Apple’s new Liquid Glass design is noticeable on the Home Screen proper once you unlock your iPhone, although the diploma of change is customizable. We have rounded up every part that is modified with the ‌iPhone‌’s foremost interface.

Liquid Glass Design

By default, app icons have a layered look with refined depth, basically showing as a number of sheets of glass stacked on each other to create a glass-like translucent look.

Apple created Liquid Glass app icons for apps like Safari, Maps, Photographs, the App Retailer, Mail and extra. Third-party app icons are adopting the similar aesthetic, and for apps with a easy design on a stable background, no replace is required. Icons like this have already got a Liquid Glass look.

The dock is clear and blends into the background behind it, and the similar goes for the search button. App folders have a frosted glass design that additionally modifications tint primarily based in your wallpaper. While you edit your ‌Home Screen‌, the buttons that you simply work together with are additionally clear.

Interface components like the dock, folders, and the search button have a lighting impact that modifications once you transfer your ‌iPhone‌, making them appear to be actual glass.

Mild, Darkish and Tinted Modes

The Liquid Glass impact is clear in each Mild Mode and Darkish Mode, with icons persevering with to function the similar stacked glass look, simply with a lighter or darker background.

Apple technically modified Mild Mode to “Default Mode” in the customization settings the place you may modify colour (lengthy press on the show and faucet on customise).

There are new “All the time” and “Auto” toggles for enabling everlasting Mild or Darkish types or adjusting them primarily based on time, and the Small and Giant buttons for altering icon dimension have been relocated to the higher proper of the customization interface.

Tinted mode seems to be totally different in iOS 26 than it did in iOS 18. Somewhat than icons that includes a black background with coloured graphics, icons undertake the full colour that you choose with white graphics in Mild Mode. In ‌Darkish Mode‌, backgrounds are a a lot darker shade of the colour you select, however aren’t totally black.

With Tinted icons, the layered glass look is not as apparent, but it surely’s nonetheless current.

Clear Icons

Apple added a “Clear” icon possibility in ‌iOS 26‌ that is out there alongside Default, Darkish, and Tinted. As the identify suggests, Clear has a dramatic Liquid Glass look with icons which might be totally clear. The icons undertake the colour of your wallpaper, with white textual content and designs.

There are Mild and Darkish choices for the Clear setting. Mild seems to be like frosted glass, whereas Darkish seems to be like tinted glass. If you wish to go all-in on Liquid Glass and have your ‌iPhone‌ look notably totally different, Clear is the possibility to decide on.

Widgets

Widgets have a few of the similar aesthetic as icons, however on the entire, they do not look an excessive amount of totally different from how they appeared in ‌iOS 18‌ in the Default mode.

With the Clear possibility turned on, widgets are clear and have a extra cohesive design that matches together with your wallpaper.

Wallpaper

You may edit your wallpaper straight from the ‌Home Screen‌ in ‌iOS 26‌. Lengthy press on the show after which faucet on the new “Edit Wallpaper” possibility.

The wallpaper interface enables you to change the picture that you simply’re utilizing on the ‌Home Screen‌, but it surely does not have an effect on the Lock Screen. If in case you have a photograph set as a wallpaper, for instance, you may change the colour, choose a gradient, or select a photograph, plus you may flip blurring for pictures off or on.

Wallpaper takes a starring function in ‌iOS 26‌ as a result of it impacts the colour of the dock, folders, and icons, relying in your settings.

Management Heart

Management Heart adopts Liquid Glass, so whereas the performance is the similar, the basic look is totally different. In comparison with the ‌iOS 18‌ Management Heart, the ‌iOS 26‌ model has depth for the icons with the Liquid Glass shifting gentle impact.

The icons are tinted to appear to be frosted glass, and a few of the underlying buttons for adjusting Management Heart have been tweaked with the up to date look. Icons are just a little bigger, and a few of the bar-shaped icons for quantity, brightness, and different settings are rounder.

Different Home Screen Components

The Dynamic Island, Notification Heart, lengthy press gestures, and App Library haven’t modified past aesthetics. App Library folders are translucent and the search bar is rounded, and for widgets, there’s a glass look of various depth relying in your icon colour alternative.

App Library icons are additionally barely bigger, with much less padding between them.

Net Apps

While you add an internet site to your ‌Home Screen‌ in ‌iOS 26‌, it at all times opens as an internet app. Net apps have been out there on the ‌Home Screen‌ in ‌iOS 18‌, however internet builders wanted to configure them to function as internet apps.

If web sites weren’t configured correctly, they’d open in Safari when added to the ‌Home Screen‌. Now an internet site will open as a devoted internet app, even when it hasn’t been explicitly set as much as work that method.

There’s an Open as Net App possibility that may be toggled off when including an internet site to a ‌Home Screen‌ if you happen to choose that web sites open up in Safari.

Learn Extra

We now have a devoted iOS 26 roundup that goes into element on all of the new options which might be out there in the replace.