Apple’s new Liquid Glass design is noticeable on the Home Screen proper if you unlock your iPhone, although the diploma of change is customizable. We have rounded up all the things that is modified with the iPhone’s most important interface.
Liquid Glass Design
By default, app icons have a layered look with refined depth, primarily showing as a number of sheets of glass stacked on each other to create a glass-like translucent look.
Apple created Liquid Glass app icons for apps like Safari, Maps, Photos, the App Store, Mail and extra. Third-party app icons are adopting the identical aesthetic, and for apps with a easy design on a stable background, no replace is required. Icons like this have already got a Liquid Glass look.
The dock is clear and blends into the background behind it, and the identical goes for the search button. App folders have a frosted glass design that additionally adjustments tint based mostly in your wallpaper. Once you edit your Dwelling Display screen, the buttons that you just work together with are additionally clear.
Interface components just like the dock, folders, and the search button have a lighting impact that adjustments if you transfer your iPhone, making them appear like actual glass.
Mild, Darkish and Tinted Modes
The Liquid Glass impact is obvious in each Mild Mode and Dark Mode, with icons persevering with to characteristic the identical stacked glass look, simply with a lighter or darker background.
Apple technically modified Mild Mode to “Default Mode” within the customization settings the place you possibly can regulate colour (lengthy press on the show and faucet on customise).
There are new “All the time” and “Auto” toggles for enabling everlasting Mild or Darkish kinds or adjusting them based mostly on time, and the Small and Massive buttons for altering icon measurement have been relocated to the higher proper of the customization interface.
Tinted mode appears totally different in iOS 26 than it did in iOS 18. Reasonably than icons that includes a black background with coloured graphics, icons undertake the total colour that you choose with white graphics in Mild Mode. In Darkish Mode, backgrounds are a a lot darker shade of the colour you select, however aren’t completely black.
With Tinted icons, the layered glass look is not as apparent, however it’s nonetheless current.
Clear Icons
Apple added a “Clear” icon choice in iOS 26 that is obtainable alongside Default, Darkish, and Tinted. Because the identify suggests, Clear has a dramatic Liquid Glass look with icons which are completely clear. The icons undertake the colour of your wallpaper, with white textual content and designs.
There are Mild and Darkish choices for the Clear setting. Mild appears like frosted glass, whereas Darkish appears like tinted glass. If you wish to go all-in on Liquid Glass and have your iPhone look notably totally different, Clear is the choice to decide on.
Widgets
Widgets have among the similar aesthetic as icons, however on the entire, they do not look an excessive amount of totally different from how they regarded in iOS 18 within the Default mode.
With the Clear choice turned on, widgets are clear and have a extra cohesive design that matches together with your wallpaper.
Wallpaper
You possibly can edit your wallpaper immediately from the Dwelling Display screen in iOS 26. Lengthy press on the show after which faucet on the brand new “Edit Wallpaper” choice.
The wallpaper interface helps you to change the picture that you just’re utilizing on the Dwelling Display screen, however it would not have an effect on the Lock Display screen. In case you have a photograph set as a wallpaper, for instance, you possibly can change the colour, choose a gradient, or select a photograph, plus you possibly can flip blurring for photos off or on.
Wallpaper takes a starring function in iOS 26 as a result of it impacts the colour of the dock, folders, and icons, relying in your settings.
Management Middle
Management Middle adopts Liquid Glass, so whereas the performance is identical, the final look is totally different. In comparison with the iOS 18 Management Middle, the iOS 26 model has depth for the icons with the Liquid Glass shifting gentle impact.
The icons are tinted to appear like frosted glass, and among the underlying buttons for adjusting Management Middle have been tweaked with the up to date look. Icons are a bit bigger, and among the bar-shaped icons for quantity, brightness, and different settings are rounder.
Different Dwelling Display screen Components
The Dynamic Island, Notification Middle, lengthy press gestures, and App Library haven’t modified past aesthetics. App Library folders are translucent and the search bar is rounded, and for widgets, there’s a glass look of various depth relying in your icon colour selection.
App Library icons are additionally barely bigger, with much less padding between them.
Net Apps
Once you add a web site to your Dwelling Display screen in iOS 26, it all the time opens as an internet app. Net apps have been obtainable on the Dwelling Display screen in iOS 18, however net builders wanted to configure them to function as net apps.
If web sites weren’t configured correctly, they might open in Safari when added to the Dwelling Display screen. Now a web site will open as a devoted net app, even when it hasn’t been explicitly set as much as work that means.
There may be an Open as Net App choice that may be toggled off when including a web site to a Dwelling Display screen if you happen to choose that web sites open up in Safari.
Learn Extra
We’ve a dedicated iOS 26 roundup that goes into element on all the new options which are obtainable within the replace.