Apple’s latest major iPhone update, iOS 26, releases today, and it has a new design language that gives just about everything on your iPhone a new look.
Apple calls the design “Liquid Glass,” and it means that a lot of things on your iPhone will now have a glassy sheen. The edges of app icons look like they’re carved out of a chunk of glass. When you press and hold on text to get a closer look at it, a glass-like bulb will magnify what you’re looking at. As you’re scrolling websites in Safari, you’ll see content slide under the translucent search bar and back button. Clear notifications float in on your homescreen and while you’re browsing your phone. The edges of your app dock and the buttons in Control Center even catch light differently based on the way you hold your phone.
Check out this gallery to get an idea of some of the ways that Liquid Glass shows up in iOS 26.
It all feels very Apple: a bold new design that looks splashy and fancy and is suddenly everywhere on your phone. But it might also be pretty jarring when you first start using it. Ever since iOS 7 — this new update would have been iOS 19 had Apple not jumped all the way to 26 — things on your iPhone have generally looked pretty flat. Liquid Glass adds a little bit of virtual texture, and while the translucency can be an impressive visual effect, it takes getting used to for your day-to-day activities.
Initially, Liquid Glass had a few major legibility problems, and throughout many betas, Apple has tinkered with many elements of the OS. And once the software is officially rolled out to everyone, I imagine Apple will tweak things even further in response to broader opinions and critiques.
I’ve been living with Liquid Glass on my primary iPhone since it was announced three months ago, and I’ve gotten used to it. It’s fine. Even though iOS 26 makes things look way different, your iPhone, for the most part, will still work the same as it did on iOS 18.
I’m sure a lot of people are going to say the design is Liquid Ass, and I’m sure Apple will tweak elements of it in response to the criticisms, like it did over the course of the iOS 26 betas. But Apple seems committed to Liquid Glass — it’s showing up across Apple’s other products today, too — so like it or not, you might just have to find a way to get used to it.
