My week of transparent living with Apple’s “clearest” liquid glass setting

I moved My phone as I sip an expensive espresso in a San Francisco café. I watch as glassy notifications appear on my home screen, one by one, distorting the top row of app icons in a neat succession. Similar to the way the glass in my hand breaks in coffee colors, the warping effect that the color of apples creates Liquid glass It pulls out the edges of everything behind each notification, and disappears after one second.

Apple has dropped the public beta for iOS 27 In mid-July, the software is expected to be fully released in September. The iOS beta includes a new slider for adjusting the appearance of Liquid Glass across your iPhone. Transparent operating system from Apple It was polarizing When it launched in 2025, some criticized how the design affected text legibility. In response, Apple rolled out updates that toyed with the Liquid Glass effect, creating a display Smartphone More ambiguous interface.

With iOS 27, Apple is giving users the option to make Liquid Glass more transparent than its default counterpart. In the current public beta, this option is available in Settings under appearance Unpaid invoice. If you click on Liquid glass Here, you can drag it to the left for a more transparent experience.

“Clearer” is on the left, with the more ambiguous look on the right.

Photo: Rhys Rogers

Fear not – if you don’t feel the same way about transparency as I do – you can drag the same slider to the right and boost the overall opacity of the liquid glass. There is still an option to Reduce transparency and Increase contrast also.

I immediately adjusted my settings to maximum clarity after I downloaded the public beta and left the setting running for a week to get the full experience. I understand why some might prefer the highly tinted version or need to switch it up for accessibility reasons, however I enjoyed the distorted colors and characters while experiencing the liquid glass at its clearest.

Early in my tests, I found myself slowly scrolling up and down my Slack messages, watching the names of Slack rooms break out behind the menu bar at the bottom of my smartphone screen. I watched the letters curl into meaningless lines, then return to the other side unharmed. The more I stared, the more strange I felt, and the more I appreciated the risks of Apple’s glass design.

The “Clearest” setting makes the icons below notifications glow with an almost Liquid Glass effect.Photo: Rhys Rodgers