Apple overhauled the look of its iPhone line up this year with the iPhone 17 Pro and new slim iPhone Air, but no matter which iPhone you have, you’re getting quite a lot of visual change if you update your phone to iOS 26.
The new version of iOS, which replaces iOS 18 and is named after 2026, introduces Apple’s new Liquid Glass design language. Though not wildly different, this adds new rounded icons to the operating system in many apps, and debuts a new glassy look to many UI elements.
This means you have to get used to some icons, search bars and other parts of apps being translucent with a glasslike effect.
Available for every iPhone back to and including 2019’s iPhone 11, iOS 26’s Liquid Glass look has caused a bit of a stir in the vocal online Apple community. Apart from not liking the change, some people have said they find it difficult to read some texts in certain apps because of the transparent app elements.
That might be why in the latest iOS 26.1 beta, Apple has added the option to tone down the glassiness. A beta version is a version of software that is in testing. People can voluntarily join Apple’s developer and public betas of iOS with the understanding that the software is not final, and there could be bugs and performance issues.
As spotted by MacRumors, Apple has added a Liquid Glass toggle in under Settings > Display & Brightness. You can either keep the Liquid Glass elements as ‘Clear’, as they are in the current version of iOS 26, or change the toggle to the new ‘Tinted’ option. This changes the opacity of the glassy parts of the OS so they are less transparent.
This could be a response to iPhone owners saying they are finding text harder to read since the visual change.
In the current version, when text in an app scrolls behind an on-screen button, you can see text through the button. With ‘Tinted’ on, it is not as visible.
“Choose your preferred look for Liquid Glass. Clear is more transparent, revealing the content beneath”, the new Settings option says.
“Tinted increases opacity and adds more contrast.”
This option calls to mind Apple’s existing options within iOS’s settings for accessibility that can increase your iPhone text’s contrast, reduce transparency and blur of some backgrounds or bolden text to make it easier to read.
The fact this change is in the fourth and latest iOS 26.1 beta not only suggests that the feature will come to everyone in the public release of iOS 26.1, but that that release is not far away.
