Apple fixes charging issue on iPhone 17 and shutdown bug on M5 Macs

Apple released two minor updates on Monday evening: iOS 26.5.1 is for owners of an iPhone Air or a model from the iPhone 17 series, macOS Tahoe 26.5.1 addresses a stability bug on Macs with M5 chip. Both updates appear a few weeks after the extensive versions 26.5 for iOS and macOS, which introduced end-to-end encryption for RCS messages, among other things.

The point releases do not deliver new features – they focus exclusively on bug fixes. According to Apple's Release Notes, iOS 26.5.1 is exclusively available for the iPhone Air and all iPhone 17 models, including the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max. The macOS update, on the other hand, is offered to all Macs with Tahoe support, although the documented fix only affects M5 hardware – an indication of possible further, undescribed fixes.

Wired charging blocked with nearly empty battery

The iPhone update fixes a bug that has been documented since the end of April. Apple describes the problem in the Release Notes as follows: The update fixes an issue where, for a small number of users, wired charging on iPhone Air and iPhone 17 models could fail when the battery was nearly empty. In everyday use, this could lead to a nearly discharged device not restarting despite the cable being connected.

According to Apple's Release Notes, macOS Tahoe 26.5.1 fixes a problem where Macs with M5 chip could unexpectedly shut down in corporate environments. The cause was the combination of certain network extensions for content filtering and the M5 chip – a common scenario in managed IT environments with Mobile Device Management. Remarkable: macOS 26.5 was already supposed to fix a similar crash bug on M5 devices, but the problem apparently persisted in enterprise configurations.

(mki)