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

After watching, scrolling by way 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. But I additionally assume it wants somewhat extra time within the kiln.

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

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

But boy are the adjustments jarring while you first see them.

Let me present you simply how dramatically it adjustments issues. Below, on the left is an image of my iOS 18 lockscreen I shared with David Pierce for the Installer e-newsletter simply final month, and on the proper is my lockscreen at this time, on my iPhone 16 Pro 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. Everything is clear and glossy.

Here’s my homescreen with the colour added again in, in order for you a special manner to take a look at it. Many icons are acquainted, however they’re all… bubblier.

Here’s the Control Center, which is frankly a large number proper now. The transparency of Liquid Glass makes it look cluttered, and that’s even with my grey homescreen. I hope Apple makes all the pieces underneath the Control Center somewhat extra opaque in order that it’s simpler to learn at a look.

The Clock app reveals a superb instance of the finer particulars which have modified. The backside tab bar is rounded, and while you faucet totally different tabs, the selector shifts over in an animation that I can finest describe as a water droplet shifting throughout the tab. (Pressing and holding the droplet lets you drag it throughout the tab bar, which is an admittedly cool impact.) You may additionally discover that the button to show the alarm on and off is extra oval than round.

And listed here are a number of different tidbits that I assumed could be value 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 checklist in Messages):

Things underneath the URL bar in Safari will “bend” because of the Liquid Glass design:

And system prompts look totally different:

At first, I hated the large adjustments. That stunned me. I’m normally effective with UI tweaks. Back within the day, I used to be on board with even the earliest and worst variations of iOS 7. But 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 plenty of small complaints, particularly with the spacing of settings features and Control Center. But I count on Apple will tweak and repair plenty of the larger points forward of the official launch of iOS 26 this fall.