Liquid Glass - What Were They Thinking?

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Paul1977

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#320380 7-Aug-2025 11:27

Just put the iOS 26 Public Beta on my iPhone and iPad, and as the thread title indicates I'm not a fan of the new Liquid Glass look. In my opinion it looks dated and gimmicky. I particularly the subtly animated reflection around the edge of icons, it makes dark icons all look like they have a thin white border.

Serious question for those who have seen it... does anyone here like the new look?

wellygary

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#3400611 7-Aug-2025 11:42

Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size and enable the Reduce Transparency toggle

Paul1977

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#3400614 7-Aug-2025 11:51

wellygary:

Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size and enable the Reduce Transparency toggle

Looked at that already. Doesn't get rid of the worst part (in my option) which is the pretend reflections around the edge of icons.

I hope they introduce an option to fully disable it. But knowing Apple, they won't.

Dingbatt

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#3400618 7-Aug-2025 12:11

Had a similar “Glass” icon pack on my Galaxy S10 (6+ years ago). Grew tired of it pretty quick and reverted to bold colourful theme/icons (old eyes).

So I hope the option to “opt out” is there in iOS26.

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#3400620 7-Aug-2025 12:19

I've stopped liking or disliking the changes to iOS and iPadOS as nothing I say or do will change it.

In saying that, I am ambivalent about these changes.
The changes to iPad OS have been largely positive, despite the obvious Liquid effects.

iOS has been a bit hit and miss for me. Some good changes and some less than stellar changes.

Aesthetically...I'm on the fence.

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Quinny

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#3400624 7-Aug-2025 12:24

Overall, the beta (I have it on my iPhone and older iPad) is very underwhelming. I find the glass looks okay. I like the idea of making notifications less in-your-face. The photo app changes are nice, but it's meh for such a huge number jump and annual release. I would love more apps per page ie scaling, fix the back button and non-conformity between apps, stuff like that. To me, other than the glass and small tweaks, it was nothing much.

And the bugs. The lag if it waits on face id (blank screen) is so frustrating. But its a beta so I accept it.

gehenna

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#3400673 7-Aug-2025 12:38

Feels like they don't have a solid product strategy so they're going back to what they used to be known for - design - only they also don't have a solid design strategy anymore either.

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mattwnz

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#3400688 7-Aug-2025 14:30

I actually like most things about liquid glass apart from the icons. It just looks like the old version of iOS before the ios7 flat design and looks dated.. If they actually have different options such as round icons, flat icons etc it would be better. Although I like Android and do think iOS as app reliability on iOS is a lot better. But it is still only in beta.

Handsomedan

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#3402363 13-Aug-2025 11:01

Latest developer beta is pretty stable on iPad OS and apart from battery drain (which is always an issue with the betas) the public betas are fairly good on iOS and Watch OS.
Aesthetically, I can give or take it, but overall, I like most of the updates.

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alasta

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#3402380 13-Aug-2025 12:16

I'm not fussed about aesthetics but that running buddy thing sounds awful. I can't imagine having a synthetic voice screeching at me when I'm in my happy place just trying to enjoy the outdoor environment and focus on my performance.

Maybe I'm just not the target audience for it. To be fair, we got some quite good endurance sports functionality in the previous couple of annual updates.

Paul1977

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#3402392 13-Aug-2025 13:54

Handsomedan:

Latest developer beta is pretty stable on iPad OS and apart from battery drain (which is always an issue with the betas) the public betas are fairly good on iOS and Watch OS.
Aesthetically, I can give or take it, but overall, I like most of the updates.

I haven't had any performance or stability issues with Public Beta 2. The only real improvements I've noticed are the better multitasking in iPadOS. But the phone side of things... meh.

My Apple Watch has finally started honouring the "Optimised Charge Limit" again after months and months of always charging to 100% not matter what. After updating to WatchOS 26 it's finally back to charging to 80% like it should.

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#3402395 13-Aug-2025 14:14

Been following this on Reddit:

MacOS26 Beta and iOS26 Beta, and it has been very polarising.

My beef is some of the very, very minor aesthetic changes, e.g. removing the month from the calendar dock icon.

AND the biggie is that Apple is phasing out support for Time Capsules as they are removing support for the AFP protocol in favour of SMB.

Whilst the difficult we can do immediately, the impossible takes a bit longer. However, miracles you will have to wait for.

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alasta

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#3402401 13-Aug-2025 14:44

Paul1977:

I haven't had any performance or stability issues with Public Beta 2. The only real improvements I've noticed are the better multitasking in iPadOS. But the phone side of things... meh.

My Apple Watch has finally started honouring the "Optimised Charge Limit" again after months and months of always charging to 100% not matter what. After updating to WatchOS 26 it's finally back to charging to 80% like it should.

Is that similar to the iPhone feature that holds the battery at 80% overnight and then tops up to 100% just before you take the phone off the charger? Or is it a hard limit at 80%?

The battery life on my Apple Watch Series 9 is pretty poor so I couldn't limit it to 80%, but it would be fine if I go ahead with my plan to buy the next generation Ultra. Then again, I wonder how much of a difference it really makes to the overall lifespan of the battery?

Paul1977

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#3402404 13-Aug-2025 15:06

alasta:

Is that similar to the iPhone feature that holds the battery at 80% overnight and then tops up to 100% just before you take the phone off the charger? Or is it a hard limit at 80%?

The battery life on my Apple Watch Series 9 is pretty poor so I couldn't limit it to 80%, but it would be fine if I go ahead with my plan to buy the next generation Ultra. Then again, I wonder how much of a difference it really makes to the overall lifespan of the battery?

It's a hard limit from what I can tell. It's meant to learn from your usage and charging habits and decide if it needs to charge to 100% or whether limiting to 80% is safe. I charge every night and generally don't use more than 50% of the battery in a day, so the watch knows that it can limit charging to 80% and it's safe because based on historical usage I'll still have at least 30% left at the end of the day, and it knows I charge every night.

I think the holding at 80% until morning and then topping up to 100% just before removing from the charger is meant to happen with the watch even with this other setting turned off.

But at some point, it decided it would always charge to 100% straight away - no hard limit and no delay for the final 20%. This persisted through disabling and reenabling the settings, resetting and resyncing the watch, and various WatchOS 18 updates.

But now with WatchOS 26 it's back to limiting the charge to 80%, which for my usage is appropriate.

EDIT: To add that I much prefer the more explicit setting on my iPhone 16 where I can manually set a hard charging limit between 80% and 95%. I have that set to 80%.

TwoSeven

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#3402418 13-Aug-2025 16:34

When I first came across glass in the early developer beta I though yuck and turned it off for a while.

However, being an HCI person, I turned it back on to default and did the old 30 days to change, and with a few more updates, it’s kind of gotten familiar now.

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#3402448 13-Aug-2025 20:50

As an irregular iOS and MacOS user I enjoy turning on the machine and seeing what they came up with. This one sounds like it will be more entertaining than usual.