The 5 most frustrating things about iOS 26 –and how I fixed them

1. Phones

The 5 most frustrating things about iOS 26 – and how I fixed them Features By Alex Blake published 29 November 2025

It’s not all sunshine and roses

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The iOS 26 update has brought major changes to all the best iPhones, but some of those adjustments are more welcome than others.

While I’ve been loving many of the best iOS 26 features since installing it on my device, I’ve also – like many – discovered a few changes that have bugged me no end.

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Fortunately, I’ve also now worked out a few ways to put these problems right. Follow along with this article and you’ll be able to do the same, enjoying a seamless iOS 26 experience without the hassle.

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1. Disable Liquid Glass

(Image credit: Apple)

Whenever you think about iOS 26, the first thing that comes to mind is almost certainly Liquid Glass. Apple’s translucent redesign has been divisive, and while I love it in macOS, the amount of overlapping content in iOS 26 means I find it to be much less pleasing on my iPhone. I eventually got sick of struggling to read text and app controls, so I disabled it with a few quick taps.

If you want to do the same, just note that you won’t be able to get iOS 26 looking like iOS 18. Instead, you have to activate a control called Reduce Transparency, which cuts down the amount of transparency across the operating system. It’s not a perfect solution, but it certainly makes things far more legible.

You’ll find the Reduce Transparency feature by opening the Settings app and going to Accessibility > Display & Text Size, then enabling the toggle next to Reduce Transparency.

Now, instead of glassy, see-through elements everywhere you look, the operating system becomes much more opaque – and much easier to read as a result.

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2. Restore old-style screenshots

(Image credit: Apple)

Whenever you took a screenshot in iOS 18 and earlier, you’d see a small preview of your image appear in the bottom-left corner of your screen – you’d tap it to edit the picture, or swipe to dismiss it. That made it simple to take a screenshot and quickly get back to your work, without having it get in the way unnecessarily.

But in iOS 26, Apple has completely changed that process by making screenshots instantly take over your screen, complete with a suite of editing tools. That’s fine if you want to adjust your images right away, but I find that most of the time, I don’t.

Not only does the change mess with my muscle memory, but it means extra taps for me, I usually just want to dismiss my screenshots and return to whatever I was doing before.

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I restored the old way of doing things by going to Settings > General > Screen Capture and disabling the toggle next to Full-Screen Previews. Now, instead of having my entire display filled with a screenshot and editing tools, I just get the miniature preview, which I can just swipe away for a later time. That saves me taps and means fewer interruptions during my day.

3. Sort out Safari tabs

(Image credit: Apple)

Another year, another attempt by Apple to interfere with its Safari web browser. This time, there’s a new tab bar layout that condenses the bottom toolbar into a much more compact size.

Instead of the URL bar and a slate of buttons underneath it, you’ll now see an awfully cramped address bar surrounded by a back button on one side and a three-dot menu on the other. With so much squished into such a small space, it just doesn’t feel optimal.

And there’s another problem: it now requires an extra tap to add a new tab, see your bookmarks, share a link and more, as all of those options are now hidden behind the three-dot button. It’s meant to be more streamlined but just adds more work into the process.

If you’re as sick of that as I am, you’ll want to open the Settings app and head to Apps > Safari, then scroll down to the Tabs section. Here, select either Bottom or Top to restore those handy buttons and make your browsing experience a little less frustrating.

4. Turn off slide-to-type

(Image credit: Apple)

For some reason, typing on an iPhone seems to be getting worse. Everywhere you look online, you’ll find people tearing their hair out over auto-correct weirdness, sluggish typing and an all-round unreliable experience. It’s bizarre to see Apple get something so basic so wrong, but here we are.

Luckily for me, I’ve not come across any of those bugs myself. But that doesn’t mean typing on my iPhone has been flawless, and in fact there’s one problem that has been a real frustration for some time now.

That problem feature would be slide to type. You know the one: run your thumb across your iPhone’s keyboard and iOS will try to predict what you meant. I don’t have a problem with this feature in and of itself, but I am peeved by the fact that I regularly invoke it entirely without meaning to – just a light brush over the screen and some random word gets prodded into my text input field. Not cool.

Thankfully, there’s an easy way to disable slide to type. Just go to Settings > General > Keyboard and switch off the toggle next to Slide to Type. Now, the next time you inadvertently run your thumb across your on-screen keyboard, nothing will happen. Ah, peace at last.

5. Snooze alert

(Image credit: Apple)

For years, iOS users have had to put up with a major annoyance that just won’t quit: the Clock app’s nine-minute snooze. Every time you snoozed an alarm, you had exactly nine minutes until it would go off again, whether that worked for you or not. The lack of customization was nigh-on unbearable.

OK, I might be exaggerating a little there, but it was undoubtedly annoying to be unable to change the snooze duration. Personally, I spent many years wanting a shorter snooze that would ensure I actually got out of bed and not give me enough time to properly fall asleep again. In iOS 26, that’s finally possible.

To get started, first open the Clock app, then either tap an existing alarm or create a new one. From there, tap Snooze Duration, pick a time (anything from one minute to 15 minutes), then tap the checkmark icon in the top-right corner.

Et voilà, your blissful sleep will still be disturbed, but only when you say so. And isn’t that so much better?

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Alex Blake has been fooling around with computers since the early 1990s, and since that time he's learned a thing or two about tech. No more than two things, though. That's all his brain can hold. As well as TechRadar, Alex writes for iMore, Digital Trends and Creative Bloq, among others. He was previously commissioning editor at MacFormat magazine. That means he mostly covers the world of Apple and its latest products, but also Windows, computer peripherals, mobile apps, and much more beyond. When not writing, you can find him hiking the English countryside and gaming on his PC.

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