What’s Liquid Glass, and What to Do If You Don’t Like It

What’s Liquid Glass, and What to Do If You Don’t Like It

If you’ve been following Apple’s recent product releases, you’ve probably heard the term “Liquid Glass.” That’s what Apple calls its newest design language, a combination of an aesthetic look and functional philosophy for the user interface in iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS 26 Tahoe, in particular, but also in watchOS 26, visionOS 26, and tvOS 26 (we think of them collectively as OS 26). Apple describes Liquid Glass as a “translucent material that reflects and refracts its surroundings, while dynamically transforming to help bring greater focus to content.” The company claims that Liquid Glass “makes apps and system experiences more expressive and delightful while being instantly familiar.” Apple even has an intro video.

Beyond the marketing speak, that means most of the controls you’ll interact with in Apple’s new operating system will be semi-transparent and appear to float above the content, blurring what’s underneath and adjusting to the underlying content’s color. That may make it easier for you to focus on your content, or it may make the interface harder to read. Liquid Glass also features subtle animations that may seem fun or make everything feel a little squishy.

Like many of Apple’s interface changes over the years, Liquid Glass has sparked strong reactions—some love it, while others dislike it. While we’ll explore the pros and cons below, it’s worth acknowledging upfront that Liquid Glass represents Apple’s vision for the future of its interfaces. Although you can adjust various settings to make it more comfortable to use (which we’ll cover shortly), Liquid Glass will be part of all Apple operating systems going forward. The good news is that, as with previous major interface changes, such as Aqua in Mac OS X and iOS 7, we’ll all adapt to it over time as Apple continues to refine and enhance the experience.

Although Liquid Glass might appear to be just a fashionable cosmetic update, Apple’s designers had some serious objectives:

Just because Apple describes Liquid Glass as “delightful” doesn’t mean everyone will agree. Many users dislike change, and numerous user experience experts have criticized aspects of Liquid Glass. Some of the concerns include:

You can’t turn off Liquid Glass, but three Accessibility settings will make it less liquid and less glassy on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. There are also a few additional settings that may make the iPhone and iPad easier to use. All these settings are independent, so you can mix and match to find the combination that gives you the look you prefer. (Paths are for the iPhone and iPad; on the Mac, start with System Settings and note slight naming differences.)

The next three settings are exclusive to the iPhone and iPad, and you’ll find them in Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size:

Again, Liquid Glass is the foreseeable future of Apple interface design, and while it’s far from perfect right now, we anticipate Apple improving and refining it over the next few releases. You can help nudge that process in the direction you want by submitting feedback to Apple.

(Featured image by Apple)

Notable User Interface Changes to Expect in macOS 26

Notable User Interface Changes to Expect in macOS 26

macOS 26 Tahoe is a larger visual leap than any recent upgrade. Although we don’t yet recommend that everyone upgrade, we want to show you some of the user interface changes that will impact your everyday experience of using the Mac.

Many of these changes stem from Apple’s new Liquid Glass design language, which we’ve previously covered in more detail. Familiar macOS interface elements with a new Liquid Glass appearance include:

With Safari, Apple’s Liquid Glass interface causes the toolbar controls and the tab bar at the top to float over the page content underneath. On some sites, this can be distracting or make tab titles hard to read (below, top). If that bothers you, turning on System Settings > Accessibility > Display > Reduce Transparency separates the controls from the content more clearly, but also gives them a gray background (below, bottom).

In Tahoe, Control Center not only receives a Liquid Glass makeover but also gains notable new features. Similar to iOS and iPadOS, you can now fully customize the buttons, sliders, and other interface shortcuts in Control Center, removing those you don’t need and adding others. To get started with personalization, click Edit Controls at the bottom of Control Center.

The selection of commands is impressive enough on its own, but Apple also promises that independent developers will be able to offer controls for their apps. Clicking the + button in the menu bar provides the equivalent of additional Control Center pages from iOS: another menu bar icon that displays a different set of Control Center items. You can have as many of these extra Control Center pages as you want.

Lastly, note that you can add many items from Control Center directly to the menu bar, where they can function as toggles or quick access shortcuts.

Apple revamped Spotlight in Tahoe, adjusting its interface (yes, it’s transparent by default, too) and introducing clipboard history. When you activate Spotlight with Command-Space and move the pointer, four buttons appear to filter your search by apps, files, shortcut actions, and clipboard history—Command-1 through 4 serve the same purpose.

Previously, Spotlight separated different result types vertically; now you can click buttons just below the search box to filter results by category. Spotlight also remembers past searches, allowing you to use the arrow keys to browse backward and forward through your search history.

Spotlight’s new Apps view, which gets its own icon on the Dock, also replaces the longstanding but little-used Launchpad. If you want a full-screen grid of app icons, similar to Launchpad, consider Launchie, AppHub, or AppGrid Launcher.

Although many people never open the Terminal app, which gives access to the Unix command line hidden in macOS, Apple has finally updated it to allow for more customization. Fortunately, Terminal still features completely opaque windows—transparency won’t make reading command-line output any easier. Each profile offers various customization options beyond appearance, so those who frequently use Terminal can tailor it to their preferences.

While we don’t want to downplay the impact these visual changes may have on your Mac experience, we’ve also found they’re easy to get used to or turn off. After using Tahoe for a few weeks, most of these changes will become the new normal. Apple will undoubtedly continue to polish Liquid Glass over the next year, refining its smoothness and eliminating awkward bits.

(Featured image by Apple)

Ten Useful New Features in iOS 26’s Phone App

Ten Useful New Features in iOS 26’s Phone App

Although it’s easy to joke about how little we use our iPhones for actual phone calls, telephony remains a core feature that everyone depends on to some degree. In iOS 26, Apple put significant effort into improving the phone experience, delivering the most notable upgrade to the Phone app in years. Here’s what you’ll find.

The Phone app has traditionally featured a toolbar with buttons for Favorites, Recents, Contacts, Keypad, and Voicemail, along with a separate Search field. iOS 26 retains this layout as Classic view (below, left) and introduces a new Unified view (below, right) that aims to simplify the interface by reducing the toolbar to four buttons: Calls, Contacts, Keypad, and Search, with the Calls screen combining favorites and recent calls. You can switch between these views by tapping the Filter button in the top-right corner and choosing the preferred layout. The Filter menu also lets you specify which calls appear below, including voicemail.

A new Call Screening feature, configurable in Settings > Apps > Phone > Screen Unknown Callers, intercepts incoming calls from unknown numbers and prompts the caller to “state their name and reason for calling” before the iPhone even rings. If the caller responds, you’ll see a transcript or snippet of their response, allowing you to decide whether to answer or ignore the call. In our experience, it mainly causes spammers and telemarketers to hang up instantly, which is equally effective.

The Phone app has long been able to silence calls from unknown numbers—those not in your contacts or numbers you haven’t called—and send them directly to voicemail. This feature, now called Unknown Callers, remains available in Settings > Apps > Phone > Call Filtering, as does the previous Silence Junk Callers option, now called Spam. What’s new is that when these options are turned on, lists for Unknown Callers and Spam appear in the Filter menu, so they don’t clutter your Calls list. You can delete calls from unknown callers, mark their numbers as known, or add them to Contacts so they aren’t silenced next time.

With most spam calls going to voicemail, your inbox may fill up with unwanted messages. You’ve always been able to delete them, but now, when you view a voicemail from an unknown number, a Report Spam button appears. Tap it to report the voicemail to Apple and delete it. We don’t know if reporting spam voicemails will make any difference, but it’s more satisfying than just deleting them.

The Phone app’s new automatic Hold Assist feature is somewhat hard to test, but we hope it works when you need it. When Hold Assist Detection is enabled in Settings > Apps > Phone, Apple says that if you’re placed on hold by a customer service agent, the Phone app can detect hold music, silence it, and notify you when the agent comes back on the line. You can also manually tap the More button, tap Hold Assist, and then see a transcript of the hold message while you wait. Tap Pick Up when you’re ready to talk.

If you need to call someone who speaks a different language (as long as it’s English, French, German, Portuguese, or Spanish), the new Live Translation feature might be helpful. Once you’re on the call, tap the More button, then tap Live Translation, and choose the languages for From and To. We highly recommend testing this feature before you actually need it, as it can take a few minutes to download a new language for the first time. After that, tap Start Translation to hear spoken translations and have your voice translated for your caller. You’ll also see a transcript of both sides of the conversation.

If you desperately need to use Siri during a phone call, you can now activate Type to Siri. Make sure it’s turned on in Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri > Talk & Type to Siri, and then double-tap the bottom edge of the iPhone to open a Siri text entry field.

When you’re on a call with someone using iOS 26, iPadOS 26, or macOS 26, you can now initiate Screen Sharing or SharePlay with that person during the call. Access these features from the More button. Screen Sharing can be helpful for explaining how to perform an action on the caller’s device or troubleshoot a problem, and SharePlay lets you and the caller listen to the same audio or watch the same video in a supported app.

Wait, did we just say you could be on a call with someone using the Phone app on a Mac or iPad? Exactly! With macOS 26, iPadOS 26, and even visionOS 26, the Phone app has expanded to the iPhone’s sibling platforms. It looks and works very similarly, with the benefit of displaying more information at once. To use one of these Phone apps, your iPhone must be on the same Wi-Fi network and signed in to the same Apple Account.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/sergeyryzhov)