(Almost) A Year With iOS 26

[iLuddite]

As we await the first iOS 27 developer beta I thought it might be fun to have a place to reflect on the last (approximate) year with iOS 26. Overall, how has your experience been with Liquid Glass as a user and/or developer? Any outstanding gripes or specific changes you'd like to see come 27?

For me it's glaring visual niggles—like broken Safari address bar padding or a sometimes partially-obstructed page in Music (see attached)—that have persisted through almost every iOS 26 iteration (and, yes: like others I have submitted [sometimes multiple] bug reports). And then there's longstanding and perhaps more widespread issues like app icon redrawing and inherent design missteps such as certain interface elements remaining glassily translucent behind Reduce Transparency's opaque top layer.

What has improved? What has remained the same or worsened? Feel free to include watchOS/macOS/iPadOS/tvOS/visionOS 26 experiences.

 

[HouseLannister]

iPadOS remains the most broken for me. Safari address bar flickers from black to white. Resizing the windows messes up the top navigation and menu bar elements, causing overlapping elements or items to just become non-responsive to touch. Buttons in multiple apps often have a weird effect on hover that makes it obvious that the glass is a skin on top of the old GUI. It still feels unfinished and creates daily annoyances.

watchOS is much more basic and delivers a much more consistent experience. It's... fine. I don't think they did enough with the cards/widgets/whatever-they-are-called to make them match the Liquid Glass. The Liquid Glass watch faces are all awful. But they didn't ruin it, so yay(?)

iOS is mostly fine with just a solid black wallpaper and dark mode icons. I still hate the edge highlight on all the icons and widgets. And the bottom search bar still gets lost in the visual clutter too often. But far less visual glitches than iPadOS.

I feel overall that Liquid Glass should have been an option. The iOS 18 look should have gone even more flat and basic looking. The green and blue everywhere should have been heavily desaturated to make the OS look less Windows XP with the painfully bright colors everywhere. Then there should be a Theme/Skin/Launcher setting area. Make Liquid Glass enabled by default if you must, but have an easy off switch that goes super minimalist with the theming. Let 3rd parties create custom launchers and icon packs and sell them in the App Store. Basically, give users the "Apple Way" but also more control and customization options.

From a development perspective, I think overall app innovation has slowed greatly this year as everyone tries to make their apps more glassy rather than do anything meaningful. Also, the 2-year pause on AI innovation hasn't helped any. Too many apps in a holding pattern. iOS 27 is going to fix some things, but the changes to multitasking for folding phones and the addition of AI will create months and months of work for every app developer and it probably won't be until iOS 28 or later that we feel caught up to our Android brethren.

 

[I7guy]

My experience with iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 has been good across 4 devices. I really like iPadOS 26 and Liquid Glass on my new IPP M5.

iOS 26.5 did finally notice a minor issue with the compact tab bar in safari. But all in all like iOS 26 and iPadOS 26.

Have iOS 26 on Apple Watch, Apple TV, HomePod and of course Tahoe on my Mac neo.

Overall a good experience and little to complain about.

 

[DankeBrutus]

iOS - I was using the public beta on my iPhone 14 Plus, later regretted not going back to iOS 18, then bought an iPhone 17 so like it or not I'm on iOS 26. In a lot of ways the language used by Apple to describe iOS 26 ended up being an exaggeration. iOS 26 is not a fundamental shift from iOS 18, it is more akin to the move from iOS 11 to 12 than iOS 6 to 7. The way you use the iPhone has not changed, it just received a new coat of paint. This new coat of paint can look really good sometimes and other times it is a visual mess. I've found that as more time has passed developers have figured out how to make the Liquid Glass elements look good. I have found that Quiche Browser has utilized LG really well. In other apps like Music I find myself frustrated by the UX. LG takes up so much space at the bottom of the iPhone screen and there is no way I can see to force the app to open to my library as opposed to AM home, so when I want to browse my library I usually need to tap twice instead of once due to how aggressive the UI auto-minimizing is. LG just has a ton of wasted space. The large checkmark and X buttons use a lot more vertical space than the older "Done/Confirm" and "Cancel" buttons and therefore require a lot more padding in the UI. Even with a Max-sized iPhone screen real estate is limited and wasted space is noticeable.

iPadOS - I miss iPadOS 18. The new windowing system is neat but I ultimately find myself wishing I had the iPadOS multitasking back. I have unintentionally pulled fullscreen apps into a windowed mode many times. The menu bar is neat but there is no option to make it visible at all times so I constantly forget it is there. Pulling down from the middle of the screen for the menu bar can and will do what I previously mentioned and move a fullscreen app into a windowed mode. This wouldn't be a problem if there was an option to make it so you can only activate the windowed mode by pulling up from the bottom-right corner but that option does not exist. That gesture also interferes with Quick Note. Slide Over has returned to iPadOS 26 but it is a shell of it's former self. You can only use it in the Windowing or Stage Manager modes and it is only useable with one app at a time. I feel like with iPadOS 18 Apple had great multitasking that fit within the confines of the iPad has a platform and with 26 they gave it the Old Yeller treatment.

WatchOS - Basically no differences. I don't know if my S7 Watch is too old for some LG visuals or something but I've found that LG has hardly touched the Watch platform. The biggest change I've noticed is the PIN screen.

tvOS - My Apple TV 4K is too old for LG visuals so tvOS 26 has not visually changed much at all. I haven't found usability to be affected at all from the previous version.

macOS - I haven't installed macOS 26 on either of my Macs. I tried it out in a VM a couple of times. Wasted space was a problem like with iOS 26 in apps like Finder. I simply haven't used it enough for day-to-day usage though to say much beyond that. For me my Macs absolutely must work, I find a breakage in my workflow on the Mac is much more annoying than on the iPhone. I'm sure that if I had updated I'd just be used to Tahoe at this point but I have my MBP and mini on the Sequoia beta so I stop being bothered to upgrade. I'm waiting to see how macOS 27 looks in June before I decide to move forward or not.