How to disable liquid glass in iOS 26?

Unfortunately the various settings many mention in this thread are band aid solutions that really don’t fix anything fully.

For me the worst time using my phone is In low light situations such as in bed with no lights on. Any videos or pages that have white seem to have the intensity amplified tenfold versus before iOS 26. I also notice a bug where even if I have my display brightness down very low, some videos render very bright. Such as scrolling through instagram stories or reels. It’s hard to explain but basically some videos are lower brightness like how I have the display set and then some videos that have brighter colors, it’s almost as if the brightness level of the phone triples for those videos. There appears to be something wrong with the way the light / screen display sensors perform ever since iOS 26.

Like many on here, I’ve spent hours attempting to tweak and alter settings in combination, by themselves, and all at once, and nothing has worked. I continued to have terrible migraine, headaches, eye strain, and even at times nausea. I have no prior health problems, and my eyes are 20/20 vision.

I truly feel my eye/vision is degrading since this horrid update. I’ve relentlessly dropped feedback on Apple’s form submission page, But still months later it is not working right and my eye strain and headaches have continued, with no health issues - only iOS 26 induced. If I don’t use my phone for 2 days it improves. If I switch to the iOS 18 phone I have as an older work phone, no issues.

fluxappeal wrote:

I haven't seen anyone complain about transparent overlays (see attached) - haven't had time to visit genius bar to inquire, but my overlays when swiping down are also transparent. Like many others, my eyesight is suffering because of this update

My eyesight would be suffering too if I used a Home Screen pic as my Lock Screen wallpaper. Don't do that and stick to one of the solid wallpapers. You will find it that to be much easier on your eyes. Just because you can do that does not mean you should.

fluxappeal wrote:

I often pull down to look at notifications while in other apps without having to stop what I'm doing, so while it does disappear on release, it's an extra swipe now + hard on the eyes. Restart doesn't change it, it's me who must effectively change my use of the phone to adapt. Thanks for confirming this the behavior of the screen now.

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PhotosSSD wrote:

Agree. Looks incomplete and shoddy.

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Enough to make me want to try a different phone.

No one posting here has any vested interest (or possibly any interest at all) in what phone you choose. You should always get the one that best meets your needs.

QuiGonJohn wrote:

First, don't like Liquid Glass, but thank you for these tips. I tried several combinations, but the issue now is the TIME as it is displayed on the Lock Screen when you wake up the phone (tap the screen or press the R side button). It used to be Solid White. Now it has various amounts of transparency and even Reduced Transparency ON did not completely fix this. We did turn on Borders, which helped a little. Any way to get that back to a Solid Color?

Yes, you can make the lock screen clock solid. Read this, which explains just about every option you have with Liquid Glass --> Liquid Glass - Love It Or Hate It - It's … - Apple Community

Twiscordia wrote:

It's not even atheistically pleasing.

I like it. But neither of our opinions is of any particular importance in this user-to-user technical support forum.

You can let Apple know your thoughts here:

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QuiGonJohn wrote:

That's my plan for my iPhone. My wife got 26 a couple weeks ago and I wound up here trying to find out if Liquid Glass could be "turned off". On mine, I have disabled automatic updates and will hold off doing an update for as long as possible. Until it becomes such a problem that I have to. Like if some app won't load unless I update.

You can do that since it's your iPhone. But app compatibility is the least of your worries. iOS updates also provide security updates, which are far more important and by not updating, you are leaving yourself vulnerable to exploits which have been addressed in the iOS updates. That would be much more troubling to me.

QuiGonJohn wrote:

At the very least, Apple could make the further updates to v26 such that they RETAIN settings a user did. So people would not have to go in and change all the various settings that affect Liquid Glass (make it more like previous versions).

Hello~ Please let Apple know. Arguing the point here is futile.

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~Katana-San~

How do we request a change from apple?

You can make a suggestion to Apple here -

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Hello~ You need to let Apple know your views in the link below as they will not see them here.

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~Katana-San~

Guys I got it:

I managed to clear it completely :

I went in a shop, bought a new iPhone 16. Disabled auto update on settings.

Now my phone is amazing again.

(I am being serious unfortunately)

It needs to be gone.

Then click on the link in the post just above yours and let Apple know. Complaining about it in this user to user forum accomplishes nothing

Here is the simplest answer… You Can’t. But if you have IOS 18 backup(s), you can open Time Machine on Mac and select an iOS 18 backup, with iPhone in recovery mode.

Unfortunately, reduce transparency and increase contrast settings only somewhat mitigate the issue. Still hard to see.

Sheml21 wrote:

Totally agree. Its awful!

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