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Comment by dchest | Hacker News Reader

It's not, iOS 18.7.3 also released https://support.apple.com/en-us/125885

It is not available. The release is 2 days old and the download is not showing up on the phone.

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.

12 mini user here. Phone is just as slow and usable as prior to updating to 26. (Immediately after updating was slow for a little while which scared me initially, but I think it was just still doing some background stuff related to updating).

13 mini here too and last iPhone/smartphone I will buy.

Settings > Accessibility > Motion > Reduce motion and Settings > Accessibility > Display and text size > Reduce transparency make it usable-ish. There is hundreds of ms lag at times inexplicably w/touch and upwards of a second plus when connected to CarPlay. But I can't blame iOS 26. I have to reboot this thing sometimes weekly, sometimes less frequent than that since iOS 18. I can no longer justify spending hundreds of dollars on things that don't meet my standard of "works" even if it's 2025.

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.

Having to toggle the beta is not acceptable and the parent is right to class that as not available

Thanks for your support. I also find these dark patterns unacceptable and even as a technical person one needs forums to figure out why it only shows the 26.2 update very prominently and not the relevant one. x

We can argue over whether 3 extra taps to access counts as "acceptable" or not, but it's clearly not enough of a hurdle to be considered "not available". Otherwise you might as well count iOS 26 as not being available either, because that needs at least 4 taps to install (settings -> about -> software updates -> install -> enter pin -> ok).

It's about being a hidden trick, and you know it.

Way to move the goalposts. The comments prior to your comment were:

>Liquid Glass is now mandatory if you care about security.

and

>It is not available. [...] the download is not showing up on the phone.

I stand corrected on this front

IOS 26 is even less acceptable, so pick your poison.

Let's not labour the definition of acceptable to derail the conversation further

This worked for me, thanks.

Genuinely didn’t know it was hidden behind a beta flag. Ty for this!

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