There are battery drain issues across the entire system not just related to the UI which 26.1 will help to address.
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Here's How the iOS 26.1 Transparency Toggle Changes Liquid Glass
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It's not that they can't make up their minds....More like they are reacting to user feedback and complaints. They aren't walking the whole thing back, just giving folks that don't love it an option to tone it down. People complain when Apple doesn't give options... And then criticize Apple when they do give options.... They just can't win
For me, personally, Liquid Gl(a)ss feels more like an aftermarket theme than an iOS evolution. I know a lot of people love it, and that’s great. But iOS 26 does not feel like it has actually improved much of anything to me. They fixed much of what was not broken, and made things less convenient, and arguably made the interface visually less user friendly to at least some users. This new switch actually looks potentially like a legitimate upgrade to me. I’ll be looking forward to trying it out.
Now do something about the stupid gradients. Idk about ya'll but I like to know what time it is!
Apple, can you please make Siri useful and delivery the AI enhancements you promised for the iPhone 16? And drop all the rest of this useless crap?💩
With the fourth beta of iOS 26.1, Apple added a toggle that makes Liquid Glass more opaque and reduces transparency. We tested the beta to see where the toggle works and what it looks like.
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If you have the latest iOS 26.1 beta, you can go to Settings > Display and Brightness to get to the new option. Tap on Liquid Glass, then choose "Tinted." The Tinted option increases the opacity of Liquid Glass UI elements and improves contrast, while the Clear option is the standard Liquid Glass look.
Apple's new option looks different in both light and dark mode, increasing opacity in color consistent with each option. It works for Lock Screen notifications and within apps to make menu and navigation bars less transparent, but there is little to no change with other parts of the OS like Control Center, the App Library, and app icons and widgets on the Home Screen.
iOS 26.1 beta 4 is available to developers and public beta testers at the current time. We're expecting iOS 26.1 to be released later in October, and that's when everyone will have access to the new settings.
Article Link: Here's How the iOS 26.1 Transparency Toggle Changes Liquid Glass
The transparency is not my complaint about iOS 26. It's the fact that they moved all the widgets around in things like safari and mail, and turned them into bubbles making the UI horrid to use. I'm glad they let uses "adjust" the transparency, however iOS has deeper issues that are a no-go for me.
The vast majority of the people using any product are averse to change. They’d like whatever device they’re using to be the same as what they’re familiar with for as long as they’re using the devices. That would be great for THEM, but, over 40 years, a company would find themselves making products/services for people who are very likely not going to be buying too many more products. JCPenny, for example, found themselves in a position where focusing on their older customers instead of new customers seemed to be the right thing to do. That quickly turned bad for them as they had to close a number of stores while recognizing they were focusing on an ever shrinking market of people.
The people using the products in this case “decide” by “not buying the products”. If they stop buying the products, but folks without legacy needs buy the product in droves, then Apple’s made the right decision for the longevity of the company even though there may be MILLIONS (of the 8 billion people in the world) that don’t like the decision.
I’m sure when the Mac came along, not even shipping with a usable spreadsheet (while the Apple II had a powerful one) there were folks wishing they could be in the position to decide that Apple should just continue to focus on the Apple II.
Which Steve Jobs would that be, the one that shipped a perfectly round mouse, then changed it, or the one that shipped the G4 cube, then discontinued it?
Yeah, there was literally zero scientific rigor on that.
In a wide variety of situations, reduce transparency increases the OLED output. And, because the one writing didn’t consider that the OLED is the source of the largest power drain in any cellular phone, they assumed that increased power consumption was wholly due to CPU usage. Look up what an Apple Silicon SoC pulls when maxed out (from sites that measure at the right level and not via a power strip wattage indicator) and compare it to their numbers. Those numbers only make sense if the OLED is pulling close to nothing which is rarely the case.
Not all people are not as averse to change, when it's beneficial to the user. When it becomes cumbersome and works against the user is when people have every right to complain.
You’re right. While MOST people are averse to change, some aren’t. Because of that, if you get any random group from outside Apple, the majority in that group will be averse to change which wouldn’t be a good group to base decisions on. Fortunately, by way of their hiring practices, Apple has, on staff, a concentrated group of people that aren’t averse to change with some that are averse to change mixed in!
People absolutely have a right to complain and they’re free to. It’s just that Apple, as a for profit business, ismore likely to respond a drop in sales than complaints of “things have changed!”.
Then why does not the power draw seem to increase when the UI is static?Yeah, there was literally zero scientific rigor on that.
Reduce Motion goes too far the other direction. It truly is there for accessibility and those who need motion in the OS to be at an absolute minimum.
The icons are horrible. The gradients make everything look blurry.
Would be nice if Apple drags iOS/macOS Vista and drops it into the trashcan. iOS/macOS design is good as it is - while Gnome 48/49 slowly but surely starts bypassing macOs, just because macOS/iOS carries a ton of bloat - and it isn‘t transparent of course.
If it works out somehow I will skip iOS/macOS 26 completely.
If it works out somehow I will skip iOS/macOS 26 completely.
