I’ve install the developer beta of iOS26 on a spare phone and have been trying out the new liquid glass interface. My first impression is positive and I’m a little bit surprised that I like it. Don’t get me wrong, if you turn on clear mode, icons and widgets are almost unusable, but if you select default icons and light mode it’s perfectly fine.

Icons are little bit rounder and the dock and the icons all have some shadow and depth to them. The Camera and Clock icons are re-designed and a bit more skeuomorphic.

The bigger changes however are inside apps. The Notes app for example still functions in the same way overall but buttons have been re-organised, search is consistently at the bottom now and sits on top of content. Buttons all have a uniformly round background. And speaking of buttons, text links have all been converted to buttons. The current version of iOS has a lot of text links for actions like Done, Edit and Back and these are all actual round buttons now.

Other apps like Photos and Camera have been re-organised and made simpler, the same options and content are still there, but now extra options are accessed via an overlay or in another tab.

Some of the effects aren’t entirely smooth on my device. I don’t know if this is because it’s a developer beta or because it’s a less powerful iPhone 12 mini. Or because the effects just take that much processing power.

Some of the liquid effects are pretty wild and I’d expect them to be dialled down a bit before public launch.