UPDATE: 2026-02-17
As of the first beta release of iOS 26.4, Apple seems to have resolved this issue, and Drafts 4 once again launches. Presumably, this fix will be in the 26.4 release when it goes live.
It has been brought to my attention that the old, retired version of Drafts (4.8.12), which was retired in 2018, no longer runs after installing the iOS 26.2 update.
There are not a lot of people still using that old version, but if you do, you might want to consider migrating data from it to the current version of Drafts.
A few thoughts:
How do I move my Drafts 4 data to the current version of Drafts?
Install the current version of Drafts. Open in and go to Settings (gear at the lower right) > Migrate from Drafts 4. Follow the directions to import from your Drafts 4 installation. More detail in the migration guide. Even though Drafts 4 will not launch, this migration process can access data from the installation and perform the migration. You can do all this in the free version of Drafts. DO NOT delete Drafts 4 from the device. That will delete your local data, and it will no longer be available on migrate.
Can I export my Drafts 4 data?
If you still have a device that is not running iOS 26.2, open Drafts 4 and go to Settings > Export Drafts. You can create a JSON export file with all your drafts data which can be imported into the current version, and/or opened with other tools to extract that data and import into other systems. You can, also, complete the migration to the current version above, then use export and action tools in Drafts to export.
Will Drafts 4 ever work again on newer OS versions?
Technically, when an existing app breaks like this on a minor OS update, it’s an OS bug. I will be reporting this issue to Apple, and hope that in a future OS update, they fix whatever changed that is causing Drafts 4 to crash on launch – but there’s no guarantee that will happen. I will not be issuing any updates to address the problem, however. The App Store does not support the release of updates to retired apps – so it will be up to Apple whether this gets fixed. So, it’s probably safest to assume this will not be fixed.