An iOS 26 Bug Is Stopping Some iPhone 17 Users From Downloading Apple Intelligence

The launch of Apple's iPhone 17 and the subsequent arrival of iOS 26 have left fans of Apple's smartphones with plenty of new hardware and software to explore. Unfortunately, as is often the case with new releases, there have also been a few hiccups. Apple has already confirmed that it's aware of a bug with searching in the Calendar app in iOS 26, though there is a workaround for the issue that has fixed it for some users. Now, it looks like the company has confirmed yet another bug, and this one is a bit bigger, with the bug affecting the use of Apple Intelligence on iPhone 17 devices specifically.

According to an Apple Support Community post, one user picked up their iPhone 17 Pro and started using Apple Intelligence features without any issue. However, after a couple of days, the models no longer seemed to work, and the iPhone 17 told them that the "models need to be downloaded." When checking their device storage, Apple Intelligence was already installed and taking up 6.59 GB.

Others posting on the same thread have noted the same issue, with one even saying that the models were still "stuck downloading" and that they went through all the troubleshooting steps with Apple Support on the phone.

While Apple Support has acknowledged  the issue, the company has yet to release any specific information about when a fix might be coming. In the meantime, this is just another misstep on the long and bumpy road Apple has been walking with its release of AI-powered features. Earlier this year, one of our own writers realized that Apple Intelligence had vanished off his iPhone and he hadn't even noticed. We've also written about how Apple's conversational Siri has sounded like vaporware at times.

Despite all of that, many are still excited for what Apple Intelligence could become. And if you find yourself running into similar issues with Apple Intelligence on your iPhone 17, you can try a few quick workarounds which some users have claimed fixed the issue for them.

First, try turning off your cellular data or even joining a Wi-Fi network. This could help trigger the download. If that doesn't work, you can try changing your iPhone's language and then changing it back. Again, this might trick the system into working as intended. Alternatively, some reported that turning on Airplane mode and then disabling it also helped fix their connection problems, or even changing the region and resetting the iPhone's network settings.

A more extreme option is to reset your iPhone altogether in the Settings app, though it will take some time to get everything set back up. You could also try wiping your device and then restoring it from an iCloud backup. Sadly, none of these are guaranteed to work, but Apple is already working on the next version of iOS 26, so hopefully it will address the problem by then.