In addition to a new, refreshed look for system components such as pimples and smokings, the iOS 26 liquid glass overhaul also extends to application icons. For the first time since iOS 7, Apple has restarted all system applications with new illustrations. This means that a brand new look arrives on your iPhone home screen this fall.
In this article, we share a side by side of the icon of the iOS 26 application and its counterpart iOS 18, so that you can decide for yourself how the new visual style represents.
The new set of application icons has holistic reimagination of Apple’s approach to application icons. On the anterior versions of the operating system, iOS, MacOS, Watchos and Visionos all had different renderings of the same icons, with the set of Mac icons using more 3D effects and shadows. Watchos icons are circular, but did not resemble the circular icons of Visionos.
Apple took advantage of this opportunity to further unify its icons of platforms. The rendering of icons on iOS and macOS is now the same, and all Mac icons use the same rounded rectangular shape “ Squack ” as the iPhone. Most icons are also drawn in the same way on Watchos and Visionos, simply cropped in a circle for these platforms.
Apple encourages the user of the glass layers to add reflections and a vagueness of the edges, and the new alignment guidelines dictate the amount of circular spatial objects in the icon are insane from the edge. The shape of a clip squirts itself has also been adjusted, with a subtly different ellipse with a larger angle radius. On the iPhone and iPad, the glass layers of icons react even to the movement of the device, with subtle dynamic directional light effects.
Even without these fantasy flowers, I think that new icons look better than their iOS 18 equivalents, in almost all cases. Apple has done a very good job with them. Let us know in the comments if you agree:
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