Apple’s Liquid Glass was a wild change to my iPhone

After observing, scrolling by means of, and puzzling over Apple’s new Liquid Glass design language on my iPhone for the higher a part of a day, I don’t hate it. However I additionally suppose it wants somewhat extra time within the kiln.

Apple introduced Liquid Glass on Monday for all of its gadgets at WWDC 2025. Maybe probably the most noticeable factor about it’s that app icons, tab bars, and even the textual content magnifier you’ll see once you hover over phrases really feel, nicely, liquid-y and glassy.

The concept appears to be that as a result of they’re “floating” a layer over issues like your lockscreen wallpaper or textual content, the “glass” might be translucent to present you a way of what’s below them. It is smart. The preliminary implementation within the iOS 26 developer beta has a lot of Apple’s signature prospers and a focus to element.

However boy are the modifications jarring once you first see them.

Let me present you simply how dramatically it modifications issues. Beneath, on the left is an image of my iOS 18 lockscreen I shared with David Pierce for the Installer publication simply final month, and on the best is my lockscreen at this time, on my iPhone 16 Professional with the iOS 26 developer beta (out now) put in.

Even in my deliberately grayscale homescreen, I hope you’ll be able to see that the variations are instantly obvious. All the things is clear and glossy.

Right here’s my homescreen with the colour added again in, if you’d like a unique manner to have a look at it. Many icons are acquainted, however they’re all… bubblier.

Right here’s the Management Heart, which is frankly a multitude proper now. The transparency of Liquid Glass makes it look cluttered, and that’s even with my grey homescreen. I hope Apple makes the whole lot below the Management Heart somewhat extra opaque in order that it’s simpler to learn at a look.

The Clock app exhibits an excellent instance of the finer particulars which have modified. The underside tab bar is rounded, and once you faucet totally different tabs, the selector shifts over in an animation that I can greatest describe as a water droplet transferring throughout the tab. (Urgent and holding the droplet permits you to drag it throughout the tab bar, which is an admittedly cool impact.) You may also discover that the button to show the alarm on and off is extra oval than round.

And listed below are a couple of different tidbits that I believed can be price sharing. The iOS keyboard has an all-new look:

The Settings app has manner an excessive amount of area between every setting class (which is an issue I’ve additionally seen within the messages record in Messages):

Issues below the URL bar in Safari will “bend” because of the Liquid Glass design:

And system prompts look totally different:

At first, I hated the massive modifications. That shocked me. I’m often fantastic with UI tweaks. Again within the day, I used to be on board with even the earliest and worst variations of iOS 7. However after a few hours with the iOS 26 developer beta, Liquid Glass is rising on me.

My iPhone nonetheless features prefer it used to. I’ve quite a lot of small complaints, particularly with the spacing of settings features and Management Heart. However I count on Apple will tweak and repair quite a lot of the larger points forward of the official launch of iOS 26 this fall.