Belated Liquid Glass on iPhone First Impressions
This morning I reluctantly updated my iPhone SE (3rd generation) from iOS 18.7.2 to iOS 26.2. I had been hoping for Santa Cook to bring me iOS 18.7.3 for Christmas. Apparently, though, we’ve all been naughty. Or maybe Cook himself is not nice. I was aware that it was (previously) possible to install iOS 18.7.3 by enabling beta software updates, but nowadays that requires enabling iCloud, which I refuse to do on my iPhone. According to MacRumors and my followers on social media, Apple has within the past 24 hours stopped providing 18.7.3 on the beta track. Moreover, Apple is providing restore image to developers for only a few iPhone models: XR, XS, and XS Max. Thus, it appears that iOS 18 is effectively discontinued on most devices, and iOS 18.7.2 suffers from actively exploited security vulnerabilities.
More on that here. I also somewhat involuntarily just updated to iOS 26.2, because I got a new Apple Watch and it refuses to pair with an iPhone running iOS 18.
What struck me on iPhone was something I hadn’t noticed as much on Mac and iPad: the animations.
[…]
There are quite a few visual glitches remaining, three months after the public release of the new operating system. If iOS 26.0 was half-baked, iOS 26.2 is at most two-thirds-baked.
Needless to say, I enabled Reduce Transparency in Display & Text Size Accessibility Settings as soon as I updated to iOS 26. I had already enabled Show Borders and On/Off Labels in iOS 18 or earlier.
[…]
By the way, don’t get me started on the Liquid Crass replacement of close buttons with checkboxes. (On iOS 18, the checkbox in the video was a Done button.) This change is insane! And I’ve already had a customer confused by the checkbox, thinking that they had to “approve” something in the window.
I’d seen the betas, too, and already knew I didn’t like Liquid Glass. What struck me in everyday use is how many glitches remain and that the accessibility settings don’t work very well. There are glass borders that start out with square corners and then become rounded. As with previous recent versions, various things just don’t look good with Reduce Transparency enabled—ugly colors, edges that are harder to see in a sea of white—like I’m being penalized for using it. I ended up turning it off because sometimes the keyboard doesn’t show the labels of the keys. I find the Liquid Glass animations annoying, too, but many of them remain even after enabling Reduce Motion. Prefer Cross-Fade Transitions helps but looks odd, in my opinion, and causes temporarily glitches with curved outlines being left behind. I guess it’s easier to not consider the “bloody ROI” if you don’t commit the resources to actually finishing the job.
Previously:
- iOS 26.2
- Liquid Glass Toggle in appleOS 26.1 Beta
- Shipping Liquid Glass
- Apple Watch SE 3
- Glowtime Ennui
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Interesting wasn't aware that 18.7.3 was only briefly available as a beta. If we never get a release 18.7.3 it'll be because the spiteful Liquid Asses at Apple have decided to expose OS 18 users who despise v26 to known and circulating security exploits. Upgrade or get F'd! We'll see about that.
Glad I picked up the update before they removed it from the beta track. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm really starting to despise Apple as a company. They botched iOS 26, and their response is to force users onto it any way possible. Preventing the 18.7.3 security update on devices perfectly capable of running it is ridiculous.
