- Apple has announced a major redesign with the announcement of iOS 26, and it's called Liquid Glass.
- It gives a transparent, glass-like look to the iPhone UI and brings updates to Camera, Phone, Messages, and other apps.
- Apple Intelligence also receives improvements, including custom emoji creation in Genmoji with ChatGPT.
If you have an iPhone, today is a big day for you as Apple has just announced a major redesign for iOS at WWDC 2025 (Worldwide Developers Conference). The new design language for iOS 26 has been dubbed Liquid Glass.
As the name suggests, the Liquid Glass design will give a new glass-like UI overhaul to your iPhone and change how you interact with the operating system.
Liquid Glass brings a transparent glass look to everything, whether we are talking about icons, menus, lock screen, or widgets. The entire iOS 26 redesign has a glassmorphic effect throughout the interface, coupled with interactive springy animations. There’s also a new “Clear” theme (see the image below) to help reflect the see-through glass effect.
Along with the clear motif, the Liquid Glass design language also brings design changes to the stock apps. The camera app now has a simpler layout, and one of the lockscreen clocks can stretch to fill the screen. You can even turn on spatial scenes to add a 3D effect to your lockscreen wallpapers.
The Phone app lets you pin contacts and screen calls to avoid spam calls. There’s also a new Hold Assist feature that can stay on hold for you while you are off doing other important stuff.
The Messages app now lets you set backgrounds and introduces polls. Apple Intelligence can also chime in to suggest when a poll is necessary. You can also say goodbye to a cluttered Messages list, as Apple finally adds the ability to hide unknown senders.
The controls and other UI elements also look cleaner with this update. The tab bar now floats over the content in the background. This is most visible in apps like Apple Music, News, and Podcasts. The menus and options also stretch and shrink accordingly to better match the rest of the Liquid Glass interface.
Furthermore, Apple Intelligence is receiving some much-needed improvements too. You can now mix and match two emojis in Genmoji to create a new one. If you need more customisation, then you can bring up ChatGPT to add text prompts to generate a custom emoji.
All this is coming with the new iOS 26, which is part of Apple’s latest year-centric renaming scheme for their entire OS portfolio. The latest update will be available for iPhone 11 and above, with Apple Intelligence features coming to iPhone 15 Pro and later. This is a developing story, so stay tuned to Beebom for more updates on WWDC 25.
