iOS 26 public beta: First impressions of Liquid Glass
I’ve been running the iOS 26 public beta on my phone for a day without any nasty surprises. Safari performance is poor, especially scrolling; otherwise, my experience is pretty good.
When my phone is hot, the UI stutters, so clearly even an iPhone 16e needs all of its performance to render the new Liquid Glass UI. And a thermally throttled iPhone 16e apparently doesn’t have enough power to sustain 60 fps. This was also the case with the iOS 18 UI on my 12 Pro, which began stuttering when it got hot despite the battery info stating it could still do peak performance.
The stuttering is significantly worse on iPad Mini 6. Opening Safari for the first time after rebooting can take more than a minute, and tapping the Address Bar results in an unresponsive iPad for about as long.
The new design works mostly, and compared to iOS 18, it actually feels more modern and fun to use. Opening an app that doesn’t yet support Liquid Glass feels like looking at an old UI in a museum.
Liquid Glass needs a third state: On Grey.
Liquid Glass still has some issues, but it has gotten significantly better compared to the early developer betas. I think it needs a third state; currently Liquid Glass can be on dark content or on light content, which works well, but the usability goes down the drain when a UI element is above medium-bright content. This is true in light and dark mode. I think Liquid Glass needs a third state that is less translucent for such situations.
On: dark:
The UI text and symbols in white work well, despite there being white text on a black background behind the UI
On light:
The dark text and symbols work well on a light background
On medium:
Liquid Glass struggles on medium brightness backdrops. In this case it settled on acting as if the backdrop was dark, however that leads to light grey UI elements on a medium grey backdrop