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Comment by schmuckonwheels | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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!

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)

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.

Reduce Motion does give you the unfortunate side effect of realizing how much dead time there is between processing buttons. Many actions have a visible pause without apparent activity. I assume the software has a hardcoded delay for the animation or the program literally takes noticeable amount of time to process the action.

In the days of jailbreaking, a popular tweak was to reduce the animation delay, so this is definitely a thing iOS does.

I can’t handle the swipe up to switch apps gesture with reduced motion it becomes too jarring. I set the glass to “tinted” and that’s about it. I wish they had a stronger disablement of just the glass.

I tried this on iPhone 17 (regular), the phone became more or less unusable. ~500-2000ms lag when changing or closing an application.

The liquidglass experience was bad, but reduce motion was unusable.

Getting an iPhone model that comes with iOS 26 and cannot be downgraded: what a blunder. It’s not about Liquid Glass per se, more the ability to use your phone without being distracted by constant visual glitches and impaired keyboard typing experience.

The keyboard is already poor on iOS 18; does it regress even further?

It worked well for me until iOS 26. Dictation improved, keyboard typing did the opposite.

You're right. This worked for me. I'm now offered 18.7.3 and wasn't before.

It is also available as a public beta, which you can register for at https://beta.apple.com/

Thank you! Done. Here's hoping they continue to give v18 sec updates until v26+ UX and perf are fixed...

It’s available as a public beta, no need for a developer account.

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.

Also, 26.2 lets you choose a "Tinted" (vs. Clear) style that effectively addresses the primary cosmetic criticism of Liquid Glass.

This has been a thing since 26.1 I believe.

I believe so, too. I’ve updated to 26.2 today and haven’t seen any changes on the interface front.

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.

It doesn't address the UI elements that used to be on an opaque pane, and now are floating above a busy, blurred mess.

I don't like transparency but for me it's not the main problem with iOS 26, the main problem is that new controls (and their placement) waste too much space on a small iPhone SE screen.

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).

> Apple has a long history of "the feature update IS the security update".

Do they?

Yes. Until a few years ago after a new major iOS version was released (eg. 26 for this year) the last major version (eg. 18 for this year) stopped getting updates, at least for phones that had access to the newer version. That changed a few years ago so that there was a period of overlap where both got updated.

For instance, look at the release history for iOS 12 and 13:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_12#Version_history

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_13#Release_history

After 13 was released (September 19, 2019) there were no more updates for iOS 12, at least for the devices that support iOS 13.

Yes. Following a transition period of 2-3 months after each new major OS version, they withhold security updates for older OS versions from devices that could update to the new major version. The current 18.7.3 will likely be the last iOS 18 update made available to iPhone 11 and up, while the iPhone XS and XR, which can’t update to iOS 26, will continue to receive further security updates for iOS 18. This mode of operation has been the case for many years now.

Interesting, I genuinely did not know that. Thank you!

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