Apple has faced a lot of flak for its new Liquid Glass design language that made its debut with iOS 26. While some users absolutely loved the new UI from Apple, others couldn’t handle one bit of it. Early users had also pointed out legibility issues and eye strain due to Liquid Glass.
Thankfully, Apple has now woken up to the feedback from users and has added a new feature with iOS 26.1 Beta 4 which allows users to customize their Liquid Glass experience.
Users can now head to Settings to choose between the ‘Clear’ or ‘Tinted’ transparency setting for Liquid Glass. While the Clear setting maintains the original high transparency effect, the Tinted setting improves opacity and contrast of UI elements, which makes them easier to read.
How to change the new Liquid Glass setting in iOS 26.1 Beta 4?
- Make sure you have updated to the latest beta version.
- Go to Settings on your iPhone.
- Tap on Display & Brightness and then on Liquid Glass.
- You will now see the new transparency options.
In order to update to the new beta version, head over to beta.apple.com and then sign up for Apple’s beta updates.
Go to Settings and then navigate to General > Software Update > Beta Updates and select iOS 26 Public Beta. The new feature should land with the new iOS 26.1 stable update for all users soon enough.
Apart from the new Liquid Glass transparency setting, there is also a new option with iOS 26.1 Beta 4 that allows users to turn off the ability to open the camera from the lock screen. The new feature would give more privacy control to users, as they can stop strangers from taking pictures if they don’t have access to the lock screen password.
The stable iOS 26.1 update will also bring Apple Intelligence to new languages including Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese (Portugal), Swedish, Turkish, Chinese (Traditional), and Vietnamese.
Meanwhile, the Live Translation feature on AirPods will also be compatible with a fresh set of languages like Japanese, Korean, Italian, and Chinese (Mandarin and Simplified).
An earlier report had revealed that Apple could also be working on making third-party wearables more compatible with iOS in the future. The Macworld report found ‘some notable under-the-hood changes’ in a snippet of code in iOS 26.1 that shows Apple’s willingness to make its software more compatible with third-party accessories and smartwatches.
What are users saying about the new change?
“Looks more like glass and less like plastic when it’s tinted. I wish there was a setting to just increase blur without further tinting. iOS 7 type blur within the Liquid Glass effect would be a really cool frosted look.” wrote one user on Reddit
“Apple giving users control?! Hell has frozen over. Seems like they’ve gotten some serious feedback from the higher ups” commented another user
“It’s been pretty clear from the start of the whole Liquid Glass thing that this was the only way they were going to satisfy everyone. Some folks adored the announcement transparency and some want everything wholly frosted and every time they changed the UI to satisfy one group the other complained loudly. I’m glad I can get my proper transparency back instead of the nerfed version we got on release.” another user chimed in
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