I’m working on a pesky OS-level bug in iPadOS 26. If you have seen Drafts hang, then appear to crash some number of seconds later when tapping or long-pressing one of the toolbar buttons, you are seeing this bug.
The bug is in the OS, when attempting to display a menu…and, as best I can tell, is triggered only when the following conditions are true:
- Running on iPadOS 26
- External keyboard connected
- Drafts editor focused for editing
- Action bar visible
- Press search button in top toolbar, or long-press +, or draft list, or other toolbar buttons.
If any of those things are not true (at least in my testing - both on-device and in the simulator), this crash does not happen, and everything works fine.
If anyone has seen this problem and can confirm my findings by testing on their iPad with and without a keyboard, and with and without the Action Bar being visible, I’d appreciate confirmation of my assessment before I submit a report to Apple. I’m working on figuring out if I can even workaround this issue, or it will have to wait on a fix from Apple – but in the meantime, if you use your iPad with an external keyboard, I recommend you do the following to avoid the issue:
- Change “Hide Action Bar” in Editor Settings to “Ext. Keyboard” or “Always” to disable Action Bar.
(PS, I always run with the Action Bar hidden on iPad - especially with multiple-sized windows it doesn’t make as much sense when you can get to all those actions with the (>) in the iPad keyboard bar or via the Command Palette – but I digress)
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It does appear that iPadOS 26.1 beta 1 resolves this issue - at least when using a build from Xcode 26.1 beta 1. I will have such a build in the TestFlight shortly, if anyone is seeing this issue.
I can confirm this is not just an issue in Drafts. I was getting frustrated by the issue halting my work, so I decided to look for a different app. But then similar external keyboard issues appeared. It happened in iA Writer, Bear, and Werdsmith. The only app that hasn’t given me any issues is Craft.
I am a new Drafts user. I am seeing this issue (iPad Pro 2024 with magic keyboard) in all sorts of ways. Just a few: when I try to add a tag to a draft using the tag button (upper left); when I click on the downward facing chevron in the magnifying glass box (upper right); when I click on the settings gear (lower right). The app hangs then closes. These errors happen regardless of whether I have draft I am writing in or have opened an older draft.
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Did you try hiding the Action Bar, per the workaround mentioned above. I’ve not seen cases where that does not resolve the issue. Also, if you are one to try betas, it seems to be resolved when running on iOS 26.1 beta 1 as well.
I’m still experiencing the issue on an M4 iPad Pro with a Magic Keyboard attached, running iPadOS 26.1 (no betas). The workaround of hiding the Action Bar appears to solve it.
Hopefully iPadOS 26.2+ will provide some relief.
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I too thought this was fixed but I experienced it again today running the same system specs as @Hathaway