Liquid Glass is amazing, but I have concerns

The most important 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 is perhaps essentially 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 offer it a strive.

Let me preface this by saying this primary beta may be very buggy, and I wouldn’t advocate putting in it in your main cellphone. Nonetheless, for those who’re wanting to discover it, simply go to the “Software program Replace” part underneath Settings and choose “Beta Updates.” That’s all it takes. Since final yr, 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 below are among the most important additions to iOS 26.

Apple’s greatest change this yr is the introduction of a brand new design language known as Liquid Glass. If you happen to’re a design fanatic or have expertise in net design, you’re probably accustomed to 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 complete ecosystem.

In follow, Liquid Glass means layers of translucent shade, delicate reflections, and depth that shift as you work together together with your system. It’s playful, dramatic, and distinctly Apple — for higher or worse. The Residence Display exhibits this off greatest. App icons seem like digital glass, glinting primarily based 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 reasonably 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. Just like the remainder of the interface, there may be ample cause 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 usually refines this by the point of public launch.

Regardless of the blended public consensus, I fairly like the overall path that Apple is taking right here. The interface seems 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 a whole lot 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. In actual fact, that is the primary time in years that Apple has rethought the digicam UI from the bottom up. Whereas the fundamentals stay the identical, Apple has refined the structure 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 Camera app has lastly gained the “Professional” mode customers have been ready for. Options reminiscent of switching between totally different recording settings, LOG video, and digicam decision are infinitely extra easy to entry.

Whereas it’s nowhere near the extent of Professional mode options within the best Android camera phones or devoted third-party digicam apps, it’s a superb compromise for informal fans who want extra management with out sacrificing simplicity. A aspect impact of those adjustments 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 enable for toned-down animations, however because it stands, the floaty feeling of the UI wears you down fairly rapidly.

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

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

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

Genmoji and Image 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 methods 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 current emojis, photographs and text-based prompts to create customized emojis. The outcomes are fairly good, as you possibly can see within the screenshot above. It’s probably not one thing I’d use fairly often, however higher on-device picture and emoji era is successfully desk stakes, so an improved expertise may 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 possibly can 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, reminiscent of an Instagram publish. In actual fact, it took me minutes to get a shortcut up and operating to robotically create a word primarily based on a shared Instagram publish after passing it via 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 every day utilization, highlighting which apps are consuming energy and why. Tapping into any given day reveals a break up between lively display screen 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. In contrast to the static Low Energy Mode, Adaptive adjusts in actual time primarily based on how aggressively you’re utilizing your cellphone. It might dim the display screen or reduce background duties with out requiring person enter. You continue to get the handbook 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 permits you to carry out a variety of file-based capabilities, together with previewing information, in fact.  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 instrument. If you happen to’re caught in a name queue with buyer help, your iPhone can now wait on maintain for you and warn you 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 system, 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 permits you to see what your folks are taking part in. Achievements, leaderboards, and Sport Heart invitations are actually neatly tucked into this house. Apple is clearly making an attempt 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 question that Liquid Glass provides 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 largely potential.

Many options are buggy or half-baked, and even enhancements like these within the digicam app require additional polish. To be truthful, it is a developer beta. I’ll reserve judgment till the ultimate launch rolls out later this yr, however what’s plain is that that is essentially the most bold replace Apple has shipped in years.