IPhone’s new vitreous look has been toned with Monday’s release of the third developer Beta of iOS 26. This follows user complaints that the update made parts of the user interface more difficult to read.
At WWDC 2025 in June, the tech giant introduced its new design language, known as Liquid Glass, which is inspired by the optical qualities of glass in the real world, including how it breaks light and its transparent nature.
But the early version of the first developer Beta of iOS 26 and the accompanying updates to Apple’s other devices still left room for improvement in terms of usefulness, accessibility and readability.
Last month, Apple got some of the more prominent problems of liquid glass, such as how it made the control center so transparent that the iPhone home screen screens and widgets were shining through, creating visual mess and confusion.
Monday’s update sees Apple taking another step to ringing things back from an overly glass look in a number of key areas. While Beta 2 solved problems with the control center, Beta 3 is moving its focus to other areas of the mobile operating system, such as messages and navigation within Apple’s first -party apps, as Apple Music.
E.g. Seeing the navigation bar in Apple’s streaming music no longer the background that shines a little through and chooses a more solid white.
Notifications are also less translucent as the background behind the text is darkened, increasing the contrast.
While the changes undoubtedly make features easier to read, some users are now complaining that Apple has gone too far in the other direction with a return to more of a “frosted glass” aesthetically.
However, it is worth remembering that these are just develop Betas – early versions of the mobile operating system that will not be completed before its public release in the fall. The point of beta software is to allow Apple to collect feedback, find errors and solve problems before the software rolls out more wide.
This means that Apple could continue to finish the floating glass-look-and-feeling over the upcoming releases to find the sweet place for the new glassy look within each app and screen.