iOS 26.4 & related updates are out!

By KE8UPE, 24 March, 2026

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Good Terrific Tuesday afternoon everyone,
This is just a quick note to say that the 26.4 updates have just dropped for all compatible devices & operating systems!

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Comments

By Maldalain on Tuesday, March 24, 2026 - 18:09

It amazes me that the iOs update is twice the size of the MacOS update.

By Holger Fiallo on Tuesday, March 24, 2026 - 18:49

Well good and bad news. When a notification pops up, VO does not read it, but if you slide to it, VO does read it, 88% of the times. Long live cats.

By Brian on Tuesday, March 24, 2026 - 18:51

A partial fix then? πŸ˜‡

By Holger Fiallo on Tuesday, March 24, 2026 - 19:59

Cross fingers? Could it be that apple likes me? Not, Long live cats.

By BlindFolk on Tuesday, March 24, 2026 - 20:09

I wish Michael and the other editorial members can tell us what's new for voice over users. Well, probably nothing to write home with this update in as far as voice over improvements. I always appreciate their updates.

By mantanini on Tuesday, March 24, 2026 - 20:25

Have they stopped updating to iOS 26.4? I still don't have it.

By Holger Fiallo on Tuesday, March 24, 2026 - 20:34

The public version is out. Next will beta 26.5 which might come out next week. Long live cats.

By KE8UPE on Tuesday, March 24, 2026 - 21:04

Hello,
the question posed in the subject of this comment is something I've been debating since 26.4 entered beta.
I am having really wierd issues with my iPhone that I haven't seen anyone else here talk about.
They include:
* very quick battery drain (I barely make it through a shift at work, but I do work from home)
* the phone gets warm
* The Eloquence TTS, specifically, the Reed voice, crashes nearly daily & sometimes, as it was last night, it's difficult to get it going again. I did it but it took restarting Voiceover at least 3 or 4 times, before it would talk again.
* this is better in 26.4, but I've noticed that my phone doesn't always ring when it's supposed to. (this is critical for my job)
* On my Apple watch ultra 2, raise to speak does not work. If I preceed my question or command to Siri with the wake word, it does it but if not, which defeats the whole purpose of that feature in the first place, then what's the point of having that feature at all?
Based on this information, how would you answer the above question posed in my subject?
Do I restore or not?
I did just make an iCloud backup, so I'm all good there but I will not use it unless absolutely necessary.

By Brian on Tuesday, March 24, 2026 - 21:10

With all of those issues, I would restore to factory settings in a heartbeat. Although, you could try simply resetting VoiceOver settings first, just to see if that does anything. Also, you may want to try a different VO voice, just to see if you get any better results with that.
Ultimately though, I would seriously consider doing a factory reset. And, do.. Not.. Restore.. From.. A.. Backup.
If your iPhone is having all these issues, restoring from a backup will just bring all these issues right back after the reset.

HTH.

By JC on Tuesday, March 24, 2026 - 21:20

Hi everyone,

the eloquence Community Dictionary has been fixed! Well, somewhat. iOS and macOS pronunciation is still broken but they did manage to fix contact names. So contacts in my phone are now reading correctly as expected with correct pronunciations this time.

By KE8UPE on Tuesday, March 24, 2026 - 21:32

Hi Brian,
Thanks so much for your response.
I have reset voiceover numerous times which usually works for a while then speech decides to randomly crap out on me again.
What’s funny is it’s not happening on any other device. It’s just the iPhone and only with eloquence, as far as I can tell. I use eloquence daily on my phone, watch, Mac, iPad and Apple TV.

By Michael Hansen on Tuesday, March 24, 2026 - 21:48

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

I know this isn't going to be the most popular answer, but if you have already tried resetting VoiceOver settings, I would personally recommend restoring the phone using a computer and setting it up from scratch as a new device.