Apple’s iOS 27 beta has been pretty smooth overall, but it’s still beta software, which means odd bugs are bound to happen. The one that’s been bugging us in iOS 27 beta 4 is widgets vanishing or going blank, on both the lock screen and the home screen.
At first we thought we were going crazy, but nope, widgets really were just removing themselves from our lock screen. RIP our Duolingo streak (luckily we had streak freezes!). Same thing was happening to widgets across different home screen pages. The widgets would disappear or go blank after app updates. Yes, the joys of using a beta.
The annoying part about this bug was that we couldn’t even put them back. When we went to add the missing widgets again, they didn’t show up in the widget search at all. Searching for Duolingo wouldn’t even show up.
So we did the obvious thing first and rebooted the iPhone (just turn your phone off then back on), which thankfully fixed it. Blank widgets started showing again, and the ones that had disappeared showed back up in search so we could re-add them. We were fully prepared to start deleting and reinstalling apps, but thankfully it didn’t come to that.
As for some other iOS 27 beta bugs so far? Battery life feels a little worse than iOS 26 depending on what you’re doing, and the Gmail app lost search for a while, though a recent app update sorted that one out. But overall it’s been one of the best betas so far.
Anyone else dealing with disappearing widgets on beta 4? What other bugs have you run into?
Apple is expected to ship the final builds of iOS 27 and company this September, alongside its next iPhone launch and other product refreshes.
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