I'll take the opportunity to air my personal bug grievance --

For several years, there's been an issue with audio message recording in iMessage. Prior to iOS 26, it would silently fail; the recording would "begin" but no audio would be captured. This would happen 3, 4, even 5 times in a row before it would actually record audio.

Apple is clearly aware of the issue, because in iOS 26 the failure is no longer silent. Now, you'll get feedback that "Recording isn't available right now". Yet the incidence is...exactly the same. You might have to try 5 times before you're actually able to record a message.

It's simply infuriating, and it makes no sense to a user why this would be happening. Apple owns the entire stack, down to the hardware. Just fix the fucking bug!