iOS 26 bugs with fixed position elements in Discourse

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:megaphone: Update: with the release of iOS 26.1, Apple has solved the most critical bugs discussed in this topic. If you or your members are experiencing layout issues with Discourse on iOS, be sure the affected device is updated to 26.1 or later.

iOS 26 has been officially released, but we recommend holding off on updating until some Safari issues are addressed. These are visual issues that cause fixed position elements on iPhones and iPads to be misplaced after opening the on-screen keyboard — in Discourse this includes the header, mobile footer, composer, and chat.

We’re keeping a close eye on this bug and are attempting to build some workarounds in the meantime, but solutions are fairly limited due to the nature of the problem being tied to how Safari calculates the window height (which websites have no direct control over).

These issues appear to impact all websites with fixed elements and inputs.

If you’re interested in more details there’s a bug report filed with the webkit team here:

There are additional details and reports on Apple’s developer forums and on Stackoverflow.

We can’t provide a timeline for when these issues will be addressed, but we’ll keep this topic updated as we learn more.

Status updates:

2025-09-17T04:00:00Z — Apple has marked this bug as resolved, and it appears that it will now just need to make its way through their release process

2022-09-25T04:00:00Z — Apple has included a fix in a beta version, iOS 26.1 (23B5044I)

2025-11-03T05:00:00Z — iOS 26.1 released, which fixes fixed element positioning… we’re hearing there may be some composer issues still on iPads

2025-11-10T05:00:00Z — while there was some progress here, we’re still getting reports of this issue not being entirely fixed: iOS 26 bugs still persist on 26.1

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Yeah I’ve noticed this when trying to type a response or a new post on my iPhone. It’s been getting really annoying. I mainly use my PC now for Discourse forums as a result.

I have iOS 26 installed and have been using the Public Betas. It’s wonderful, but trying to respond to a new post or existing reply in Discourse can get a bit mucky. Will wait until a fix comes out.

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You’ll update as you learn more?

The iOS26 Beta has been running for 4 months with exactly this issue. How could this sneak up on you?

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That’s not quite accurate. The problem only started with iOS Beta 7. That doesn’t make it any better, but I hope for a quick fix.

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There are often problems with betas that are resolved by the time the public release happens, and issues change even between beta versions. In this case it’s a very basic browser height calculation that’s broken and avoiding the problem is not at all trivial.

I don’t think it’s odd for us to put the onus on Apple to fix this, it’s a very sloppy issue that will impact thousands of sites beyond Discourse, and even occurs in Apple’s own support forums.

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I think the link is tagged with Beta 7 because that’s when it was reported. I had the dev beta installed from day 1 in June and experienced the issue from the start.

It seems like it will be fixed in the next developer beta, according to the linked thread. Still, communication about this from Discourse was neither proactive nor precise.

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Then the story goes you monitored this for Beta 1-9, held out hope it’s going to be fixed with the final release and then quickly tell people to not update (like they won’t) once it’s been pushed to the general public without the fix?

I get that addressing the problem is out of your hands but one would expect more attention to a show stopping problem on the most important platform.

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Did you report it anywhere here that you experienced these problems?

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I understand you’re upset about the bug, but you’re criticizing us for not notifying everyone about an issue in beta releases while also telling us the notification wouldn’t stop anyone from updating anyway… so it seems you’re holding us conditions that are impossible to satisfy.

In more positive news, someone from Apple’s side has responded to the report on their bug tracker, and it sounds like they already have a fix and it just needs to make its way through their software release process. https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=297779#c10

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I was only made aware of this platform by this announcement. I had raised the issue in my community before realizing it’s not being addressed.

@awesomerobot You are responding to something I didn’t say. I was trying to figure out how your testing of the beta went to have led to this announcement. I suppose I don’t want to believe that you only became aware of the problem when the public update was pushed.

Glad to hear it is getting addressed. Ironically in a dev beta first. Might be time that someone in the team gets their device on them.

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I am quite happy with how it went. It is not on Discourse to test on Apple’s behalf. If there is a webkit bug in iOS beta, I would expect it to be solved in production. I don’t want to be even informed about it here on meta. There might be hundreds of such bugs. Of course, it’s iOS beta. They should be all gone by the time it gets released. And if not – we will be notified here. It’s perfect.

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unfortunately I’m on RC (Release Candidate) which is typically the final release, and it still there.

Very annoying, but I’m not sure why some users are pointing the finger at the team here. It’s a WebKit bug with no workaround.

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Sorry, just to clarify - this was released on Monday 15th. 26.0.0.

Last year, 18.0.1 was released 2.5 weeks after the first roll-out. By this timeline, we can expect 26.0.01 within about 14 days.

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How do you fix this?

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By waiting next bug fix from Apple?

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Quick update:

I just updated to 23A341 (different from the RC build - 23A340) and the bug is still there.

I think we’ll have to wait for 26.0.1 which may come out in 7-10 days.

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Can confirm. I’ve just tried again with the latest beta and the bug remains.

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Hooray, today’s beta, iOS 26.1 (23B5044I), seems to fix the positioning issues.

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I reported the issue to Apple since Beta 4 (and all subsequent versions). It was useless.

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