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I just upgraded my MacBook, iPhone and Apple Watch to version 26 of their respective OSes; macOS 26, iOS 26 and watchOS 26.

While everything works fine and the upgrades went smoothly, I’m finding I am getting annoyed by the “Liquid Glass” UI feature that has been introduced in all of them. As Wikipedia describes it:

Apple describes Liquid Glass as a dynamic material that combines the "optical properties of glass with a sense of fluidity".

Is there any way to disable or minimize the impact of the “Liquid Glass” UI and set it back to a flat UI experience?

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  • 4
    The only correct answer is "no you can't disable it". Both answers provided thus far don't disable the UI, they just show how to add more opaque views of some of the UI elements. This won't have any impact on 3rd-party apps that don't reference those accessibility settings in their code which means the Liquid Glass effect might still be there. Commented Sep 17 at 0:50
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    Be sure to tell Apple that you want this ability. Commented Sep 17 at 12:50

5 Answers 5

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According to ZDNET,

  • iOS

    On an iPhone with iOS 26, head to Settings, select Accessibility, and then tap the setting for Display & Text Size. Turn on the switch for Reduce Transparency. Return to your home screen and you'll see that the icons and folders now have a more opaque look to them.

  • macOS

    On a Mac with MacOS 26 Tahoe, head to System Settings and select Accessibility. In the Vision section, tap the setting for Display and then turn on the switch for Reduce Transparency. Open a window to see how the folders and icons now appear.

  • watchOS

    On an Apple Watch with WatchOS 26, the steps are similar. Open the Settings app on your watch, select Accessibility, and then turn on the switch for Reduce Transparency. To see how reducing transparency affects the appearance, swipe down the screen to view your latest notifications. You'll notice that the notification panels no longer look transparent.

So you can’t disable it, but you can reduce it.

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  • Note that by doing this, your folders (on iOS, at least) are in an almost constant state of dark mode. Commented Sep 17 at 16:28
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With the .0 versions, you can’t. There is no known way to disable Liquid Glass as a whole (which would require Apple and application developers to provide and maintain both Liquid Glass and the old UI).

What you can do is reduce some of the effects via Accessibility settings, e.g. Reduce Motion.

PS: With the .1 versions, Apple has added an option to basically disable most of the effects (see this answer).

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    This is the real answer to the OP's question. Commented Sep 17 at 21:25
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According to this post on X from the user BobPony.com (@TheBobPony) you can disable it on macOS like this:

  • Create the directory /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain.

  • Then save the following below to SwiftUI.plist.

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
  <plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
      <key>Solarium</key>
      <dict>
          <key>Enabled</key>
          <false/>
      </dict>
  </dict>
  </plist>

It works fine. The only issue so far is the transparent modal windows and the dock itself.

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    An example of before and after would be helpful to understand the impact of this change. Consider an edit to your answer to include this perhaps. Commented Oct 4 at 10:22
  • @AndyGriffiths The directory doesn't seem to exist by default, so there is no "before" state for the file. Commented Oct 4 at 13:40
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    @nohillside Not the before state of the file, the before & after state of what effect that has on the UI. Sorry, I didn't make that clear. I had screenshots in mind but then omitted to type that! The request is to try and make clear what impact the change has on the UI. Commented Oct 4 at 14:23
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    @AndyGriffiths Some more details are on Reddit. It also seems to just require a defaults write …. Commented Oct 4 at 17:31
  • This wasn't working for me until I changed the owner to root and changed file permissions to r--r--r or 644. Logged out and back in. The system modal dialogs are still transparent, though. Commented Oct 15 at 17:57
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And yet another answer based on iOS 26.1 which was officially released today (October 3, 2025) you can tweak how the “Liquid Glass” feature is rendered. There are now two UI options under the new option, “Settings > Display & Brightness > Liquid Glass”:

The “Settings > Display & Brightness” screen in iOS.

Clicking that new “Liquid Glass” option presents two options: “Clear” and “Tinted”:

“Liquid Glass” with “Clear” selected.“Liquid Glass” with “Tinted” selected.

As the UI explains itself:

“Choose your preferred look for Liquid Glass. Clear is more transparent, revealing the content beneath. Tinted increases opacity and adds more contrast.”

For my purposes, this solves the issue. The “Tinted” option works great! I guess Apple listens to user feedback.

Update: A similar setting — “Liquid Glass: Clear” and “Liquid Glass: Tinted” — can be found in macOS 26.1 under “System Settings > Appearance.”

“Liquid Glass: Clear” in macOS 26.1.

“Liquid Glass: Tinted” in macOS 26.1.

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Another option for macOS that is along the lines of Daniele Margutti’s answer is to run this defaults write command. Hat tip to nohillside’s comment on that answer that mentions a Reddit thread on this topic. Anyway, run this defaults write command:

defaults write -g com.apple.SwiftUI.DisableSolarium -bool YES

Do that and relaunch the Finder (Command+Options+Esc, choose “Finder” and then click the “Relaunch” button on the lower right) and “Liquid Glass” should be gone!

To re-enable it, do the same dance but with the -bool set to NO like this:

defaults write -g com.apple.SwiftUI.DisableSolarium -bool NO

Relaunch the Finder and “Liquid Glass” will be back in play.

Update: That said, some things simply look weird with “Solarium” (aka: “Liquid Glass”) disabled this way. For example, here is what Safari’s omnibar search results look like with “Solarium” disabled; it’s practically unusable:

enter image description here

In contrast, here is what a search in Safari’s ominbar looks like with “Reduce transparency” enabled via “Accessibility > Displays > Reduce transparency”; much more usable:

enter image description here

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