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Everything New in iOS 26 Beta 3

I’d much rather have a bug-free iOS 18 than the so-called “liquid glass” redesign. If Apple wants to focus on customization, they could simply let users adjust the transparency of app icons. Colors are a part of identifying app icon easily. So, a complete transparent mode is annoying. Let users decide the intensity

“Liquid glass” was a major highlight of the keynote, but honestly, iPadOS received a far more meaningful update than iOS. Apple could’ve introduced something more powerful—like a Samsung DeX-style desktop mode for iPhone.

Yes, the iPhone 16 Pro might be 100,000 times more powerful than the Apollo Guidance Computer, but what’s the point if users can’t truly take advantage of that power?
 
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nachodorito said:
I feel like liquid glass should automatically frost by ~50% when text is on top, but otherwise I really love the redesign and I don't want to see it nerfed so badly.
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Exactly. Personally, other than the control centre being "in the distance...sirens", I really liked that beta 1 / 2 design. There does have to be a happy medium, but it feels a bit like they've gone too far back to iOS 18 to me on this latest one.
 
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Very disappointing to see that the transparency is reduced for Liquid Glass. Hopefully Apple will change it back to earlier version. At least it will be great if Apple can give an option for the user to select the desired level of transparency.
 
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and yet we still can’t have an actual EQ instead of stupid presets and IOS still doesn’t remember individual EQ settings for all your bluetooth devices, something it would take a single developer a couple of hours to do and actually be useful.
 
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Apple Knowledge Navigator said:
If they’re ‘toning’ the glass down - that is, making it more opaque - then how can they continue to justify the original design goals?

I’m not complaining about this development, but to me it proves just how misguided the whole design language is when they’re willing to backtrack on elements so easily. It’s as if Alan Dye and his cohorts just said “LoOk wHAt wE can DO!” without
thinking about the actual execution.
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TheHeron said:
No, we don't.

We need something BETTER. Like iOS 6.

Bring back normal ordinary skeuomorphism. No flat garbage, no excessive transparency, just good, usable, attractive design.
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I’m reminded of an old saw…something about beholders and eyes…oh and is beauty in there too?

I can see the ad now: ‘Apple, the computers that don’t do design no more’
 
Obviously the iPad OS 26 debacle is now exposing the platform for what it always has been: a massive vanity spork pro max project with dangerous toaster-fridge proclivities perpetuated by Ive.

The mash up ends now Jony. All of it needs to be cancelled. Immediately, and replaced with a Mac Fold Touch Pro Ultra M6 model that does everything and nothing different to System 4.0 and has a physical iPod Classic built in. Apple buys the rights to Clippy from MS, AI sorted.
 
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on the early days after the keynote, when people showed screenshots of the hard-to-read control center, i had no doubt they’d do something to fix it and make it readable as development progressed. i’ll give them the benefit of the doubt till the release version is out, but like others said, it seems they’re dialing transparency down to the level already present in elements of ios 18. should this still even be called liquid glass?
 
I find the more opaque design much easier to use. The more transparent version made it difficult to see elements clearly, forcing me to enable “Reduce Transparency” on the iPadOS 26 beta. It hasn't been a pleasant experience for me.

There’s a simple solution that could satisfy both preferences: a transparency slider in Settings. That would let users choose anywhere between full transparency and full opacity, instead of the current all-or-nothing approach.

Apple’s current implementation feels too rigid and divisive. If I recall correctly, Windows Vista offered a setting to adjust transparency.
 
sergekills said:
Yeah, but isn’t it ridiculous?
So much fuss about the glass effects on the event and then all the fanboys yapping all over the internet how genius it is just to dial it all down?
Do they even test what they create? How on earth no one said that this glassy design only looks cool in the promo videos?
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Well at least people can't say that their keynote demo's were fake. We all got to try it before it was liquidated :D
 
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I think I finally got it, the super opaque “frosted glass” look happens when iOS detects what’s underneath the tab bar is mostly empty and it literally switches to a different material

As soon as you have something more going on under the bar it reverts to the more reflective “liquid” surface

I think iOS is doing some kind of in the fly evaluation wether adding the extra effects is gonna compromise legibility and deciding to forego them dynamically
 
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Image 2.jpeg

I just updated my iPad after updating the iPhone earlier today, so thought I’d try and get a before and after. I did this via screen recording from my Photos library as I wanted to see the Liquid Glass across a range of backgrounds, so these are screenshots from the two recordings. You can see they’ve darkened the background in B3 and it looks like there is more blur. Annoyingly the photos changed order in my library, but it still captures the change. Interesting that the text seems to be much sharper in B3 also.

I prefer B2 over the dampened Liquid Glass effect in B3. Maybe something in-between would strike a good balance.

All that said, there are definitely odd glitches occuring with blur - I’m seeing this in Music as others have noted, where switching between the tabs seems to change the effect.
 
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johnsawyercjs said:
But Liquid Glass does have transparency (really translucency) as one of its main design features, in addition to emulating light reflecting off of glassy UI elements. The main complaint many people have with Liquid Glass isn't with its reflection simulations, but with this transparency effect, since even in its more toned-down versions, it allows too much of what's behind a UI element to bleed through and make what you're supposed to be focusing on, in the UI element, require needless extra effort to distinguish from the stuff that's bleeding through.
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Of course it has transparency, I said that to begin with, it’s just not “all about” transparency — that’s the oversimplification. So when the amount of transparency is tweaked, it isn’t fundamentally changing Liquid Glass, just part of its implementation — which should be expected as this IS a beta, and is still in flux. For what it’s worth, I liked beta 2 more than beta 3 for it’s level of transparency out of the box, but like I said, it’s only one aspect of the design language.
 
Haiku_Oezu said:
I think I finally got it, the super opaque “frosted glass” look happens when iOS detects what’s underneath the tab bar is mostly empty and it literally switches to a different material

As soon as you have something more going on under the bar it reverts to the more reflective “liquid” surface

I think iOS is doing some kind of in the fly evaluation wether adding the extra effects is gonna compromise legibility and deciding to forego them dynamically
Click to expand...
I agree. It’s still very glassy in a lot of places. If there’s color underneath it’s translucent. If there’s nothing going on it’s more opaque.
IMG_0237.png
 
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I love that with every update it becomes less "liquid glass" and more "frosted glass"
 
What a topsy turvy world we live in.

If a choice has to be made between transparency (bling) and legibility (usefulness), surely it must take a very special kind of moron to choose the bling. FFS.
 
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If they insist on not removing blur/shadow effect on top and bottom of screen while navigating in safari and some apps, i will return back to 18.6 before they release 26 gm version. Nobody can restrict my usable screen. I paid for whole screen to use. Not for stupid design shows of some apple engineers.
 
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