My pre-m1 iPadPro has been very slow loading pages in Safari since iPadOS 26. Seems a lot of people are having similar issues. Fixes mentioned range from clearing caches to a complete factory reset.

The solution for me was to go into Settings -> WiFi -> DNS and change the DNS from automatic to manual and configure with a decent DNS.

Unclear what changed to cause the problem (other than the great plague of ‘26) but things feel snappy again. YMMV

Related: what DNS are people using these days?

I can now say that updating my DNS setting was only a short lived fix for iPad/Safari sluggishness. It was better for a but now at random intervals it’s back to taking 10s of seconds if not longer to beginning a page load.

It feels like safari is sleeping for a bit then once it starts to load its fine. Once a single page experiences this delay others tend to load fine.

Very confusing. I’ve disabled all 3rd party plug-ins to no avail and I can’t reproduce the problem on my iPhone.

The immediate difference I can think of between iOS and iPadOS is windowing/stage manager. No clue why this would slow Safari page loads but I’m turning them both off for a bit to see if anything changes.

Oh the things one does to debug issues seemingly beyond their control…

@patrickmcconnell I have switched my DNS to Quad9, which is based in Switzerland.

https://quad9.net

Quad9 | A public and free DNS service for a better security and privacy

A public and free DNS service for a better security and privacy

Quad9
@patrickmcconnell
For all the years I’ve been using Apple products (39 and counting) I’ve always been one to update the OSs on my devices. I’ve usually waited for the .1 update because there’s nearly always been some weird issues, but I’ve held off on the “26” updates across the board because of all the UI problems people are talking about. I’m becoming curmudgeonly in my old age.