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Over the past weeks, a wave of posts claimed that iOS 26 had reached only around 15% of devices. Some headlines framed it as a historic slowdown in Apple’s update cycle.

The number spread fast. It also turned out to be wrong. What looked like weak adoption was largely a tracking artifact caused by changes in Safari and WebKit.

Where the 15% figure came from

Most of the alarming charts traced back to early StatCounter data.

StatCounter relies heavily on browser user-agent strings to identify operating system versions. With iOS 26, Safari no longer exposes the real OS version in the user-agent the way it used to. In many cases, iOS 26 traffic appeared as iOS 18.

From StatCounter’s point of view:

• iOS 26 devices were undercounted
• older versions were artificially inflated

The result looked like a collapse in adoption.

Several tech outlets, including Macworld and Cult of Mac, took those early numbers at face value and amplified the narrative.

What more reliable data shows

When you step away from raw user-agent scraping and look at broader datasets, the picture changes significantly.

Current Wikipedia-compiled estimates for January 2026 put iOS 26 adoption around 50% of active devices.

That is lower than previous cycles at the same point:

• iOS 18: ~72%
• iOS 17: ~65%
• iOS 16: ~62%

Slower than usual, yes. A collapse, no.

Other sources such as TelemetryDeck and StatCounter’s later corrections land in a similar range — well above the viral 15% figure.

Why this kind of error happens

Browser fingerprinting has always been fragile. Apple continues to limit what websites can infer about devices for privacy reasons. The iOS 26 user-agent change is another step in that direction.

Analytics platforms that depend on those strings without adjustment end up producing distorted reports until their detection logic catches up.

In this case, the distortion happened right when attention around iOS 26 adoption was highest.

Did design changes slow updates?

Some commentators pointed at Liquid Glass and UX changes as a possible reason for slower rollout. There is no solid data confirming that.

The only measurable signal so far is that iOS 26 adoption is progressing more gradually than recent releases — something Apple has done deliberately before with staged rollouts and tighter server-side throttling.

Whether user hesitation plays any role remains speculation.

Conclusion

• The widely shared 15% adoption number was a tracking error caused by Safari user-agent changes
• Real-world adoption sits closer to 50% as of January 2026
• iOS 26 is rolling out more slowly than iOS 17 or iOS 18, though well within historical norms
• Measurement artifacts can easily turn into viral narratives when methodology gets ignored