Apple yields: 'Tinted' control in iOS 26.1 beta 4 tones down Liquid Glass after backlash

Apple is soft-reversing one of the most disputed visual decisions it has shipped to the iPhone in years. Following weeks of criticism of the shimmering 'Liquid Glass' user interface in iOS 26, the company has begun testing a setting called 'Tinted' that tones down the gloss and restores a flatter, calmer reading surface.

The option is not live for the public yet: it is currently confined to iOS 26.1 beta 4 builds for developers and public beta testers, according to early coverage by The Verge and 9to5Mac.

Liquid Glass — the jelly-like translucent layer behind panels and widgets — was presented at WWDC 2024 as a step toward 'material made of light.' On stage, it looked cinematic. Once shipped to hundreds of millions of phones, the reception was far colder.

Designers and accessibility advocates said the surface introduced visual noise, undermined outdoor readability and increased cognitive drag during prolonged reading. Ars Technica wrote that the material 'adds zero information while adding constant motion,' describing it as fatiguing under real-world light.

Some of the toughest criticism came from high-brightness markets — the Gulf included — where reflective UI layers become liabilities under full sun.

In local UAE forums and enterprise IT channels, the complaint was less about aesthetics than integrity of use: a premium handset whose interface washes out outdoors erodes its own claim to premium. The discontent also penetrated corporate and education fleets, where administrators signalled that the new glass look created avoidable legibility and compliance risks.

Apple’s answer, for now, is not to delete Liquid Glass but to downgrade its dominance. In 26.1 beta 4, 'Tinted' lives inside appearance controls — not buried under accessibility — implying Apple sees this as a mainstream preference rather than a disability carve-out.

The setting suppresses the bloom, mutes internal highlight contrast and produces a panel closer to pre-Liquid generations. MacRumors reported the company internally frames the change as 'option, not reversal'.

The move echoes past retreats. Apple flattened skeuomorphism in 2013 after cultural fatigue, though this time the trigger is structural: phones now host always-on AI interactions and are read for longer under harsher light, raising the cost of decorative motion and gloss. In that sense, 'Tinted' is less an apology than an acknowledgement that modern surfaces must be authored for photons and physiology, not for the demo screen.

Apple has given no timetable for when 'Tinted' exits beta or whether it will ship enabled by default. For now the concession exists only in 26.1 beta 4, and only for those who go looking.iphone