iOS 26.2 Second Release Candidate Brings Fixes As Public Launch Nears

Apple is moving iOS 26.2 one step closer to public release, and today the company has begun seeding a second release candidate to testers and developers.

This follows a short but intense beta cycle that started in early November with the first iOS 26.2 beta and continued a couple of weeks later with beta 2, giving Apple time to hunt down bugs and polish the experience.

The new release candidate, carrying build number 23C54, is essentially Apple’s dress rehearsal for the final rollout. In practical terms, this build should behave almost exactly like the version that will ship to regular iPhone owners, giving developers a last chance to validate their apps, check for crashes, and make sure new APIs behave as expected across different devices and usage scenarios.

One of the more visible problems in beta 2 was a frustrating AirDrop bug that caused transfers to fail or hang, especially during larger file sends. According to Apple’s release notes for the candidate, those AirDrop issues have now been addressed, which should restore confidence for users who rely on quick local sharing. However, the company still lists several known problems, which means cautious users may prefer to stay on the current stable release until iOS 26.2 officially lands.

That official rollout is unlikely to be far away. Release candidates are the final stop in Apple’s development pipeline before an update is pushed to the wider public, so a stable iOS 26.2 build should appear within days if no critical bugs are discovered at the last minute. For most people, the smartest move is to wait for that polished version to arrive via the usual over the air update.

Looking a bit further ahead, Apple is already planning iOS 27. While iOS 26.2 is primarily a polish and bug fix update, iOS 27 is expected to double down on raw performance and deeper AI driven experiences throughout the system, from a more responsive interface to smarter Siri behavior and more proactive suggestions across apps.