Apple seems content letting one of its more embarrassing bugs stick around a bit longer. A homescreen glitch that’s been making the rounds on social media for weeks now remains unfixed even in the freshly dropped iOS 26.2 RC build, and honestly, it’s kind of baffling given how ridiculously easy it is to reproduce.

The whole thing kicked off when X user Sankew posted a video showing the bug in action. That clip has racked up over 550,000 views since then, and the glitch has spread beyond just X. Instagram Reels are now flooded with people recreating it, and pretty much anyone with an iPhone running recent iOS versions can trigger it in seconds.​

Here’s what happens: Long-press any empty spot on your homescreen to enter edit mode, shuffle any widget around, then tap the dots sitting just above the dock. Those dots normally pull up all your homescreen pages, but instead of doing that, the entire homescreen crashes and reloads itself. Every single time. No special setup needed, no weird configuration required. Just those three simple steps and boom, your screen goes dark and springs back to life.​

What makes this particularly strange is that Apple usually jumps on bugs this visible and this reproducible. When something goes viral with half a million views and people are actively sharing it across multiple platforms, you’d think it would get priority treatment. Yet here we are with iOS 26.2 RC out the door, and the bug is alive and well. I’ve tested it on the latest iOS 26.2 release candidate build and can confirm the issue hasn’t been fixed.

Another disappointed user also shared a video noting the same:

Maybe Apple figures it’s more of an annoyance than a critical problem since it doesn’t actually break anything permanently. Your homescreen just does a quick restart and everything goes back to normal. But when a bug becomes this well-known and this easy to stumble into accidentally, leaving it unfixed sends a weird message. If the RC build is any indication, iPhone users might be dealing with this crashy behavior for at least another update cycle.

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Dwayne Cubbins
2733 Posts

I cover fast-moving stories across apps, online platforms, and everyday tech — phones, wearables, consoles, and whatever else people are fighting with this week. Bugs, rollouts, scams, policy enforcement, and the occasional internet-culture rabbit hole are all fair game. My goal is simple — make confusing tech news readable. When I'm not working, I'm working out or chilling with my dog. Got a tip? You can find me on X @dcubbins.

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