iOS New Topic Display Bug

[fearlessfrog]

RE: @smokinhole ios bug here - Music Is Noise - #3 by smokinhole

Your squeaky wheel squeaked loud enough to spend some frog tokens. Discourse updated to latest, with apparently some iOS safari fixes (refresh your browser or app, as it’ll need a hard refresh I would imagine). They have a nice simple admin updater with a large friendly ‘Update’ button that doesn’t really work about 10% of the time. The Discourse are really nice people, in that all their work is open source and we’ve benefited for years from it, but they make money hosting the software and we don’t give them any money. Sometimes that means the auto update process is not really, and more like this:

I did the step 2 so we should be on latest now. It cost 15,000 frog thinking tokens, which at market rates is about 2 cents.

v2026.6.0-latest Changelog | Discourse Releases

[smokinhole]

Thanks @fearlessfrog. I have cleared all website history and data. I’ve verified latest ios. And I’ve restarted the phone. But if I try to START a thread, this is how it looks:

Just under the “Create Topic” link you can just make out the cursor. When I create a thread, I type blind. If I respond to a thread as I am doing now, it works as expected.

[fearlessfrog]

What phone and iOS version? The screen looks quite small vertically and I’m using a iPhone 17 here and all ok on creating new topic.

Does it help to hit the tick on keyboard bar (top) and reopen the editor?

Is it same on Edge or Firefox on same phone (despite it using same WebKit underneath)?

Does it also happen here? https://meta.discourse.org/

Does anything better happen if you do a ‘Request Desktop Site’ from the iOS … mystery tour button menus?

[keets]

Random question what IOS are you on?

This week I created my first ever topic with no issues. Literally create post, fill some yadayada post pic, more waffles. All from an IPhone 13 Pro.

[smokinhole]

Iphone 16pro. IOS 26.6. Updated to latest. Haven’t tried Firefox or Edge. Desktop or Mobile have exactly the same behavior. The tick does open the scratchpad to full real estate but closes back to the pic above the instant the area is touched or typing starts. However, like the rant, it sounds like a “me” problem, not discourse. So I’ll live with it. Anyway, starting new threads should never become a habit. This might be doing me some good. Sorry about the loss of frog tokens.

PS- I’d rather not register on Discourse just to try posting. However I do believe that the MSFS forum uses the same software. It does not exhibit this behavior.

[fearlessfrog]

The Microsoft forum is their own branch due to the Xbox/Live auth requirement and quite a bit behind now I think.

The best bet of a fix would be registering at meta discourse and then logging it as a bug if it happens there - it’s not like your device is that old so they might be happy to get the details.

If it doesn’t happen there then that’s good info for me as perhaps something in our theme etc that I could fix.

[fearlessfrog]

If it doesn’t happen on meta discourse or you really don’t want to register there then one thing worth an experiment is going to your user preferences / interface (tab) here and picking the new Horizon theme - it’s Discourse’s latest UI so maybe the editor likes it more. If not then easy to pick the theme you had anyway.

Edit: there is the ephemeral https://try.discourse.org/ to use as well

Ooh this Horizon theme is weird..

[BeachAV8R]

I have spent sooooo many Frog tokens over the past gosh..how many years? I’m in debt up to the top of my owl nest.

[Freak]

Frog gave you those to get you hooked.
Now that he has a solid monopoly on thinking and all of Mudspike depending on him, is the perfect opportunity to hike prices and get a sweet ROI.

[smokinhole]

Horizon IS weird. And no help. I’ll try Discourse another day but for now, gotta work. Thanks for the help @fearlessfrog!

[fearlessfrog]

@smokinhole

Horizon IS weird. And no help.

That’s good in a way, as that was the bare theme unaltered by us, so nothing customizable we did (like the wee like icon etc) broke the editor for you. I would be interesting to see if meta or try discourse do the same, as then (a) if you get the issue then an easy bug report to them (I can do it etc) or (b) I change here to match their version that works (or bisect diff and see what fixes it) etc.

@Freak

Frog gave you those to get you hooked.

It’s the long con, the first 35 years is just slow preparation but eventually I’m going to be winning so much for sure.

[schurem]

[smokinhole]

Can Post But Not START a Topic

[smokinhole]

Aaaaand that’s why I didn’t want to register. They’ve moved or removed the post and I can no longer log in.

The post was titled something like:
“I Can Post But Not Start A Topic”. The body said:
Because THIS is what I see when
I type on a topic I have created:

Then I replied to my own topic stating…
This is what I see right now…

[fearlessfrog]

It is good to have proven it happens on latest mainline discourse.

I’ll log the bug and chase it at meta.discourse.org using your screenshots and version info.

@smokinhole

Aaaaand that’s why I didn’t want to register. They’ve moved or removed the post and I can no longer log in.

try.discourse.org is the demo sandbox site they use so that people can try things and mess around. It’s all temporary and gets wiped/rebuilt each build. Anything support like they get a bot to delete to stop people expecting replies etc.

[fearlessfrog]

Ok, I’ve logged it to their support sub forum, and with zero angry elf energy they or others that have seen stuff like it maybe might help out. If I get a bit of time later I might try to fiddle with it too, as they do accept fix PRs etc (that I’ve done before). Here’s the topic I made so we can all follow along

New Topic Editor Too Small iOS 26.5 Safari Web - Support - Discourse Meta

FWIW these were all Claude’s ramblings (on a pretty new model) on this so far although pretty weak workarounds tbh, try them if bored as might offer clues:

Disable the accessibility setting that may worsen fixed-position bugs

Have them check:

Settings > Accessibility > Motion

Then temporarily turn off:

Reduce Motion
Prefer Cross-Fade Transitions

A Stack Overflow report on the same iOS 26 fixed-position Safari issue says fixed elements can be “quite messed up” when Reduce Motion plus Prefer Cross-Fade Transitions are enabled. This is one of the best “local setting” candidates to test.

Force-quit Safari, then reopen

This is worth trying because the WebKit bug thread describes the bug being triggered after focusing/dismissing the keyboard, and notes that reloads or switching tabs may not clear it, while closing/reopening Safari can. Swipe up from the bottom and pause, find Safari, swipe its preview card up to close it, then reopen Safari and try Discourse again.

Rotate to landscape, then back to portrait

There is a later Discourse Meta report where a user found that turning the phone landscape and back to portrait could fix related iOS 26 Discourse composer/cursor problems. It is not a real fix, but it is a low-effort workaround to test.

Try making the composer/editor large before typing

An earlier Discourse iOS 26 text-editor report says the problem was more likely when the editor was small before the keyboard opened, and worked better when the editor was made large before focusing the text field.

For your user, that means: open New Topic, then before tapping deeply into the body field, try any available composer expand/fullscreen control, or rotate to landscape first so the editor starts larger.

[smokinhole]

Cool. Thanks. Sorry for trouble. I’m not the prolific topic starter I once was. So shouldn’t be a problem.

[fearlessfrog]

A reply from the Discourse team:

This is specifically because there’s not enough space to type right?

We can probably do an improvement pass to ensure we always have at least a single line of space here for typing no matter the device size… but for now, if they hide the toolbar with the ☰ button at the top of the composer, are they at least able to enter some content?

Does that help?

[smokinhole]

Let me check!

Perfect. Thanks @fearlessfrog (and Discourse)!

[fearlessfrog]

Cool! I’ll let them know as I think they could do with redesigning that area a bit to allow the category/tags to be ‘foldable’ to let more room for smaller vertical screens.