Liquid Glass in iOS 26: A Swift Developer’s Guide

Various UI components in iOS 26 adopting the new Liquid Glass design (dark mode). The Liquid Glass design language introduced in iOS 26 is a translucent, dynamic material that gives apps a polished “glass-like” appearance. It represents Apple’s most significant visual overhaul since iOS 7, with interface elements that look like animated glass layers floating above content . Liquid Glass elements blur and refract the content behind them, reflect ambient colors/light, and even react interactively to device motion and user input in real time  . In short, UI components in iOS 26 (buttons, toolbars, menus, etc.) appear as sleek glass panels that filter background content while dynamically responding to their surroundings.

Setting Up Your Project for Liquid Glass

To use Liquid Glass in your app, you’ll need to build with the iOS 26 SDK (e.g. Xcode that supports iOS 26 beta). Simply recompiling your app with iOS 26 will apply the new Liquid Glass style to standard system controls automatically . For example, default navigation bars, tab bars, and other UIKit components will adopt the floating glass appearance by default when running on iOS 26 . Ensure your deployment target and testing environment include iOS 26 so you can see these effects. (If you run your updated app on earlier iOS versions, those devices will not have Liquid Glass – more on backward compatibility later.)

Note: Apple provides a temporary opt-out (the UIDesignRequiresCompatibility Info.plist flag) if you aren’t ready to adopt the new look, but this is meant as a short-term workaround and will be removed by the next Xcode release . In general, it’s expected that new iOS 26 apps embrace the Liquid Glass design going forward.

Using Liquid Glass in SwiftUI Views

iOS 26 introduces a new SwiftUI view modifier called .glassEffect() that lets you apply the Liquid Glass material to your own custom views. Using this modifier is straightforward – you can call .glassEffect() on any SwiftUI view to “glassify” it, and SwiftUI will render that view with the translucent, blur-and-reflection effects automatically . This isn’t just a static background; the glass effect interacts with what’s behind the view and adapts its appearance dynamically (it can even cause your view’s content to switch between light and dark mode for contrast, depending on the backdrop) .

For example, to create a glassy background for a text label:

Text("Hello, World!")
    .padding(16)
    .glassEffect()

Applying .glassEffect() in this way will give the text a default glass backdrop (with appropriate blur and translucency) that blends with whatever is behind it. By default, the system uses a “regular” glass material style, but there are a few variations and options you can specify:
	•	.regular – The standard Liquid Glass appearance used throughout the system (moderate blur/translucency) . If you call glassEffect() with no parameters, this regular style is applied.
	•	.clear – A more transparent glass style (lighter blur and tint) for an even more see-through look . Use it as .glassEffect(.clear) if you want a subtler glass.
	•	.identity – A special “no glass” style. This effectively disables the glass effect, rendering the view normally. It’s useful if you need to turn off the glass conditionally (for example, toggling between a glass and non-glass state) . You can switch a view’s effect at runtime by swapping between .regular and .identity based on some state.

All of these Glass styles are of type Glass (a struct provided by SwiftUI), and you can modify them further:
	•	You can tint the glass with a color by calling .tint(Color) on the style. For instance, .glassEffect(.clear.tint(.red)) will infuse a subtle red hue into the glass  – useful if you want your glass elements to reflect a theme color or to distinguish game pieces by color. The tint is blended into the translucent material.
	•	You can make the glass interactive by appending .interactive() to the style. For example, .glassEffect(.regular.interactive()) creates a glass panel that reacts more dramatically to content and movement . An “interactive” glass will accentuate highlights and shadows based on user gestures (like presses or scrolls) and device motion, making it feel more alive. By default, the standard styles already reflect background content, but the interactive variant is “even more aggressive” in how it picks up and responds to underlying UI and gestures .
	•	You can also specify a shape for the glass effect region. By default, the effect covers the view’s frame using a system-defined shape (the DefaultGlassEffectShape), but you can provide any custom Shape. For example, if you want a circular glass button, you might use: .glassEffect(.regular, in: Circle()). For a rounded rectangle shape (like a tile or card), you could use: .glassEffect(.regular, in: RoundedRectangle(cornerRadius: 12)). SwiftUI will clip and render the glass material in that shape . This makes it easy to create glass panels with custom silhouettes. (If you don’t specify a shape, the effect will default to a rectangle or the view’s existing clip shape.)

Example – Custom Glass View

To illustrate, imagine a custom tile view for a game piece:

struct TileView: View {
    let value: Int
    var body: some View {
        Text("\(value)")
            .font(.largeTitle).bold()
            .padding(20)
            .glassEffect(
                .regular.tint(tileColor(for: value)),
                in: RoundedRectangle(cornerRadius: 8)
            )
    }
    func tileColor(for value: Int) -> Color {
        // Return a Color based on the tile value (e.g., higher values get warmer colors)
        // For simplicity, 2->blue, 4->green, 8->orange, etc.
    }
}

In this snippet, the Text is given a glass background in a rounded rectangle shape. We tint the glass using a color that depends on the tile’s value (so each number tile can have a slight color distinction while still looking like glass). The result is a translucent tile: you will faintly see the background through it, and it will reflect some of the background’s color. The text itself remains fully opaque on top, and SwiftUI will ensure it’s legible (Liquid Glass can automatically adjust contrast; e.g., if the background is very light, the glass might adopt a darker vibrancy so white text stays visible ).

Grouping Multiple Glass Views (GlassEffectContainer)

When you have multiple glass elements in proximity, you should use a GlassEffectContainer to manage them as a group. Simply applying .glassEffect to each view individually is not ideal if those views are meant to appear as a unified cluster – separate glass views won’t naturally interact with each other unless you group them . GlassEffectContainer { ... } is a container that tells SwiftUI to render all enclosed glass effects together on a single composited layer. This way, the glass elements can reflect each other’s presence (e.g. one glass button can subtly reflect light from an adjacent glass button), and the system can optimize the rendering of multiple overlapping translucent views .

Usage: Wrap the views that should share a glass layer inside GlassEffectContainer, for example:

GlassEffectContainer {
    HStack(spacing: 16) {
        Button(action: {...}) {
            Image(systemName: "gear")
                .frame(width: 40, height: 40)
        }
        .glassEffect(.regular.interactive(), in: Circle())

        Button(action: {...}) {
            Image(systemName: "questionmark.circle")
                .frame(width: 40, height: 40)
        }
        .glassEffect(.regular.interactive(), in: Circle())
    }
}

In this HStack of two round glass buttons (Settings and Help, for instance), the GlassEffectContainer ensures they share one continuous glass effect rather than rendering as isolated blobs. They will appear as two pieces of the same glass surface if they are close enough. The container also improves performance by drawing one unified glass layer for them .

You can control how glass elements merge or separate by adjusting the container’s spacing and using the union modifier:
	•	GlassEffectContainer(spacing: X) – The spacing parameter defines the distance at which separate glass shapes will “morph” together or pull apart. If two glass subviews are closer than this spacing, the framework will treat them as part of one continuous glass shape; if they are farther apart, they’ll appear as distinct glass pieces . Tweak this value to get the desired grouping behavior. You can even animate changes to spacing to smoothly merge or separate glass elements (a visual effect Apple calls morphing of the glass shape ).
	•	.glassEffectUnion(id: , namespace: ) – This view modifier lets you explicitly link glass effects by an identifier. If you have glass views that are not adjacent (or you want them to stay unified despite distance), give them the same id and a shared namespace using .glassEffectUnion. Any views with matching IDs in the same container (and same effect style) will be rendered as one unified glass sheet . This is useful if, for example, you have a UI element that moves around and you want its glass to remain merged with another element’s glass during transitions. Keep in mind that union will only work if the glass style/type and shape are the same for those views .

By using GlassEffectContainer (along with spacing and union where appropriate), you ensure multiple glass components visually coexist correctly – they’ll reflect light consistently and appear as cohesive layers, which is exactly how Apple’s design language expects glass elements to behave  .