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If your iPhone typing has felt off lately — missing letters, weird autocorrect, and causing general aggravation — you weren't imagining it. There's been a keyboard bug in iOS 26 that's been driving people nuts for months. The good news: iOS 26.4 fixes it and I've got a bonus step you can take to really lock it in.

That's the headliner this issue, but iOS 26.4 also brought some nice improvements to Reminders (a follow-up to something I covered back in January), an automatic security upgrade that happens when you update, and a few other things worth knowing about. Let's get into it.

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Typing on my iPhone was driving me nuts (again). It got to the point where I was seriously wondering if it was me.

Turns out, it wasn't. It was a bug in iOS 26.

Here's what was happening: when typing quickly, some keystrokes would look like they registered, but they never actually made it into the text. The missing letters threw off autocorrect because it couldn't figure out what you were trying to type when half the word was missing, compounding the issue.

Apple's official release notes for iOS 26.4 say it includes "improved keyboard accuracy when typing quickly." That's Apple-speak for "we fixed the bug."

If you've already updated to 26.4, you may have noticed things feel better. But there's one more step worth taking.

Reset Your Keyboard Dictionary

Here's the thing Apple doesn't mention: while that bug was active, your iPhone was quietly learning from all those typos. It stored your mistakes as if they were intentional. So even with the bug fixed, your keyboard dictionary is still full of cruft from the last several months.

The fix is simple:

Fair warning: autocorrect will feel a little generic for a few days afterward. It won't recognize nicknames, abbreviations, or your go-to phrases right away. But within a week or so of normal typing, it relearns your actual patterns.

If you've been frustrated with your iPhone keyboard since the fall, update to 26.4 and reset your dictionary. That combination should make a real difference.

I've written before about keyboard settings that can help with typing accuracy — things like turning off predictive text or disabling inline predictions. Those tips still apply, but this time the fix was on Apple's end.

Back in January, I wrote about one of my favorite new additions to the Reminders app: the Urgent toggle.

The idea is simple. If you have a reminder with a due time, you can mark it as Urgent, and instead of just getting a regular notification (which is easy to miss or dismiss), your iPhone sets off an actual alarm. It shows up on your Lock Screen with a snooze button, just like a morning alarm, and sticks around as a Live Activity until you deal with it.

If you started using it after that issue, good news: it just got easier to use.

What's New in 26.4

Before this update, marking a reminder as Urgent meant opening the full task details view and toggling it on. Not a huge hassle, but enough friction that you might not bother in the moment.

Now you've got two faster options:

Long-press any reminder and tap "Mark as Urgent."

Use the Quick Toolbar — when you're editing a reminder, tap the calendar icon, and you'll see the Urgent option right there.

Apple also added a dedicated Urgent smart list at the top of the Reminders app. Every task you've marked as Urgent shows up in one place, no matter which list it actually belongs to.

This is a nice quality-of-life improvement. If your Today list gets overwhelming, the Urgent list gives you a quick way to see only the things with actual hard deadlines.

If you haven't tried Urgent reminders yet, it's worth a look. And if you already have, the 26.4 update just made it even more practical to use day to day.

A couple of other things in iOS 26.4 worth knowing about:

Stolen Device Protection Is Now On by Default

When you update to iOS 26.4, Apple automatically enables Stolen Device Protection if you don’t already have it enabled.

Quick refresher: Stolen Device Protection adds an extra layer of security if someone steals your iPhone and knows your passcode. When you're away from familiar locations like home or work, certain sensitive actions — like accessing saved passwords, turning off Lost Mode, or changing your Apple ID password — require Face ID or Touch ID. No passcode fallback. Some changes also trigger a one-hour security delay.

Apple first introduced Stolen Device Protection in iOS 17.3, following reports of a specific theft method in which criminals would watch someone enter their passcode, then steal the phone.

One thing to keep in mind: if you're planning to sell, trade in, or give away your iPhone, turn Stolen Device Protection off before you do. It can complicate the transfer process if it's still active. You'll find the toggle in Settings → Face ID & Passcode → Stolen Device Protection.

You can learn more about it in Apple's support article "About Stolen Device Protection for iPhone."

AI Apps Come to CarPlay

iOS 26.4 enables AI apps like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Claude to run in CarPlay for the first time. ChatGPT is already available if you update the app to the latest version.

A few things to note: it's voice-only (no text or images on screen, by design), there's no wake word to activate it hands-free, and you have to manually open the app from CarPlay each time you want to use it.

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Here’s a quick rundown of noteworthy things that I’ve hand-selected just for you: