Apple Reveals Upcoming Liquid Glass Icons for Additional iOS Apps

[MacRumors]

Following Tuesday's event, new Liquid Glass icons for Apple Store, Clips, GarageBand, iMovie, Keynote, Numbers, and Pages have surfaced on Apple's iPhone tech spec pages. The new icons appear on the iPhone 16 tech specs page despite that model having no hardware changes, and existing users will presumably see the new icons in app updates that will roll out on Monday alongside iOS 26.

iOS 26 icons​

These apps come preinstalled on new iPhones but they were not included in the iOS 26 betas and release candidate because they are updated through the App Store. While the spec sheets themselves don't reveal changes beyond the usual pre-installed and downloadable apps, the iconography is unmistakably updated to the latest iOS design set based around Liquid Glass.

Most of the updates are relatively subtle with changes largely limited to the glassiness of the design elements, while a few like Clips and GarageBand have a bit more substantial changes.

iOS 18 icons​

Perhaps notably, there is inconsistency across Apple's product pages. While every iPhone model page displays these new icons, all Mac product pages continue to show the current macOS versions of these app icons.

We are not expecting Mac hardware updates until later this year, or more likely early 2026, but with macOS Tahoe being released alongside iOS 26 on Monday, we should see the Liquid Glass app icons coming to Apple's App Store apps for Mac as well.


Article Link: Apple Reveals Upcoming Liquid Glass Icons for Additional iOS Apps

 

[sleeptodream]

That garageband logo… yikes

Edit: Does anybody else think the new icon designs are not 3D or glassy enough? They’re nowhere near as interesting to look at as the og iOS icons

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

although not as significant on icons , this looks like a clear downgrade in terms of legibility

 

[szw-mapple fan]

I’m glad we’re getting more details back into iOS icons. Always thought the iOS 7 style white glyph on gradient icons were too bland.

 

[RickDEGH]

Those aren’t ’liquid glass’

 

[Orizaba]

They look great! I wish the Safari icon got an update, still seems a bit out of place with its old design language with most other icons getting a nice iOS 26 refresh.

 

[gleepskip]

Apple's design language: anything goes.

 

[ps3zocker]

They look great! I wish the Safari icon got an update, still seems a bit out of place with its old design language with most other icons getting a nice iOS 26 refresh.

I feel like they should have designed it more like the new Clock app icon, making the blue gradient edge to edge. Kind of like the original <iOS7 Safari icon.

 

[JohnC1959]

although not as significant on icons , this looks like a clear downgrade in terms of legibility

They seem nearly identical to me. Small differences I wouldn't notice were it not for this article.

 

[hieranonymous]

Does anyone actually use Clips? It should have been Apple’s answer to Bytedance’s CapCut or Instagram’s Edits, but compared to those apps, it’s borderline unusable, which is kind of shocking.

 

[sleeptodream]

I’m glad we’re getting more details back into iOS icons. Always thought the iOS 7 style white glyph on gradient icons were too bland.

These look more bland to me somehow. Like they’re too soft, no sharpness or fine details. No glossy glass :/

 

[sleeptodream]

I feel like they should have designed it more like the new Clock app icon, making the blue gradient edge to edge. Kind of like the original <iOS7 Safari icon.

Agreed, actually I wish they had made a push to get rid of most of the white border icons, there are too many and you completely lose the liquid glass sheen

 

[Radeon85]

Garage Band and the Apple Store look so out of place.

 

[iceqube33]

although not as significant on icons , this looks like a clear downgrade in terms of legibility

Legibility? These are icons that are meant to be identified quickly in a sea of icons. I think they are distinct enough for that.

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

Legibility? These are icons that are meant to be identified quickly in a sea of icons. I think they are distinct enough for that.

as I said, it's not visible on icons

 

[JohnC1959]

as I said, it's not visible on icons

oh, you were saying that the new liquid glass as a whole was less legible, but not so much the icons specifically? ok. That wasn't clear.

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

oh, you were saying that the new liquid glass as a whole was less legible, but not so much the icons specifically? ok. That wasn't clear.

yeah im not a native, my wording can be pretty bad I guess

 

[dontwalkhand]

I wish we would have transitioned to the icons used on Macs instead, they had some depth to them, and certain icons had elements that escaped the square.

 

[Starfia]

Holy crow; a couple of those are actually improvements.

 

[platinumaqua]

That garageband logo… yikes

Edit: Does anybody else think the new icon designs are not 3D or glassy enough? They’re nowhere near as interesting to look at as the og iOS icons

New GarageBand icon looks close to the iOS 6 version

 

[platinumaqua]

I wish we would have transitioned to the icons used on Macs instead, they had some depth to them, and certain icons had elements that escaped the square.

Well Macs shouldn't have even gone to the squircle icons at all.

Others speculated it was for iOS apps running on Macs (Catalyst) to not stick out like a sore thumb, but that feature turned out to be a dud with most developers not allowing their iOS/iPadOS apps to run on Macs.

 

[tennisproha]

Can Apple just pick one corner radius and stick with it. The new one is great. Lets build all window and screen radius to match going forward

 

[tomtad]

I wish we would have transitioned to the icons used on Macs instead, they had some depth to them, and certain icons had elements that escaped the square.

The delicious original Pages icon agrees

 

[elemenohme]

Does anyone actually use Clips? It should have been Apple’s answer to Bytedance’s CapCut or Instagram’s Edits, but compared to those apps, it’s borderline unusable, which is kind of shocking.

I was surprised to see Clips included in the icon update - I thought they’d abandoned it. I tried using it recently and found it useless. Seems like it could be an easy win for Apple as an alt to CapCut and Facebook’s Edits. But it lacks even the most basic editing and caption features that you need for social video these days. I’d love a proper video editor right inside the Photos app, but I guess they think the current tools are good enough.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Having done some glasswork before, I’d like it if the goal had been to get pieces of glass, cut them accordingly, stack them, fire them, then look at the result and make the icon look like that. This IS the first introduction of Liquid Glass, so they’ve got 10 years or so to play with it.