My Week of Transparent Living With Apple’s ‘More Clear’ Liquid Glass Setting

I scroll on my phone, sipping connected an overpriced espresso tonic astatine a San Francisco café. I ticker arsenic glassy notifications popular up connected my location screen, 1 aft another, distorting the apical enactment of app icons successful neat succession. Similar to however the solid successful my manus refracts the coffee’s colors, the warping effect of Apple’s Liquid Glass tugs astatine the edges of whatever's down each notification, disappearing a 2nd later.

Apple dropped the nationalist beta for iOS 27 successful mid-July, with the software’s afloat merchandise expected successful September. The beta mentation of iOS includes a caller slider for adjusting Liquid Glass’s quality crossed your iPhone. Apple’s translucent operating strategy was polarizing erstwhile it launched successful 2025, with immoderate criticizing however the plan impacted substance legibility. In response, Apple rolled retired updates that tampered with the Liquid Glass effect, making the smartphone interface much opaque.

With iOS 27, Apple gives users the enactment to marque Liquid Glass adjacent much transparent than its default. In the existent nationalist beta, this prime is disposable successful Settings nether the Appearance tab. If you pat connected Liquid Glass here, you tin resistance it to the near for a much transparent experience.

Fear not—if you don’t consciousness the aforesaid mode arsenic I bash astir transparency—you tin resistance that aforesaid slider to the close and boost the wide opacity of Liquid Glass. There’s inactive the enactment to Reduce Transparency and Increase Contrast arsenic well.

I instantly cranked my settings to maximum clarity aft I downloaded the nationalist beta and near the mounting connected for a week to get the afloat experience. I recognize wherefore immoderate similar the heavy tinted mentation oregon request to power it for accessibility reasons, yet I reveled successful the warped colors and characters arsenic I experienced Liquid Glass successful its clearest glory.

Early during my tests, I recovered myself dilatory scrolling up and down connected my Slack messages, watching arsenic the names of Slack rooms refracted down the paper barroom astatine the bottommost of my smartphone screen. I watched arsenic the letters curled into meaningless lines and past reformed, unharmed, connected the different side. The much I stared, the much whimsical it felt, and the much I appreciated Apple’s glassy plan risk.