Apple is still tweaking the Liquid Glass look and feel

The iOS 26.6 developer beta released earlier today brings a few animation and interface tweaks, indicating that Apple is still working on the balance between practical usability and its original vision for Liquid Glass. Here’s what’s changed.

Liquid Glass has changed quite a bit since Apple’s original announcement of the new visual language at WWDC last June.

Following an initial pushback and a significant dialing down of the Liquid Glass effect across the system during the first betas, Apple gradually eased the transparency and distortion effects back until the release of iOS 26.

Even so, Apple continued to refine the look, introducing a Settings toggle that lets users choose between Clear and Tinted interface options on iOS 26.1, and a slider for adjusting the Lock Screen clock on the first developer beta of iOS 26.2.

With the second iOS 26.2 beta released today, Apple tweaked the menu opening animation, bringing it closer to what the company presented at WWDC, as noted by Aaron Perris on X:

For reference, here is a comparison between Apple’s original announcement at WWDC, and what the animation currently looks like on iOS 26.1:

Today’s beta also seems to have slightly tweaked the “X”, “Show more”, and “Clear All Notifications” buttons that appear above notification stacks on the Lock Screen, bringing the Liquid Glass effect to these interface elements too, as noted by user mvbalan on Reddit:

What do you think about the new animations and effects? Let us know in the comments.