This illusion of optical liquid glass on iOS 26 drives me crazy

My colleagues did not believe me when I told them that all my application icons looked slightly twisted after updating my iPhone 16 pro to iOS 26 and obtained the new Apple liquid glass user interface.

I told our journalist Kyle Barr staff – a complete guru of consumption technologies, notice – to look at my home screen and tell me that my icons tied up slightly to the left, like the tower leaning in Pisa. “I don’t see it,” he said, trying to convince me that there was no inclination. He checked his own newly updated iPhone 14 Pro and has not seen inclined icons either.

It turns out that we are both reason.

To create the effect of glass and all its reflective and shimmering properties, iOS 26 forces each icon of the home screen of your iPhone to have a slight glow to them in the corners at the top left and bottom right. This gives the most subtle parallax effect when you tilt your iPhone, creating the illusion that they have the thinnest depth layer.

Against most of the wallpapers at home – especially more colorful – the icons of LaApp do not seem biased with the eye. All shades keep attention from the corners of the refraction application. But this is not the case with many dark wallpapers, or solid black as I have it on my iPhone. At the top of a pure black wallpaper with the icons set to “dark”, “clear” or “tinted”, everything seems tilted. I found it a little disorienting and a little frustrating if I look at my home screen for more than a few seconds.

I am not the only embarrassed by this illusion of optics. An article on R / iOS has more than 2.5,000 votes and nearly 500 comments when writing this document. “The Glow Frame effect gives applications the inclination, and it’s really distracting for me (I even feel a little stunned),” wrote the user Tantunidevourer.

People who had not noticed it after updating their iPhones confirmed the tilted icons. “I had not noticed it at first glance, but now I cannot not see the inclined application icons,” wrote Silacko user. Another Reddit user, OrganicCofuffeebean, said: “This update makes me feel drunk.”

Some users have suggested deactivating the parallax effect buried in the accessibility section in the Settings application. Apple added a “movement reduction” parameter after users complained about the icon icon animations in / out in iOS 7 causing dizziness and nausea. (I was one of these users who felt nauseous to the effect of the zoom icon.) Activate the reduction of movement kills animations, and the additional parameter of “cross -transitions” helps “reduce the movement for user interface controls which slide when appearing and disappearance”, according to Apple’s description. I lit the two parameters and I can confirm that it does not delete the corners of the refractive application icon. Perhaps Apple will add another rocking to the constantly increased accessibility section in a future software update. At this point, why not let users decide how much they want iOS 26 liquidians and glassy on their devices with a sort of cursor parameter that allows you to adjust transparency?

With Liquid Glass, Apple was going for a unified design language that crosses all its products, from iPhone to iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. Some people like the fluid interface; Others hate him. If you are the latter, you can make liquid glass less liquid and glassy with some accessibility adjustments.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say all IOS 26 is an “optical nightmare”, like the user of Reddit Demenghi, but I think there is room for improvement, or at least, more personalization must be added.