How to disable liquid glass in iOS 26?

I am so happy to hear I’m not the only one who doesn’t like it. Apple goes on and on and on about how gorgeous it is. It’s like a middle school art project. And the color of the Apple apps (in particular games, music and find my) are just awful. And no I won’t get used to it. I’ve been using iPadOS 26 and MacOS Tahoe since the public beta came out. I kept thinking they would “fix” the not so gorgeousness of it before the final release. I just don’t get it.

Most everyone that I spoke with ( family, friends & coworkers) aren’t crazy about it. They can live with it but they’d like the option to be able to toggle it off as would I. I’ve made the adjustments in my settings but I’m still not completely satisfied. Apple really should’ve given us the right to choose for those who aren’t interested. The one feature that I’m glad that they did think ahead about was giving us the option to make the time solid.

It is 100% doable and quite simple to go back to iOS 18 if you have a Mac and cable capable of data transfer (not just a cheap charger cable). I know this because I did it.

You are talking about deleting a Beta version of iOS 26 and going back to iOS 18. Apple provides instructions on how to do this.

But.....if you have installed an official release version of iOS 26.....you cannot go back to iOS 18.

Big difference. If you are going to reply to try to help other users, at least provide them with all of the facts.

Totatora wrote:

It is 100% doable and quite simple to go back to iOS 18 if you have a Mac and cable capable of data transfer (not just a cheap charger cable). I know this because I did it.

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It is only doable if you used that same computer to upgrade to your last iOS18 and the legal update file is still on the machine. You are in that situation? ? Good for you. Any other situation is illegal jailbreak.

This is a visual effect and not a request for a downgrade. Honestly, I’m surprised they’re reintroducing this Windows 2000 approach as it causes graphics to work harder, which was one of the issues MS had to address at that time. This has nothing to do with the operating system.

3mack wrote:

This is a visual effect and not a request for a downgrade. Honestly, I’m surprised they’re reintroducing this Windows 2000 approach as it causes graphics to work harder, which was one of the issues MS had to address at that time. This has nothing to do with the operating system.

It has EVERYTHING to do with the operating system. It is hard coded and a fundamental part of the operating system.

robman8 wrote:

It's usually just complainers that post, so I'll chime in on behalf of my 60 year old wife. She actually needs to take motion sickness pills when we take road trips,( i only say that bc some people mentioned it lol). She loves the new look, didn't want to reduce anything. Says it just seems clearer to her. So, it doesn't have to do with age, but more with people who have trouble adapting to change.

I'm only a little older than your wife (but don't suffer from motion sickness, thankfully!) and I agree with both her and you. I think there are people who always resist change and people who are more comfortable with it. It's not age, it's just a personality type.

You know nothing about visualization I’m guessing. Transparency effects ALWAYS take multiple rendering passes and therefore eat more resources - and therefore battery. Even a simple painters algorithm would require back to front sorting for every pass and be power consumptive.

You bet your bippy LG is eating more power than their past UI’s.

And one other comment about somehow LG being ‘hardwired’ and therefore not changeable: if that’s the case it’s a bad design. A good design- abstracted properly - would make turning it off and on just a simple switch.

I won’t say whether the iOS APIs are good design or not - but I will say Apple is not a big believer in backward compatibility.

bubba38n wrote:

You know nothing about visualization I’m guessing. Transparency effects ALWAYS take multiple rendering passes and therefore eat more resources - and therefore battery. Even a simple painters algorithm would require back to front sorting for every pass and be power consumptive.

You bet your bippy LG is eating more power than their past UI’s.

And one other comment about somehow LG being ‘hardwired’ and therefore not changeable: if that’s the case it’s a bad design. A good design- abstracted properly - would make turning it off and on just a simple switch.

I won’t say whether the iOS APIs are good design or not - but I will say Apple is not a big believer in backward compatibility.

I ran iOS 26 on my iPhone 16 Pro Max for 5 days, before getting my iPhone 17 Pro Max yesterday. And battery performance was completely unaffected by iOS 26 on both our iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max. If, as you say it takes more power, it certainly didn't have an affect on our phones and it's not having any affect on our new iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max. If your reason for wanting Liquid Glass removed is because of a fear of using more power, it is an unfounded fear at best.

quasar88 wrote:

Why did someone think this was a good idea? Extremely distracting!

I love how it looks and I'm someone. But you aren't addressing Apple here, since you seem to not like it, you can give feedback to Apple here --> Product Feedback - Apple

100% agree to have an option to turn this off completely. It’s terrible. I have the reduce transparency turned on, but when sleep mode is on, it seems to change it back, and the lock screen clock is not readable.

[Edited by Moderator]

They didn’t say they disliked it. They said it makes the display less accessible, and I’m having the same trouble. It doesn’t sound like you can relate to our experiences—how frustrating it is when Apple makes it harder for us to use our devices—but please know tech reviewers’ feelings and opinions about it are entirely irrelevant.

They’re just asking for the option to disable Liquid Glass, period, regardless of how you define “feature.” (And I know, this isn’t the forum for that, but please cut DanielleMarie89 and the rest of us whose devices have now become less usable some slack.) Reducing transparency doesn’t affect the flashes of light they were referring to—I’m betting that’s one of the settings they mentioned trying unsuccessfully.

You can’t ignore them? Obviously many of us found the option that most people explained to be inadequate/ineffective. All the repeat posts about reducing transparency must not annoy you, given you did the same thing. But venting your frustrations about commenters really isn’t more appropriate than people venting their frustrations about Liquid Glass.

Five_bells wrote:

You can’t ignore them? Obviously many of us found the option that most people explained to be inadequate/ineffective. All the repeat posts about reducing transparency must not annoy you, given you did the same thing. But venting your frustrations about commenters really isn’t more appropriate than people venting their frustrations about Liquid Glass.

I'm sure I could, but it's really not your place to coach me on when I can post or what I can post. This is a forum for people to ask a technical question and for other users to help them. This forum is not the place to vent. People should go somewhere else, like Reddit if they really want to vent. Rant posts, which are really venting are routinely removed by Apple Moderation. A lot of posts have been removed in this very thread. And since most people don't read past the first post, it's perfectly fine for me or anyone else to comment to them as long as we're being respectful, which I always am.