iOS 26.3 and macOS 26.3 Fix Dozens of Vulnerabilities, Including Zero-Day

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/02/11/ios-26-3-security-vulnerabilities/

by akyuu • 5 months ago

151 86 5 months ago

macrumors.com

tailnode2• 5 months ago

Why couldn't Apple patch the zero-day using their new Background Security Improvements pipeline?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102657

jajuuka• 5 months ago

I imagine scheduling lined up for the 26.3 release and it wasn't considered dangerous enough. They did this with 26.2 as well including a fix for a zero day. I wonder if they are leveraging that to get people to update sooner. Imagine some people might be turned off of updating with the bugs and visual changes in 26. It's not like 26.2 or 26.3 have any major changes that are enticing.

altairprime3• 5 months ago

26.4 is likely to have 9 new emoji, as usual for a late-cycle OS release. That may not particularly appeal to the "7bit ASCII for life" subset here, of course, but it's definitely a driver.

jiehong• 5 months ago

Their previous security updates feature was mostly unused.

I suppose it’s not really working, or is the product of a team and no other internal team actually use it.

wpm• 5 months ago

It's more the former. I'm assuming though that Background Security updates are basically the same thing as "Rapid Security Responses" was, which on the Mac I can recall being used once, 13.3.1(a) released the same day as 13.4 as an RSR.

Basically, the amount of stuff Apple can realistically change on the fly without restiching an entirely new system volume snapshot into place is quite small, so unless the stars align it can't be used.

See: https://khronokernel.com/macos/2023/04/18/RSR.html

saagarjha• 5 months ago

dyld is not covered by them.

altairprime3• 5 months ago

They've been delivering empty-noop test updates through that new pipeline in the past couple weeks to beta users, which suggests that they considered it.

ProfessorLayton2• 5 months ago

While I'm really glad they've fixed a bunch of important security vulnerabilities, I'm really hoping they fixed the screen flickering issue [1] they introduced in macos 26. It has been driving me insane and even impacts my Studio Display. My work computer is locked to 15.7.3 and has no such issues with either the internal or external display (The same display flickers in 26).

Really wish Apple would get their software quality up from the gutter.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2025/12/18/macos-tahoe-studio-disp...

ErneX2• 5 months ago

A similar issue happens with Apple Silicon macs and external monitors since long time ago. A fix I found online [1] is to disable GPU dithering using the Better Display app.

The flickering was so bad in my case that the pixels got stuck for some minutes when it happened.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/s/TDOa9Lb5rP

ProfessorLayton2• 5 months ago

I tried that and many other things like changing the default color profile and it and it didn't work. A reboot fixes it for a few days before returning, so it definitely seems like a bug rather than a hardware issue. Both my work MBP (No issues, macos 15) and personal Air (macos26) are apple silicon.

FarmerPotato• 5 months ago

iOS also flickers every time I exit an app back to the Home Screen.

Weird green tints for no reason.. bubbles that take so long to inflate, you think your tap was dropped. Round edges that no longer fit the text content. Stupid ellipses at the edges of wrapped text. And all the functions that now take two taps when one used to do it. Text rendered on top of text for crying out loud! Whole view panes clobberin* each other. WebKit is a mess of wasted black bars where menus were hidden. Multiple flashes of white and black between content changes. It hits Apple apps as well as trashing third party layout.

Too many defects to list.

Headline: Apple celebrates 50th anniversary by burning down 40 years of human interface knowledge.

copperx2• 5 months ago

Is this related to the 'Screen Mirroring' problem?

When I connect my laptop to a projector, I can select an individual window, or at least I used to be able to select a window and just project that. However, now when I try to select the window, as soon as the mouse cursor gets near the selection button, the button disappears!!! It has been driving me absolutely insane.

Aloisius• 5 months ago

I see flickering like crazy when I adjust the screen brightness on my M5 Macbook Pro on Tahoe.

But it's especially obvious when it dims itself based on ambient room brightness, I can actually see the vertical refresh happening as I move from a fully bright room to a dim one.

vondur• 5 months ago

Wow, I have an M4 MacMini with a Studio Display and haven't seen that. Hope I don't Jinx it when I get home to use it...

pikhq• 5 months ago

I hope they release a version of these fixes on iOS 18 in a form installable on an iPhone 14; I've been trying to stay away from Liquid Glass until it's actually usable. I really don't want to be forced to upgrade, since Apple seems to have replaced UX testing with "just ship it," as has become standard in the industry.

BitwiseFool• 5 months ago

Liquid Glass looks pretty from a distance, but my biggest gripe with the design language is just how difficult so many things become to read or interact with. Given that the whole raison d'être of liquid glass is transparent effects, the options to limit that or otherwise increase contrast simply do not go far enough. I also balk at how much extra computing power is needed to generate effects I find no value in and would prefer to disable.

My hope was that Apple would be forced to course correct in subsequent releases but that doesn't seem to be happening.

tailnode2• 5 months ago

They almost certainly will course-correct in the next release now that the culprit responsible for Liquid Glass is no longer at the company. But they won't chuck it out wholesale; it will be a gradual evolution back to sanity.

derefr2• 5 months ago

I also balk at how much extra computing power is needed to generate effects I find no value in and would prefer to disable.

I mean, "computing power" in a literal sense maybe, but does that matter if it doesn't translate to either "workload contention" or "electrical power"?

I think the Liquid Glass effects, similar to smooth scrolling, are mostly just running as pixel shaders on a spare tile of one of the SoC's GPU's Streaming Processors — a tile that likely likely would have been idle-but-burning-power-anyway, given that GPU power management occurs on the level of entire SPs. It's the same reason that ProMotion "smooth viewport scrolling" doesn't really cost anything.

rdtsc• 5 months ago

I also balk at how much extra computing power is needed to generate effects I find no value in and would prefer to disable

Sounds like you need to spend some money for a new Apple device! /s

Reason077• 5 months ago

“My hope was that Apple would be forced to course correct in subsequent releases but that doesn't seem to be happening.”

I’m optimistic that they will eventually course correct on Liquid Glass, but we’ll have to wait until iOS/macOS 27, or perhaps longer.

There are parallels to Apple’s butterfly keyboard fiasco on the hardware side. Sleek looking on the surface but an objective step backwards in usability. Unfortunately it took Apple several years to reverse course on that one.

ibejoeb• 5 months ago

The Windows ME/Fisher Price look. I can get past the drag handle problem. It's like every window is now the damn ios simulator.

bs7280• 5 months ago

My biggest frustrations with it aren't even related to the look of things, its the all around disregard for user experience. The new screenshot UX on iOS is an insanely bad downgrade.

layer8• 5 months ago

They won't, it already didn't happen for 18.7.4 and 18.7.3 (only via beta channel for the latter), and the present fixes are being released as 18.7.5 for the iPhone XS/XR. Still I think that staying on iOS 18 is the lesser evil.

Cider9986• 5 months ago

I recommend installing liquid glass on iOS. It actually has been looking good on there since 26.2. Macs have been godawful with liquid glass.

sillywalk• 5 months ago

Doesn't look like it. It looks like it's only iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR

https://support.apple.com/en-us/126347

RASBR89• 5 months ago

Updated my 13 mini. Performance is fine / maybe better.. but battery. Tanked. How true is the ‘it takes days for reindexing’ statement?

lynndotpy4• 5 months ago

Re-indexing does occur after an update, but iOS 26 consumes more battery life than iOS 18 anyways.

Just in one example video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eCUkYJ8A98 ) they see the phone get hotter and the battery drops 13x faster during non-static sequences like checking notifications, etc.

Just anecdotally, my iPhone 16 Pro seems to last half as long. Before iOS 16, I got from 80% to 20% without a problem. Now, I charge to 100% and I still need to recharge throughout the day. Apple simply fucked up our phones.

pvab3• 5 months ago

ios 26 has made my 13 mini consistently laggier and hotter

markoa• 5 months ago

iOS Liquid Glass needs its own Snow Leopard.

stuartd• 5 months ago

Is that not 18.7.5 as released yesterday or am I missing something?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/126347

TheDong• 5 months ago

Available for: iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR, iPad 7th generation

They are explicitly choosing to only release security updates for 18.x to devices which are not eligible for liquid glass.

iPhone 14 was deemed capable of running liquid glass, even though it has worse battery life and performs sluggishly.

In the past, Apple has usually let you hold back on an older version and shipped security updates for all devices, not just ones that are incapable of running the new OS, but not this time.

lynndotpy4• 5 months ago

Apple used to make minor and patch releases available, but they've stopped doing that so as to increase Liquid Glass adoption. For that reason, iOS 18.7.5 is only available for the iPhone XS / XR series released.

Very consumer-hostile behavior from Apple :(

itchingsphynx• 5 months ago

Looks like this is for older devices only. “Available for: iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR, iPad 7th generation” so doesn’t include iPhone 16… nor is available on my device.

472828472• 5 months ago

I immediately enabled “reduce transparency” and “strong contrast” in the accessibility settings and didn’t really notice much difference to 18 then. Not a big deal at all.

bee_rider3• 5 months ago

Reduced transparency is somewhat ugly (the giant bars on the top and bottom of the screen in the web browser for example. But it isn’t obviously awful like the giant transparency thing.

Aloha2• 5 months ago

Now if they'd only fix the CarPlay issues, I really miss working navigation in my car.

I have called and opened tickets, and I keep hearing it'll be fixed real soon now.

niij• 5 months ago

It broke my carplay too. Updating my infotainment system' fixed' it.

Aloha2• 5 months ago

There are no known updates for my car unfortunately - annoyingly my wife's iPhone 16 works fine.. in both of our cars.

pier252• 5 months ago

Were Sequoia and iOS 18 affected?

jerlam• 5 months ago

Both show vulnerabilities on the Apple page: https://support.apple.com/en-us/100100

pier252• 5 months ago

So apparently only older devices can update to iOS 18.7.5 that fixes this patch.

If I want to fix it on my iPhone 16 I'm forced to update to iOS 26.

bayesnet• 5 months ago

Is there any word on whether these vulnerabilities were exploitable on devices with MIE[0]?

[0] https://security.apple.com/blog/memory-integrity-enforcement...

walterbell• 5 months ago

If Apple won't disclose, we'll need to wait for public PoCs for testing on MIE-enabled devices.

Relatedly, did Apple baseband have similar vulnerabilities as Broadcom WiFi/Bluetooth baseband?

NetOpWibby• 5 months ago

macOS was so buggy for me a few days ago that I updated my computer to the public beta. Boom, problem solved. So bizarre.

copperx2• 5 months ago

Do you feel an improvement in speed? My 32GB RAM M5 MBP is slow as molasses in Tahoe. My M1 MBA feels much faster (I haven't updated yet).

lynndotpy4• 5 months ago

Do you use a lot of electron apps or a Chromium-based browser? Ever since Liquid Glass, I've had to run this script at each boot:

#!/bin/bash launchctl setenv CHROME_HEADLESS 1 defaults write -g NSAutoFillHeuristicControllerEnabled -bool false

It removes the drop-shadow from Chrome and removes an autofill context.

seanieb2• 5 months ago

Careful if you're still on MacOS Sequoia, Apple has hidden Tahoe as a default under updates. If you click updated now it automatically upgrade you to Tahoe.

fainpul• 5 months ago

If that's true, that would be new:

https://daringfireball.net/2025/11/software_update_tahoe_con...

seanieb2• 5 months ago

I believe it is new. I’ve never seen them: - put a upgrade os version under “updates” - then select the upgrade os version instead the current version when there are multiple updates ( os patch, safari or xcode)

altern8• 5 months ago

Now if they'd only fix—meaning remove—Liquid Glass and other nonsense that they've added, I could stop sticking to Sequoia..?

ost-ing• 5 months ago

Maybe they can fix Messages from bugging out all the time. Apple software has gone down the drain. I don’t want a million new features I just want the ones that make a phone a phone actually work 99.5% of the time

LeoPanthera2• 5 months ago

No problems with Messages here.

nottorp3• 5 months ago

Messages has always randomly stopped syncing between my devices. No matter the iOS and Mac OS versions i run. Happy?

Humphrey• 5 months ago

Have they fixed all the keyboard bugs introducted in iOS 26.0 yet? I’m not sure how much longer I can put up with issues like this - I might need to switch back to Android if they don't fix these soon.

Seriously, how hard is it to correctly measure the keyboard height and not render important UI elements, such as submit buttons, underneath it so you can’t click “Send”? It's getting close to unusable.

Update: No they haven't

soared• 5 months ago

So many bugs in this version of iOS, ive never seen anything like it. The UI for so many websites is mildly broken or misaligned now, keyboard randomly has a noticeable lag, audio does not return to normal volume if a background app makes a noise for a moment, and many more. Really awful, I’ve never wanted to downgrade iOS back to the old version until now.

urbandw311er2• 5 months ago

Hang on, where are the equivalent 18.7.5 patches for my iPhone 13 Pro?

I feel I should be at least given the security patches if I don’t want to update to Apple’s widely derided iOS 26 UI awfulness.

gadyq• 5 months ago

It made my emails go to split screen which I hate and have tried everything and I can’t get rid of it hate it

kelm64• 5 months ago

What a fucking shit storm you created Apple once again with shit software 26.3! iPhone 15+: Apps won’t open or can’t log into them or they just crash, screen glitches, saved passwords not working, every single time I have to reset it ( which is often do to your shit software) my sound disappears and I have to play with the silent button and sound buttons, etc. I can’t even get into the Apple community I’m sure it’s cause there’s SOOOOOOOOOO many other people complaining!!!!! ANDROID HERE I COME!!!!!FUCK YOU APPLE NO MORE MONEY FOR YOU BITCHES!!!!!!

iOS 26.3 and macOS 26.3 Fix Dozens of Vulnerabilities, Including Zero-Day

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