IOS 26 Adoption Trails Last Year’s Pace at 79% of iPhones

79% of all active iPhones run iOS 26, according to Apple’s final adoption snapshot taken on June 7, one day before WWDC 2026 opened. That number drops to 68% for iPads, continuing a persistent gap between the two platforms that has held across multiple release cycles.

The more telling comparison is with last year’s figures. iOS 18 had reached 82% of all iPhones by the equivalent measurement point in June 2025, and iPadOS 18 had hit 71%. iOS 26 trails both marks, which is a quiet reversal of the trend Apple typically likes to publicize. Whether that reflects slower uptake of a more visually disruptive redesign or simply a larger installed base of older devices is hard to say from the numbers alone.

Among iPhones introduced in the last four years, adoption climbs to 86%, which is where Apple’s framing tends to focus. Older devices pulling down the overall percentage is not new, but the 14% still running iOS 18 is a real number representing millions of users who have not moved in two full release cycles.

What This Means for iOS 27

The timing of this data release is not accidental. Apple publishes final adoption figures just as developer betas begin, partly to signal to developers which OS versions still need support. With iOS 27 beta testing now underway, developers building for the new Siri AI features will need to decide how long to maintain iOS 26 compatibility for that remaining 21% of active iPhones.

iPad’s 15% still running versions older than iPadOS 18 is the sharpest outlier in this data. Tablets tend to sit in drawers, run kiosk apps, or get handed down rather than upgraded, and that behavior shows up consistently in Apple’s own numbers year after year.