The controls that can silence a single person are not in the Notifications screen, and Apple documents them across four separate pages. One of them tells the sender. One of them cannot be detected at all.
Vibrate on Ring and Vibrate on Silent were replaced by one Haptics picker holding two options that are a single word apart. A switch in Accessibility overrides the lot, and Apple says it silences earthquake and tsunami alerts too.
How much went is the fastest clue you have, and some of what looks missing has only moved. Apple’s own sync fix says to move one setting whichever way it is not already set.
Almost every fix lives on one Settings screen, and Apple’s own turn-on step has a second tap that people miss. Plus what the connection advice everywhere else gets wrong.
Most of them were never closed. Safari keeps separate tabs for each profile, each Tab Group and Private Browsing, and one timer Apple does not document closes the rest.
Almost nothing is actually being deleted. iOS offloads, moves, hides or blocks apps, and each of those is undone in seconds once you know which one you are looking at.
Auto-Brightness is only one of several ceilings on the screen, and the newest one arrived with iOS 26 switched on. Here is what lowers it and what lets it back up.
A keyboard you are not looking at is usually the reason, and Apple puts its range at about 33 feet. Plus the one key that brings the onscreen keyboard straight back.
Two settings decide whether your cards appear at all, and one is not in Wallet settings. Plus what silently removes every card, and where Apple stops helping.
Closing apps in the app switcher is what leaves widgets on old data, plus the setting that turns itself on under 20 percent and the one Apple names after widgets.