After three days with iOS 26, I am amazed by Apple’s Liquid Glass redesign, however I’ve considerations

The largest buzz at WWDC 2025 was round Apple’s spanking new Liquid Glass interface. From a unified year-based naming scheme for its platforms to what may be probably the most in depth visible overhaul to iOS in years, iOS 26 marks a major shift in Apple’s software program strategy.

However is there substance beneath the divisive shiny sheen? I dove into the developer betas to provide it a attempt.

Let me preface this by saying this primary beta could be very buggy, and I wouldn’t advocate putting in it in your main telephone. Nonetheless, should you’re desperate to discover it, simply go to the “Software program Replace” part below Settings and choose “Beta Updates.” That’s all it takes. Since final 12 months, Apple has dramatically simplified the beta sign-up course of. Regardless, I’d extremely advocate ready for subsequent month’s public beta earlier than putting in the replace. With that stated, listed here are a number of the most vital additions to iOS 26.

Apple’s greatest change this 12 months is the introduction of a brand new design language known as Liquid Glass. Should you’re a design fanatic or have expertise in internet design, you’re probably acquainted with glassmorphism. Liquid Glass builds on that aesthetic and makes in depth use of transparency and floating components. Extra importantly, this redesign spans each Apple platform from the iPhone to the iPad, Mac, Watch, TV, and even Imaginative and prescient Professional. It’s Apple’s first actual try and unify the visible language throughout its total ecosystem.

In apply, Liquid Glass means layers of translucent coloration, tender reflections, and depth that shift as you work together along with your gadget. It’s playful, dramatic, and distinctly Apple — for higher or worse. The House Display exhibits this off finest. App icons seem like digital glass, glinting based mostly on the background. You’ll discover bubble-like UI components throughout the Images app, the Health App, and even the Digital camera. On the Lock Display and in Management Heart, most flat backgrounds are actually translucent layers. It’s a refined however impactful shift that makes every little thing really feel prefer it’s floating quite than simply sitting on high of your wallpaper.

In day-to-day use, not every little thing works completely but. Transparency can harm readability, particularly in Management Heart when it overlaps busy apps just like the music participant. The Lock Display has related points. Some animations additionally really feel inconsistent.

The interface tweaks proceed on to the browser, the place you now get a near-full-screen view of the webpage with glass-inspired components that come out. Much like the remainder of the interface, there’s ample motive to be involved about readability (particularly for these with accessibility wants), and your expertise is fully depending on the background. Nonetheless, that is early beta territory, and Apple sometimes refines this by the point of public launch.

Regardless of the combined public consensus, I fairly like the final route that Apple is taking right here. The interface appears futuristic to a fault, like one thing straight out of an Apple TV science fiction present, and I’m personally right here for it. However even at this early stage, it’s clear that plenty of ache factors have to be addressed earlier than the general public rollout this September.

The Digital camera app, too, has obtained a significant, and much-needed, overhaul. Actually, that is the primary time in years that Apple has rethought the digital camera UI from the bottom up. Whereas the fundamentals stay the identical, Apple has refined the format to supply faster entry to controls. The refreshed interface makes it simple to swipe between modes like photographs, movies, portrait, and extra with a single swipe alongside the underside edge. This feels intuitive and rather more helpful when composing photographs.

Equally, a refined however welcome contact is how Apple now surfaces changes. In some methods, the Digital camera app has lastly gained the “Professional” mode customers have been ready for. Options similar to switching between totally different recording settings, LOG video, and digital camera decision are infinitely extra simple to entry.

Whereas it’s nowhere near the extent of Professional mode options in the very best Android digital camera telephones or devoted third-party digital camera apps, it’s an excellent compromise for informal lovers who want extra management with out sacrificing simplicity. A aspect impact of those modifications is that the overwhelming quantity of animations and floating components makes the interface really feel slower than it’s, with every little thing taking simply half a second too lengthy. I can’t say for certain if Apple will permit for toned-down animations, however because it stands, the floaty feeling of the UI wears you down fairly rapidly.

It’s honest to say that Apple’s preliminary AI push has been considerably underwhelming. When Apple Intelligence was introduced final 12 months, effectively behind the competitors, it distinguished itself with a robust promise of privateness. A 12 months later, a big portion of final 12 months’s promised options are nonetheless unavailable, making it troublesome to take Apple’s 2025 claims fully critically. Regardless, among the many newly introduced options is deeper integration with your entire suite of on-device communication apps. Furthermore, this 12 months, Apple is opening up entry to its on-device LLM to third-party builders. That’s certain to open up some very attention-grabbing and revolutionary use circumstances.

In Messages, FaceTime, and the Telephone app, Reside Translation now permits real-time language translation of each textual content and audio. It features inside message threads and through calls, offering fast responses with out requiring you to depart the app. I couldn’t discover a solution to activate the function within the beta.

Equally, Visible Intelligence now understands what’s in your display and may floor associated outcomes, hyperlinks, or solutions. As an example, if somebody sends you a product picture, you may ask the on-device intelligence to indicate you related objects from the online or pull up details about it with out ever leaving the thread. Consider it as Apple’s tackle “Circle to Search” however leveraging the ability of Apple’s on-device LLM and ChatGPT. That is one in all iOS 26’s extra thrilling options, however as soon as once more, it isn’t but out there within the developer beta.

Genmoji and Picture Playground are additionally a part of this AI layer. Now you can mix emoji, photographs, and descriptive phrases to generate customized stickers and pictures. Whereas these instruments really feel like enjoyable get together tips for now, their true energy lies in deep system-wide integration. The function works precisely as you’d think about and allows you to mix present emojis, photographs and text-based prompts to create customized emojis. The outcomes are fairly good, as you may see within the screenshot above. It’s probably not one thing I’d use fairly often, however higher on-device picture and emoji technology is successfully desk stakes, so an improved expertise could be very welcome.

The opposite function that I discovered thrilling was deeper integration of AI into Apple’s on-device scripting service. Apple Intelligence is now out there to the Shortcuts app, enabling you to create smarter automations. This implies you may combine Apple’s on-device LLM and even ChatGPT right into a shortcut and use it to parse information earlier than passing it on to a different app. I can envision use circumstances like immediately splitting a tab or summarizing any on-screen content material, similar to an Instagram publish. Actually, it took me minutes to get a shortcut up and operating to mechanically create a observe based mostly on a shared Instagram publish after passing it by means of the on-device LLM. That’s very cool.

Speaking about on a regular basis use options, Apple has lastly overhauled the Battery part in Settings. The brand new interface replaces the 24-hour and 10-day views with a extra digestible weekly breakdown. It then compares your common battery consumption to your each day utilization, highlighting which apps are consuming energy and why. Tapping into any given day reveals a cut up between energetic display time and idle background use. It’s similar to the battery insights out there to Android customers and is a welcome addition.

Dig deeper, and also you’ll additionally discover a new Adaptive Energy Mode. Not like the static Low Energy Mode, Adaptive adjusts in actual time based mostly on how aggressively you’re utilizing your telephone. It will probably dim the display or cut back background duties with out requiring consumer enter. You continue to get the guide 80% cost limiter and battery well being metrics, however the focus right here is on smarter defaults.

Along with the massive hits, quite a few smaller quality-of-life enhancements are sprinkled all through the OS. The keyboard feels chunkier and extra exact, with higher haptic suggestions. There’s a brand new preview app that allows you to carry out a variety of file-based features, together with previewing information, after all.  The Settings app has undergone minor restructuring. Whereas not a radical shift, the app feels cleaner and sooner to navigate with its revamped font sizing and kerning. In Messages, now you can set customized backgrounds per dialog, including a bit extra character to threads. Apple has additionally added a polls function for group chats, one thing that arguably ought to have existed years in the past.

The Telephone app has additionally obtained some consideration. It now unifies the Recents, Favorites, and Voicemails tabs right into a single, streamlined interface. Essentially the most important addition is Name Screening. It screens unknown callers by gathering context and providing choices to reply or dismiss them with out ever answering. Maintain Help is one other useful device. Should you’re caught in a name queue with buyer assist, your iPhone can now wait on maintain for you and provide you with a warning when a human lastly joins the road.

iOS 26 additionally introduces a devoted Apple Video games app. It acts as a central hub for all issues gaming in your gadget, successfully serving as a light-weight however genuinely helpful Sport Heart alternative. The app pulls in your put in video games, affords customized suggestions, and means that you can see what your mates are enjoying. Achievements, leaderboards, and Sport Heart invitations are actually neatly tucked into this area. Apple is clearly attempting to make iOS gaming really feel extra like a platform and fewer like a sequence of one-off downloads, but it surely stays to be seen if there’s important adoption.

It’s exhausting to say definitively at this early stage. There’s little doubt that Liquid Glass offers iOS a daring new face, and up to date Apple Intelligence options really feel like the start of one thing genuinely helpful. However proper now, it’s principally potential.

Many options are buggy or half-baked, and even enhancements like these within the digital camera app require additional polish. To be honest, it is a developer beta. I’ll reserve judgment till the ultimate launch rolls out later this 12 months, however what’s simple is that that is probably the most formidable replace Apple has shipped in years.