Apple may have touted iOS 26 as a major update to the iPhone’s operating system, but nearly 84 percent of iPhone users have so far chosen not to download it in the four months since its release.
After all, it skipped from iOS 18 to iOS 26, with no iOS releases in between. Such a big naming leap matched a major redesign of the iOS’ design language. Apple called it Liquid Glass.
We’re all just feeling around in the dark, but in the wake of the study that discovered the 84 percent figure, people are wondering if it’s a rejection of Liquid Glass.
What’s Going On with Apple’s iOS 26?
It could just be laziness, but the data on iOS 26 uptake (courtesy of Statcounter) suggests otherwise. The rate of iPhone users downloading the latest update is far lower this year than in years past.
Statcounters’ study is recent. The usage numbers are taken from January 2026, and we’re not even a third of the way through the month. Here’s how the numbers break down:
As of the time of the study, 4.6 percent of iPhone owners had downloaded iOS 26.2, 10.6 percent had downloaded iOS 26.1, and 1.1 percent had downloaded the first version of iOS 26 released on September 15, 2025, but had not received any subsequent updates. That means just 16.3 percent of iPhone users are running iOS 26.
That’s a crazy low uptake rate. Perhaps you’re thinking that it’s just normal for iPhone users to take their sweet-ass time updating their operating systems. But, as Cult of Mac pointed out, iPhone owners in past years have been much quicker to update by this point, as major iOS updates typically arrive annually in September.
“For comparison,” Cult of Mac’s Ed Hardy writes, “in January 2025, about 63 percent of iPhone users had some iOS 18 version installed. So after roughly the same amount of time, the adoption rate of Apple’s newest OS was about four times higher.
And that’s not a fluke. In January 2024, some iOS 17 version was on 54 percent of iPhones. A year earlier, the iOS 16 adoption rate was 62 percent.”
Whatever it is, Apple may be urging folks to go out and touch glass, but an overwhelming majority so far seem content to sit inside the comfort and familiarity of iOS 18.
The post Why Haven’t Most iPhone Users Updated to iOS 26 Yet? appeared first on VICE.
