On Monday, Apple released iOS 26 Beta 2, addressing a significant issue with its new user interface, Liquid Glass, especially regarding Control Center. Liquid Glass was unveiled at WWDC 2025 earlier this month.
Liquid Glass, which redefines the aesthetic of iOS, iPadOS, and other Apple platforms, draws inspiration from the optical properties of glass, emphasizing light refraction and translucency to create a sleek, modern look. However, the initial developer beta of iOS 26 drew criticism from early testers who highlighted flaws in the interface’s readability and usability, particularly in the Control Center.
Accessed by swiping down from the top right corner of the iPhone’s display, the Control Center’s semi-transparent design made buttons and sliders difficult to distinguish from the Home Screen’s icons and widgets visible beneath it.
yeah i cant defend this pic.twitter.com/MmFQ4hMjba
— Holly – I like tech (@AnxiousHolly) June 10, 2025
While some critiques of the unfinished beta were arguably premature, the feedback prompted Apple to act swiftly. In the latest beta, the company enhanced the Control Center’s background blur, effectively reducing the visibility of underlying Home Screen content and improving clarity and usability, marking a step toward refining the ambitious Liquid Glass design.
The background blur in Control Center changed to make readability better.
Left: beta 1. Right: beta2.#iOS26 #Apple pic.twitter.com/9w6pcusbfv
— Bas van der Ploeg (@basvanderploeg) June 23, 2025
MacDailyNews Take: Significantly better. More work to do vis-à-vis Liquid Glass for Apple throughout the summer.
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dumb and dumber … no more innovation .. becoming AppleSoft with crap functionality and convoluted design. here’s and idea .. fix Mail, Safari and all the other software that doesn’t work instead of cluttering up the UX. Steve Jobs = Simplify. Tim Cook = ?????????
It’s one of AAPL’s releases that makes this user wonder who ever thought it was ready, or if it was at a stage that users would dismiss? It was so “clear” it was bad…pre-beta.
The solution is almost exactly like foreshortening, or result of a large aperture in photography…which puts everything out of focus (backround here), except for the subject. It could be stunning/rich.
But then I come back to; who thought….
What Apple needs is a setting in accessibility that has a transparency slider. That would be more useful than the all or none approach currently used.
Frosted Liquid Glass.
Interesting that they developed this process called Beta that lets them release something less than perfect then iteratively improve it till it is ready for general release.
Beta or Alpha they’ll all get criticized either way, even Apple rumors that turn out to be totally false are heavily criticized.
I agree with you, and most of your comments. But in this case you don’t know what Alpha means. Alpha comes before Beta.
Accessed by swiping down from the top right corner of the iPhone’s display, the Control Center’s semi-transparent design made buttons and sliders difficult to distinguish from the Home Screen’s icons and widgets visible beneath it.
What’s hilarious is they announce this whole new design language called “Liquid Glass” and within two weeks they’re moving away from it.
Apple is a total clusterfuxk. They don’t have the right people making final decisions. Just a bunch of people doing crap keeping the ship afloat.
Some of the bigger, core ideas are good like better multi-tasking on the iPad, and some design elements across all devices I like, but Apple needs someone to really lead design. Craig isn’t that person. He’s too technical and not design savvy, which is fine.
They need a new Ive.
Too bad some of the people who gave us shit-tastic iOS7 felt they should have a do-over.
Who are these idiots? Why do they mistakenly think people want more blur. More flatness. More layers to swipe. More skinny fonts with miniscule differences between l, I, |, and 1. More gray and monochrome look. ?!?!?!?!
I am not at all impressed.
I mean, I get that Apple’s trying to be all fancy with this Liquid Glass thing, but if I need a PhD to figure out how to turn on my Wi-Fi, we have a problem, right? 😂
Props to Apple for listening to feedback! But let’s be real, maybe they should hire some folks with normal eyesight for testing next time, huh? 😜