Many things have been said about Apple’s new design language for iOS 26, the very praised (or slandered) liquid glass. Apple’s latest design, which is somewhat based on Apple’s vision operating system, offers something very different from what we have seen before.
However, while Apple showed a large part of the new look during the last WWDC, there is nothing like a practical experience to understand if you like something. Although you can access the Beta developer for iOS 26, we would not recommend it because of how it can negatively affect your device and applications. Fortunately, the public beta version is published for its release on July 23, according to Mark Gurman, This means that interested users could test it more easily.
In this spirit, let us decompose all the changes we have seen for liquid glass, compared to iOS 18, which could come to you soon.
Liquid glass makes the iPhone screen more transparent.
Regarding the home screen, the most notable change occurs when you activate the “All Clear” mode. This will make your icons and widgets much more translucent. However, we have heard many reports that, at least in developer mode, this can affect readability. You can solve this problem with the reduction transparency option in the settings or by completely deactivating it.
If you turn off everything, the difference between the home screen of iOS 26 and that seen on iOS 18 is quite minimal. For the most part, the only real proof that you will see liquid glass is on the quay at the bottom of the screen, which is more transparent.
Overall, the icons of the iOS 26 home screen are slightly larger than on iOS 18. It is also noticeable that some of Apple’s application icons have changed, with some, such as parameters, offering slightly different shade, while others, such as the application of the camera, have been completely redesigned.
The control center is not too different
For the most part, the control center remains relatively similar in iOS 18 and iOS 26, apart from the transparency caused by liquid glass. If you look at the screenshots above, you will notice that you can clearly see the house screen or locking your iPhone in the background in iOS 26. In the meantime, the transparency of the iOS 18 version has more than a gray shade. Again, this can cause problems to solve writing in the iOS 26 version compared to the current version, but you can refuse a good amount with the reduction of transparency.
The iOS 26 locking screen is much more elegant
You can say that the iPhone locking screen offers the biggest difference between the two operating systems. The new version offers a more stylized clock that adjusts its size dynamically depending on the image you use, as well as the number of notifications you have.
Meanwhile, the icons and notifications also have the most notable translucidity of the lock screen, alongside a new white text. The shortcut buttons for the torch and the camera also have a slight specular highlighting effect which makes them appear more 3D than the iOS 18 version. There is also a new unlocking effect which gives the impression that you move a glass shutter, rather than the simple sape animation seen in the iOS 18 locking screen.
iOS 26 presents dynamic tab bars and back lighting
One of the new additions with iOS 26 is the introduction of dynamic tab bars in applications. This new bar will change depending on whether you scroll an application or try to perform a specific action. The new bar aims to release the space which would generally be absorbed by a static bar, while aiming to be more intuitive.
In addition to that, iOS 26 will allow buttons and menus on the screen to adapt to the color of the background. Now, this feature is available in iOS 18, but the current version is very silent, with it only moving from gray to white. Meanwhile, the iOS 26 version can adapt to everything behind, even if you scroll through your gallery.
The public beta version iOS 26 will probably be very different
One thing to note is that, when the public beta version ends up going out, it will probably be very different from everything we have seen before. Until now, we have seen it in the different versions of developer Beta. For example, the second beta iOS 26 version offered new transparency options, moved the New Tab Safari button and made changes to some of the applications and widgets.
Meanwhile, the third beta iOS 26 added more changes to the liquid glass to make it more readable, new wallpapers and several other fixes. As such, we expect the first public beta version to take all the recommendations and corrects of the developer’s beta version. This also applies to the full public version, which could be very different.
On this note, if you plan to wait for the official launch of the update, we expect it to happen around mid-September, which will correspond to the exit dates of iOS 18 and iOS 17.
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