I woke up to my iPhone 17 looking completely dead after an overnight iOS 26.2 update. Screen stayed black. No logo. No response. Instant panic.
Here’s the fix to revive.
1) Force Restart
This is the exact button sequence:
- Quick press Volume Up & release
- Quick press Volume Down & release
- Press and hold Side Button for ~10 seconds until the Apple logo appears
If your iPhone is “bricked” (black screen / frozen), this solves it surprisingly often.
2) If it still won’t boot: Recovery Mode (Mac)
Plug your iPhone into a Mac with a USB cable and perform the same force restart. Finder should prompt Recovery Mode with two options:
- Update: reinstall iOS without wiping data (try this first)
- Restore: wipes the phone and restores from backup (last resort)
I tried Update first, unfortunately it failed, and my phone stayed stuck at the Apple logo.
I had to Restore, which means data loss since my last backup.. which was a long 1+ month ago.
What went wrong?
I’ve used iPhone since 2008, and this is the first time that it bricked without warning.
How did an overnight iOS update fail so terribly? It is Apple’s bug. Their software often has embarrasing issues, so I am not surprised.
But why my iPhone? My best guess is that I was running out of storage.. I have like 5 GB left, which I think after an iOS update could create lots of tmp files etc, and it caused the boot up somehow to get stuck.
Lessons learnt
- Don’t assume updates are always safe
- Backups matter (especially for photos)
- More storage helps (I’m leaning 512GB next time)
Also, I should use iCloud+ for backup. It will backup automatically, and move some storage online too. That could be better than upgrading device storage.
iCloud+ is the no-brainer affordable option:
- 50GB = $1/month
- 200GB = $3/month
You can even share it with family, and it’s way cheaper than losing memories again.