How to disable liquid glass in iOS 26?

I totally get where you’re coming from — visual changes in interfaces do mess with your eyes, and when things become less readable, that’s super frustrating. Here are a few thoughts + tips, and some background that might help explain why these changes hurt so much — maybe they’ll help you decide what to do next.

dzeldaz wrote:

Sounds like alpejohn is frustrated and that’s the best way to vent.

That is not, however, the purpose of this forum. This is a technical support forum. For venting, try your favorite social media platform.

I already done that and it hasn’t made much difference. I hate this liquid glass functionality. Everything is different, I wish i could go back to previous display. Also since updating whenever I change my screen it shakes a bit goes up and down.

I agree with you everything is overly animated and honestly, it’s kind of giving me a bit of motion sickness and when you go to the accessibility and reduce that, it just has like this really harsh way of transitioning things that is also not appealing. I don’t know what’s going on here, but everything doesn’t need to swoop or dance and play around with itself. It is literally giving me a headache.

Since the question has already been answered here, that there is no way to go back to the previous look, I want to voice how I feel.

I have to be honest, as a customer, it is updates such as these that turn me off from wanting to use their products any longer. It feels like that with a lot of these one-way updates, consumers no longer have any preferences to what works for them, only what works for the manufacturers. It feels like these updates are saying, “We do this, because we can.” Sure, there are limits to what customers should be able to do, but in the past, there was a lot more customization, preferences, and more flexibility. I do work on the iPad a lot, and so it kind of became my home. But when there is less and less ways on how to design my home, then it does get me to want to look for other alternatives, and not stay.

Bleduc1 wrote:

Since the question has already been answered here, that there is no way to go back to the previous look, I want to voice how I feel.

I have to be honest, as a customer, it is updates such as these that turn me off from wanting to use their products any longer. It feels like that with a lot of these one-way updates, consumers no longer have any preferences to what works for them, only what works for the manufacturers. It feels like these updates are saying, “We do this, because we can.” Sure, there are limits to what customers should be able to do, but in the past, there was a lot more customization, preferences, and more flexibility. I do work on the iPad a lot, and so it kind of became my home. But when there is less and less ways on how to design my home, then it does get me to want to look for other alternatives, and not stay.

You are not the customer of anyone participating in this forum. Apple doesn't read here for feedback or suggestions. You can, however, let them know your thoughts here:

Product Feedback - Apple

Personally, I really like it.

Please allow the option to disable the Liquid Glass feature, the flashes of lights when clicking on things is causing me to get severe migraines. None of the settings I have tried have made a difference. I’m very sensitive to changes in lights and/or flashes of lights :(

My screen flickers on the top when changing to another screen after updating to iOS 26. This hurts my eyes, so since updating I don’t want to spend time on my iPhone as i find it very uncomfortable to work with, i get headaches.

I don’t like the liquid glass effect at all. I also don’t like that. I’m seeing the occasional flashing and blinking on certain steps that I’m taking. Lastly, until I turned off the transparency and went to dark mode. The URL on the web browser was very difficult to read.

Apple, if you’re paying any attention to this your .1 release needs to have a way to turn off liquid glass. You may not think so but a lot of us use our devices for serious purposes. Liquid glass is nothing but a gimmick that you put in there for people that want something bright and flashy to be amused by. I need those such things. Apple Intelligence and everything else may be improvements. Liquid glass is nothing more and nothing less than an annoyance. I’d like to see the option to turn it off across all of the operating systems.

Thank you I just checked and Reduce Motion was off. The only good thing with this update is that for the past one year I didn’t get any sound notifications for whenever I got New Mail, i called the apple support they went through some steps with me but couldn’t fix it, still wasn’t fixed after updating few times before this latest one but after this update the sound notifications is fixed. But now we have lost more problems.

The-Friendly-Grizzly wrote:

I don’t like the liquid glass effect at all. I also don’t like that. I’m seeing the occasional flashing and blinking on certain steps that I’m taking. Lastly, until I turned off the transparency and went to dark mode. The URL on the web browser was very difficult to read.

Apple, if you’re paying any attention to this your .1 release needs to have a way to turn off liquid glass. You may not think so but a lot of us use our devices for serious purposes. Liquid glass is nothing but a gimmick that you put in there for people that want something bright and flashy to be amused by. I need those such things. Apple Intelligence and everything else may be improvements. Liquid glass is nothing more and nothing less than an annoyance. I’d like to see the option to turn it off across all of the operating systems.

Apple isn't paying attention here on this user to user only forum. If you want Apple to hear you, use this link --> Product Feedback - Apple

Everything now takes so many more steps to do, how is that an update? To exit a tab you have to click on the bottom right and then…. And don’t get me started on the intrusive positioning of the contact’s name in texts… honestly… what were they thinking? And why does this new view all of a sudden make my phone feel, physically heavier?

All that to say, is there anyway I can revert back to my previous layout and setup of literally everything, not just the display, but the layout of the apps also? Thanks

[Edited by Moderator]

I can’t believe Apple even shipped this!!!

I’m seriously considering returning my new phone just to not have to look at it.

If you follow Apple fan threads where everybody beta tests iOS every year, universally it was despised. You saw maybe one person like it out of 100. It’s not as bad in the transparency element. It just looks terrible. The new camera icon is just ridiculously bad.

I’ve never seen a more ugly UI in my entire life and I’ve lived through the UI of the 80s and the 90s

I really hope that there’s already a massive number of people wanting to get rid of it, but it sends Apple a message and a few updates from now they give people the ability to turn it off and go back to the old look

I’m terrified to see what it does to macOS

Nope. Nice try. If this were anything like aqua, it wouldn’t be revised by pretty much the entire Apple community. People would love to see aqua make a comeback. I’m not one of them, but there are fans of it and those people aren’t fans of this. Let me tell you read any forum about Apple products and you’ll find all the feedback you need to see. Apple should’ve done the same before they shipped this.