iOS 26 review: A practical, yet playful, update
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Liquid Glass works for me. I wish they had kept is as glassy as beta 6, but here we are. Maybe a slider down the road. Overall it’s a decent update for me.
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Whoever approved the concept of clear icons should be led out the door. What an abomination - equally so across all platforms.
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Disclaimer: I only recently grabbed a iPhone 16e for testing, thus have about 3 weeks experience of life prior to liquid glass.
That Compact toolbar layout for Safari seems to play havoc with page layouts that put attempt controls at the page bottom - any buttons that are deliberately or accidentally down there get transmogrified under the coke-bottle refraction effect and any text looks like AI slop...
That Compact toolbar layout for Safari seems to play havoc with page layouts that put attempt controls at the page bottom - any buttons that are deliberately or accidentally down there get transmogrified under the coke-bottle refraction effect and any text looks like AI slop...
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That UI color scheme is awful and I don't care about stretchy icons or whatever they're trying to sell people as the phones are commodities now.
No thanks. Won't run on my SE2 anyway. This phone keeps giving and giving. I hope it lasts another 10 years.
No thanks. Won't run on my SE2 anyway. This phone keeps giving and giving. I hope it lasts another 10 years.
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Yeesh, my immediate impression using Liquid Glass for the first time this morning is that it looks terrible with Dark Mode on the compact and info dense screen of an iPhone. It’s a total visual cacophony with every element in its own rounded little bubble against a black background, like some kind of high contrast accessibility mode. Looks cheap and theres no visual harmony.
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I think liquid glass is a step in the wrong direction from a usability standpoint (its also a arguably a regression in aesthetics). This is design change for the sake of change.
Jony Ive was a big fan of Dieter Rams (why we have the braun look alike calculator app for instance), and there is no way that this new design lives up to his ten principles of good design the same way the last one did.
Just a simple example: The fact that the menu bar now needs to flicker back and forth between white text on dark bg and dark text on light bg depending on the content below it is incredibly annoying. So much trickery to get around a deeply flawed underlying premise. Transparent main control surfaces and buttons are a bad idea, period. Faux modernity wears off really fast, while usability wins in the end.
Jony Ive was a big fan of Dieter Rams (why we have the braun look alike calculator app for instance), and there is no way that this new design lives up to his ten principles of good design the same way the last one did.
Just a simple example: The fact that the menu bar now needs to flicker back and forth between white text on dark bg and dark text on light bg depending on the content below it is incredibly annoying. So much trickery to get around a deeply flawed underlying premise. Transparent main control surfaces and buttons are a bad idea, period. Faux modernity wears off really fast, while usability wins in the end.
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glass effect seems like a waste of computing power, also still hoping for a proper wifi on-off button and gps/location on-off button in. notification panel.
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I am... ambivalent about the UI changes on iOS. (More opinionated on the macOS side).
The new safari interface - swipe up from the address bar, but make sure you don't go too low to swipe to home - will take some getting used to.
The new safari interface - swipe up from the address bar, but make sure you don't go too low to swipe to home - will take some getting used to.
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He has not been at apple for like 6 years now so I guess that checks out.
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I installed it yesterday and my biggest complaints so far are the compact safari toolbar and Liquid Glass. The toolbar was easy enough to fix. Liquid Glass is garbage though.
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RickRoyLeonPrisZhoraRacha
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I am reading other blogs about how the "glass" icons have opposing "lens flare" that make the icon look skewed or crooked. Some say causing nausea.
WTF Apple?
Perhaps this is Tim Cook's legacy...
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The collapsing tabbar in apps like music and podcast is a big step back for power users.
I often switch between tabs in the music app, now it needs two clicks instead of one before. One step to open the collapsed tabbar and on click on the next tab. (You can also make a swipe gesture but it’s not great.)
I often switch between tabs in the music app, now it needs two clicks instead of one before. One step to open the collapsed tabbar and on click on the next tab. (You can also make a swipe gesture but it’s not great.)
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Yeah, that was my point. He wouldn’t have let this slide.
Regardless of apple’s wavering leadership in other areas, it still felt like they had a solid foundation of good designers. Designers that opted for clear, minimal interfaces focused on usability. Unfortunately it seems like this leadership has also faltered. Chalk up another area of apple that seems to be in decline.
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I'm actually not a big fan of putting the controls on top of the thing that you are trying to see in general. Apple's video apps have been doing this for a while and even after years of this, I still have to repeatedly tap on the screen to get the controls to hide so I can see the video. I don't know if it's just that my touchscreen on my phone is not as sensitive, or I just have bad tapping ability.
You can imagine what I think of this release given my opinion. However, by far the most egregious use of this seems to be Facebook and Instagram, who have so many controls and buttons and things overlaid on the video that it's practically unusable.
P.S. I get it that there's limited screen real estate and so you don't want to have the videos constantly shifting between sizes when you go from fullscreen to something else, I just wish that the controls would be easier to dismiss.
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I note that the alarm has been changed. Now the snooze and stop buttons are the same size, which makes my spouse hit stop instead of snooze in the morning when shes swatting at it.
It's really not a huge deal, but I wonder why the previous, rather sneakily functional, design was changed to a symmetric one?
It's really not a huge deal, but I wonder why the previous, rather sneakily functional, design was changed to a symmetric one?
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With dark mode on, and a black wallpaper the shiny edges on app icons in the upper left and lower right corners is absurdly strong.
I don't mind glass otherwise but in that situation on the icons it's like some amateur hour CSS like work that is cranked up a couple settings too much.
I don't mind glass otherwise but in that situation on the icons it's like some amateur hour CSS like work that is cranked up a couple settings too much.
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The spam call blocking looks interesting but do I have to activate Apple Intelligence to be able to use it? Am on an old 11 pro max.
As for the liquid glass thing, meh. O am quite happy with the way it is now.
As for the liquid glass thing, meh. O am quite happy with the way it is now.
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Yo, somebody has to edit this review.
Floating paragraphs around camera, no new paragraph for safari comments. Did version control do or something?
Floating paragraphs around camera, no new paragraph for safari comments. Did version control do or something?
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I've hated every iteration of glass/transparent UI one every OS, and this is no exception.
It's really just a terrible idea, that only detract from contrast and readability and even the aesthetics are questionable and subjective (I hate it).
It's really just a terrible idea, that only detract from contrast and readability and even the aesthetics are questionable and subjective (I hate it).
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Apparently, some phones are having issues with battery being drained faster due to transparency and new “effects” of the UI.
I would hope Apple tested that on real phones and disabled those effects on those, but I also would not be surprised if they did not so that the users buy a new phone.
I would hope Apple tested that on real phones and disabled those effects on those, but I also would not be surprised if they did not so that the users buy a new phone.
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Liquid glass is annoying. Luckily you can disable transparency in accessibility settings. We have 4 iPhones in the family, everyone was complaining about the new UI. Even my oldest one who was looking forward for iOS 26, after a day was fed up the glass. Wife's background was a beach/water picture and you could barely make out the icon folders in light mode.
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Liquid Glass aside, one of the biggest positive changes I noticed is that CarPlay makes much better use of the screen resolution in my car. Where previously a lot of space was wasted with UI boxes and the screen text was almost overly large, the new interface fits a lot more information in without compromising readability. I feel like I upgraded my infotainment screen from like 1024x768 to 1440p.
EDIT: I did some looking around and it appears this is due to the new "Smart Display Zoom" feature added to CarPlay.
EDIT: I did some looking around and it appears this is due to the new "Smart Display Zoom" feature added to CarPlay.
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It's quite terrible from a usability standpoint and a major design fail. Send that overpaid designer packing.
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The whole liquid glass theme reminds me of Windows Vista era software. UI transparency was a new gimmick then, so it was somewhat more understandable when we got awful looking faux-glass themes then. Linux desktops were the worst example I remember from the time. What's Apple's excuse for the huge regression in usability, space efficiency, and design in 2025?
I feel the same way about monochrome icons as I do about taking away unique shapes from icons. The purpose of the icon is to make it easy to distinguish from others. I don't care for the reduction in usability here either just to eliminate edge cases of unbalanced-looking icons (which hasn't been a major issue since everyone moved to high-dpi displays anyway).
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SE 2 is actually eligible for this update. But it's probably the last one for that phone.
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I have iPhone 12 Pro, no Apple Intelligence on this phone, but the iOS 26 spam filters work.
Well, they "work". It has caught some texts as spam but allowed others through.
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Okay maybe I'm the only one but overall I quite like the Liquid Glass look, even if I agree that it's awkward in a few places. I had seen so many comments here hating it that I didn't go in with high expectations, which probably helped but I was pleasantly surprised by a lot of it.
I see lots of gripes here about changes in the default apps, but design tweaks happen every year in iOS and it's separate from this year's glossy transparency theme. I'm happy enough so far with changes in Messages, Photos, Music, Settings etc. but iffy about the redesign in Safari and Phone.
I see lots of gripes here about changes in the default apps, but design tweaks happen every year in iOS and it's separate from this year's glossy transparency theme. I'm happy enough so far with changes in Messages, Photos, Music, Settings etc. but iffy about the redesign in Safari and Phone.
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Why no mention of the new "power mode" options that showed up in the battery setting?
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ColdWetDog
Ars Legatus Legionis
It seems that every version change of iOS causes some phones to go into battery excess mode for whatever reason. Generally fixed after a point release or two.
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Thanks for the reviews, these are a yearly highlight for me.
If I can critique, these used to be longer and delved into... technical things. Not just user facing stuff. For example:
Recovery assistant on iPhone
Head tracking
Adaptive Battery
And as in the macOS review, no mention of the more-powerful-than-people-realize AI frameworks.
If I can critique, these used to be longer and delved into... technical things. Not just user facing stuff. For example:
Recovery assistant on iPhone
Head tracking
Adaptive Battery
And as in the macOS review, no mention of the more-powerful-than-people-realize AI frameworks.
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I disabled Aero Glass ASAP on Monday night. Ran like shit on employer's SE 3 with all the MS InTune stuff. Looked like shit too.
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I've seen a few glitches that I can forgive in iOS 26. For example, the dynamic island in the MLB app had some intermittent issues for me last night on my 15 Pro. Sure it's a big third party app, but it's a third party app on a slightly older phone that might get less testing all around.
But there are some really weird things in first party Apple apps too.
Why are there three separate blocks of controls? If this glass is liquid, let them merge together when they're beside each other like this, and re-flow when I scroll/they shrink down. Don't give me white space between everything. Also: the text behind the text is distracting, but we all knew that was happening. Still bad though!
Fuck the heck is this?
But there are some really weird things in first party Apple apps too.
Why are there three separate blocks of controls? If this glass is liquid, let them merge together when they're beside each other like this, and re-flow when I scroll/they shrink down. Don't give me white space between everything. Also: the text behind the text is distracting, but we all knew that was happening. Still bad though!
Fuck the heck is this?
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Seriously disappointed about the lack of a full Ars deep-dive on this crucial and incredibly popular feature.
/s
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Collapsing tab bar is up to each individual developer. By default, it does not collapse. If it does, that developer chose to support it. Not disagreeing that is more work to go back, but its not necessarily required in all apps.
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Thanks. Good to know. I might try it but I’ll wait for a few days because the comments regarding additional battery usage concern me.
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