In the fourth beta of iOS 26.1, Apple added a “Tint” option that reduces the translucency of liquid glass for those who prefer a more opaque look. I I saw some comments I was wondering if the setting would preserve battery life, so I thought I’d do some testing.
Test Settings
I ran four separate tests with the iPhone 17 Pro Max and kept the settings as similar as possible. Here are the settings I used for each test:
- Liquid Glass set to Clear.
- Liquid glass set to Tinted.
- Liquid Glass set to Tinted with Reduce Transparency and Increase Contrast enabled.
- Liquid Glass with Reduce Transparency, Increase Contrast, and Reduce Motion enabled.
For each test, I used Light mode and not Dark mode, turned off True Tone and Night Shift, and set my iPhone to 50% brightness. The screen has also been configured not to turn off. My battery status is always at 100% and the ambient temperature during testing was 68-72 degrees.
I left my notifications on because I get a pretty even distribution of notifications throughout the day and wanted to mimic how I would use my iPhone. My home screen was set to standard icons.
How I tested
I did the exact same series of actions for each test, timed to the second.
- 30 minutes of scrolling TikTok.
- 30 minutes of YouTube videos.
- 30 minutes of scrolling Instagram/watching reels.
- 30 minutes of Safari on the MacRumors site. Scroll and tap on a handful of different pages.
- 30 minutes of Maps application. I headed to the same place, but I didn’t actually go there. Rather, this was a test to get the Liquid Glass interface up and running for a good 30 minutes.
During each of the five segments, I swiped four times to access notifications on the lock screen and I swiped four times to open Control Center. I opened Notifications and Control Center a total of 20 times for each test, then swiped to close them. These were timed at intervals of approximately 3.5 minutes.
When I switched from one app to another, I swiped up to close it and leave the home screen, swiped down to show search, typed the app name, and tapped to open it.
Each test lasted 2.5 hours, with a few extra seconds between each segment to switch applications. The tests were spread over two days, one at approximately 3:00 p.m. and one at 5:30 p.m.
I only charge my iPhone to 80%, so between each 2.5 hour period I charged my iPhone to 80% before starting the next test. The only generic factors were notifications and what content was on TikTok and Instagram while I was scrolling.
Test results
The results were not what I expected. I started this test thinking that enabling Reduce Transparency and Reduce Motion would have an effect, but that’s not the case. I couldn’t find any settings selection that changes the battery my iPhone uses.
- Round 1 – This was the “Clear” round, and my baseline. I started at 80% and finished at 70%.
- Round 2 – Tinted mode. I started at 80% and finished at 69%.
- Round 3 – Tinted mode, reduce transparency and increase contrast. I started at 80% and finished at 69%.
- Round 4 – Tint mode, reduce transparency, increase contrast and reduce movement. I started at 80% and finished at 70%.
I ended up with 1% less battery with the two interim tests, but there wasn’t enough of a difference to draw a conclusion. I can’t see the percentage fractions with the battery measurements, so it’s possible that the two 70% tests were close to 69% and I had minor differences due to the small variations in content between tests.
Test results developed
I wanted to include the total percentages for each test segment because there were some minor differences.
- Round 1 – TikTok finished at 79%, YouTube finished at 77%, Instagram finished at 74%, Safari finished at 72%, Maps finished at 70%.
- Round 2 – TikTok finished at 78%, YouTube finished at 75%, Instagram finished at 72%, Safari finished at 70%, Maps finished at 69%.
- Round 3 – TikTok finished at 78%, YouTube finished at 76%, Instagram finished at 73%, Safari finished at 70%, Maps finished at 69%.
- Round 4 – TikTok finished at 79%, Instagram at 77%, YouTube at 74%, Safari at 72% and Maps at 70%. During this cycle, I accidentally swapped Instagram and YouTube, but restarting would have changed the test time, so I simply swapped those two apps.
Warnings
I wanted my test to mimic how I might use my phone regularly, but it was only a 2.5 hour period. It’s possible that a full 16 hours of accessing and exiting apps and features using Liquid Glass could have a greater overall battery saving effect. I suspect this would only be a tiny percentage of overall battery usage, and mostly inconsequential.
The applications I used do not all have Liquid Glass-intensive interfaces. TikTok and Instagram, for example, barely use Liquid Glass. Heavy use of apps with more Liquid Glass elements could change the results, but there aren’t many apps that I spend a lot of time on that use Liquid Glass like that.
I use an iPhone 17 Pro Max. I’m curious if there would be a difference in battery life on an older iPhone which might have more difficulty rendering Liquid Glass effects.
If anyone with an older iPhone would like to run similar tests, I’d be happy to return with another article that includes more tests done by MacRumors readers. I’m also able to do more testing if anyone has any suggestions on what I could change to actually reduce battery consumption.
Conclusion
On the iPhone 17 models, I don’t think there are any settings to change related to Liquid Glass that will make a significant difference in battery consumption.
There doesn’t seem to be any reason to enable something like tinted mode or reduced transparency, unless you want opacity for visual preference reasons.
Low power mode, adaptive power mode, dark mode, and reducing screen brightness still seem to be the most effective ways to extend battery life.
