Every tech site kept saying this was gonna be the biggest redesign ever too, including this one
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iOS 26 Liquid Glass Design Drama: Beta 2 vs. Beta 3 Changes in Every App
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Innovation? I think this is to draw our attention away from the total lack of innovation in this coming upgrade, more aptly named a downgrade. Used to look forward each year to new offerings, but this is pure junk.
I love how its very clear a lot of these changes are visual bugs but the community has just collectively decided that not only are bugs in one of the earlier betas a deliberate design change but they’re representative of the final product and Apple as a whole.
Looking forward to when this article gets written about b4 fixing bug- I mean changing things back and everyone’s emotions switch sides, and then the b5 article where we pretend bugs are intentional again, and then the b6 article where….
Looking forward to when this article gets written about b4 fixing bug- I mean changing things back and everyone’s emotions switch sides, and then the b5 article where we pretend bugs are intentional again, and then the b6 article where….
I get what you're saying here. It will sometimes do that for me, where it morphs to the darker version to match a darker background, but it wasn't doing it in the App Store interface. I see it more in Safari -- I think it might be a little buggy right now.
But I want to point out that it is the "Dark Mode" view, so you can also get this turning on Dark Mode. It's why I have a whole section on Dark Mode. I'll add better clarification that it can sometime swap to the darker view on a darker background.
Edit: I added a dark mode App Store screenshot too to better illustrate the difference between lighter and darker backgrounds.
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It's far from a huge redesign of the UI, but still one of the bigger redesigns in a long time. The UI has overall been at a pretty good point for a while so not much need for anything radical. It's like any tech -- lots of changes early on then you reach a reasonably decent point and things plateau.
Some of those Beta 2 UIs were extremely difficult to read. I'm all for trying new things, but if the "liquid glass" starts to become more important than actually being able to see the UI and what it's trying to tell you then it's gone too far. I think Beta 3 is perhaps too far back the other way, but there's plenty more betas to come for them to play a little more (or let you choose just how translucent you want it, but that wouldn't be something Apple is known for!)
I don’t think anyone really cares for your comparison videos.
At least I don’t, because I got beta 3 right in front of me and know how it looks.
You might have a problem with some wording in the article, but that’s none of my concern.
The screenshots could in deed be better though, I agree.
I find it really weird how inconsistent the liquid effect is now from app to app.
This seems like a really short sighted design change to market as your BIG selling point for iOS 26 when I think it should have been pretty obvious to even a lay person that there would be usability issues with that much transparency.
The speed with which they are responding to user complaints leads me to believe someone(s) internally were very aware of this possible reaction but weren't able to get their concerns elevated to: No we don't ship it like this for the first beta.
I guess it's ok but I'll be looking forward to future refinements of this design that weren't made with the original liquid glass in mind. I feel like we wouldn't have gotten these unnecessarily round bubbly controls if iOS 26 beta 3's version of liquid glass was what we had out of the gate.
This seems like a really short sighted design change to market as your BIG selling point for iOS 26 when I think it should have been pretty obvious to even a lay person that there would be usability issues with that much transparency.
The speed with which they are responding to user complaints leads me to believe someone(s) internally were very aware of this possible reaction but weren't able to get their concerns elevated to: No we don't ship it like this for the first beta.
I guess it's ok but I'll be looking forward to future refinements of this design that weren't made with the original liquid glass in mind. I feel like we wouldn't have gotten these unnecessarily round bubbly controls if iOS 26 beta 3's version of liquid glass was what we had out of the gate.
almost like its a BETA to test user feedback 😂😂😂
The really scary part is how you can sub in any number of products for "this entire iOS redesign" up above...
For too long now, Apple has been doing the opposite of smoothly running on all cylinders.
Why not just include the same visual options that we now have for icons?
Light Tinted
Dark Tinted
Clear (Full Ass Glass)
Let the people choose their level of absurdity!
Light Tinted
Dark Tinted
Clear (Full Ass Glass)
Let the people choose their level of absurdity!
Worry less about this non sense, and focus on calls no longer being silent and going to voicemail. Silence unknown calls isnt working on ios 26 beta 2 now 3. The option that says send unknown calls to voicemail that option isnt even showing up in settings>apps>phone>scroll to unknown calls. It should be above where it says send unkown calls to unknown caller list.
they have no ideia what they are doing.
That's certainly how it feels at times, no question about it.
"you have to be really good at your career to work at apple"
biggest lie ever said.
there are plenty of very nice design on YouTube than this crap they baked in 5 minutes and are still changing dramatically in a beta version 3.
it's going to be called frosty glass now...
Why can't they add drop shadows to the text and icons instead of making the whole element frosted glass?
I'd like big toggles in the OSes that say: "Sequoia mode" and "iOS 18 mode"
Probably because it would look awful. Drop shadows are generally a not a good solution. Not to mention having a shadow over translucent glass makes no sense from a design or material perspective.
If they add theming support, I'm definitely looking for either the iOS 6 theme or Mac OS Platinum theme
Design is function. Apple has forgotten this. They’ve adopted the primitive view that design is an aesthetic added afterwards. So, we are getting pretty visual effects disjointed from functionality which make the software, on the whole, less functional. Many more tweaks are coming. I foresee options taming the readability issues created by Liquid Glass being add to Accessibility, as if wanting to clearly see the text in the UI indicates a user disability. Perhaps they should just rename Liquid Glass to Inaccessibility.
Maybe this is what the mass market wants: something different, shiny, and new, even if it is less functional and disjointed. They could have done so much better by leaving the UI alone.
Maybe this is what the mass market wants: something different, shiny, and new, even if it is less functional and disjointed. They could have done so much better by leaving the UI alone.
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Maybe it’s time to stop naming these annual updates. As you own an Apple device it just changes over time with styles. Clearly they’re moving back to what no one was complaining about. You don’t have to change things for the sake of change.