Credit: Andrew Cunningham

Apple’s new Liquid Glass user interface design was one of the most noticeable and divisive features of its major software updates this year. It added additional fluidity and translucency throughout iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and Apple’s other operating systems, and as we noted in our reviews, the default settings weren’t always great for readability.

The upcoming 26.1 update for all of those OSes is taking a step toward addressing some of the complaints, though not by changing things about the default look of Liquid Glass. Rather, the update is adding a new toggle that will let users choose between a Clear and Tinted look for Liquid Glass, with Clear representing the default look and Tinted cranking up the opacity and contrast.

The new toggle adds a half-step in between the default visual settings and the “reduce transparency” setting, which aside from changing a bunch of other things about the look and feel of the operating system is buried further down inside the Accessibility options. The Tinted toggle does make colors and vague shapes visible beneath the glass panes, preserving the general look of Liquid Glass while also erring on the side of contrast and visibility, where the “reduce transparency” setting is more of an all-or-nothing blunt instrument.

This being beta software, the toggle doesn’t always behave predictably. I found it behaved better and more consistently on iOS than on macOS, where some apps wouldn’t toggle back to “clear” mode without a system restart, and some other parts of the OS (like Control Center) didn’t seem to honor the setting at all. Hopefully this behavior will become more predictable and consistent in the final release.

Apple will likely release the 26.1 updates to all of its operating systems to the general public at some point in the next few weeks, including watchOS, tvOS, visionOS, and the HomePod OS. Aside from the Liquid Glass toggle, they should squish other early bugs, patch security holes, and add a handful of new features that weren’t ready for the initial release.