As many now have commented on, today's OS 26 betas tone down the liquid glass effect quite a bit on many elements in the operating system, and I've collected a few that stand out to me.

Ignore any subtle size differences. The beta 2 screenshots are from an iPhone 16 Pro and beta 3 is from a 16 Pro Max.

Bottom Menus

Above is scrolling a social feed with an image behind the menu. This is a huge difference, and while I think it looks less cool when everything's hitting right, it's certainly more legible in the new beta.

Apple Music

This is kinda looking at the same thing, but I think Apple Music's chaotic, image-centric UI really shows the differences strongly here.

Photos

This difference is much more subtle, and a lot of the original clear glass material is still here, although it does present a bit differently. I'll be curious to see if this is intentional, or if it will get the more frosted look other menus have gotten in a future beta.

Mail

And finally, here's the buttons at the bottom of Mail messages that once again, I think look more plain now, but they're absolutely more legible.

Takeaways

As I wrote just a few days ago about the liquid glass UI in beta 2:

The highs are very high in my book, but there are still plenty of "yikes" moments that I wish weren't there and I hope get improved by the fall.

I still need to live with it more, but I think this round of changes thoroughly nips the "yikes" moments in the bud, but I have to admit the highs aren't as high as they were before, in my opinion. Above all else, a user interface must be usable, so I agree with this directional change, but it is a shame that it feels like a pretty significant walk back of the vision they presented just under a month ago. There's still plenty of glass here, but my immediate impressions using the new beta is that it feels a lot more plain than it did before.

That said, there's still plenty of time in the summer to tweak more, and I'd much rather have this ship to customers than what we had in beta 1, so we're making improvements on the whole.