problem solved.
Security updates are typically available for the most current 2 OS versions, and 18 is still officially supported, perhaps until 2026 or 2027. 18.7.3 exists with similar security updates as 26.2. It may not show up on iPhone as an update option without being on the beta 18 channel because they're trying to force people onto 26 using dark patterns, but it shows up on iPadOS without any additional magic.
null
chuckadams
Some parts have improved: It's nice that alarms are now slide to cancel. Safari's UI however is now 98% mystery meat.
null
konart
At least they added an option to make it less glassy.
Etheryte
I wish they fixed the keyboard focus and UI shifts around that. It's one of the most buggy things I've ever seen, oftentimes I can't even see what I'm typing because everything is offset in weird and incorrect ways.
the_other
The pre 26.2 less-glassy options were bearable because they were mostly like pre-Tahoe. The post 26.2 less-glassy options are now so shit that I’m using glassy mode, despite it being also ugly, distracting and harder to read than ever before. Apple have absolutely trashed their OS and their “Apple make good UIs” pedigree. It’s such a disappoibtment. I hope they come to their senses in the next major release round.
pdpi
Given the news a few days ago about the changes in UI design leadership at Apple (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46142843), there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
1over137
Not sure why you are so downvoted, because indeed Apple only does full security updates for the very newest (now 26): https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/10/apple-clarifies-secu...
schmuckonwheels
Because it's factually incorrect.
Ars Technica, a clickbait aggregator whom should have been banned from this site long ago, is hardly a reliable source.
p_ing
https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/about-software-up...
> Note: Because of dependency on architecture and system changes to any current version of Apple operating systems (for example, macOS 26, iOS 26, and so on), not all known security issues are addressed in previous versions (for example, macOS 15, iOS 18, and so on).
akyuu
As far as I know, it is factually correct.
https://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/apples-poor-patchin...
doodlebugging
Thanks for that link. Before reading I was in the process of migrating all my stuff from a Windows7 machine, deduping archives and identifying software that I may still need to run in a VM somewhere or on a tablet. I had considered flipping to Apple devices since I have an iPhone but have never pulled the trigger on any of that. I was considering iMacs instead of a Linux box for a more seamless interface with the phone.
After reading that article where it is apparent that Apple has intentionally used terms that sound similar to obscure what the customer is actually gaining when they upgrade versus update and they intentionally omit the part about older devices not getting all the security updates that are pushed in the updates. I now have some clarity.
I can focus on moving to Linux and in time will be ditching the iPhone. Should've done this years ago.
firefax
>Liquid Glass is now mandatory if you care about security. Sigh.
Long live frutiger aero
throwaway613745
[flagged]
I have a powerful MacBook Pro M2 Max with 32 GB of RAM. I updated it to macOS 26 since that it became a lot slower than my MacBook Air M1 with just 16 GB of RAM that I left on macOS Sequoia 15.7.x… What an irony given that my MacBook Pro has way better hardware specs.