Is the iOS 26 Liquid Glass Display Hard for You to Read? Here’s How to Make Your iPhone Screen Clearer

Finding the New iPhone Update Blurry and Distracting? 8 Accessibility Settings to Fix iOS 26 Legibility.

The new design in iOS 26, called “Liquid Glass,” has changed how your iPhone and iPad look. It uses more see-through layers and animations. Some people enjoy this new appearance. However, many others find it makes their screens harder to read and use. The text may seem blurry, buttons can be difficult to see, and the constant movement can be distracting.

If you are having trouble with this new look, you are not the only one. You can’t switch back to the old design completely, but you can change several settings to make your device much easier on the eyes. This guide will walk you through clear steps to improve the readability and usability of your iPhone or iPad running iOS 26. These adjustments can help you regain a sense of clarity and control over your device’s interface.

Understanding the Liquid Glass Readability Problem

The “Liquid Glass” design introduces several changes that can affect how you see and interact with your screen. Understanding these specific issues helps explain why the following tips are effective. The main challenges users face fall into three categories: low visual clarity, distracting movements, and unclear interactive elements.

A major issue is the reduction in contrast. The Liquid Glass interface places text and icons over semi-transparent, blurry backgrounds. Think of trying to read words written on a foggy window. The letters don’t stand out sharply against what’s behind them. This forces your eyes to work harder to distinguish words and symbols, which can lead to eye strain and make quick glances at your phone less effective. Text can appear washed out, and the entire screen may have a “smeared” look that reduces overall legibility.

Another common complaint involves the new animations and transitions. iOS 26 features more elaborate movements when you open apps, switch between screens, or receive notifications. These fluid, layered animations can be visually distracting for many users. Instead of feeling smooth, they can sometimes appear clunky or sluggish, even on powerful devices. For some people, this excessive motion can be disorienting or even induce a feeling of mild dizziness. The primary goal of an interface is to get you to your information quickly, and these movements can feel like an unnecessary delay.

Finally, the design of interactive elements has become less distinct. In previous versions of iOS, it was very clear what was a button and what was plain text. With Liquid Glass, buttons may not have clear borders. They might just be colored text, making it difficult to know where to tap. Icons have also been redesigned with a slanted or “askew” appearance that some find confusing. Furthermore, a frustrating bug causes text to overlap or get squished in certain apps and menus, especially if you use a larger font size. This combination of unclear buttons and compressed text makes navigating the interface a more confusing experience.

Immediate Fixes for Better Visibility and Text Clarity

You can make the biggest improvements to your screen’s readability by adjusting a few key settings in the Accessibility menu. These options are designed to help people with different visual needs, and they are particularly effective at countering the negative effects of the Liquid Glass design. We will go through each one step-by-step, explaining what it does and why it helps.

1. Use Reduce Transparency to Make Backgrounds Solid

This is the single most important setting to change for better legibility. The transparency effect is what creates the blurry, see-through backgrounds in menus, folders, and the app dock. By turning it off, you replace those distracting layers with a simple, solid color. This creates a stable, high-contrast foundation for text and icons, making everything on top of it instantly clearer and easier to read.

1. Go to Settings > Accessibility.
2. Tap on Display & Text Size.
3. Turn the switch for Reduce Transparency to ON.

2. Use Increase Contrast to Sharpen Lines and Text

This setting works to counteract the washed-out look of the Liquid Glass interface. It darkens borders around buttons and app windows and makes text stand out more sharply from its background. While it doesn’t completely solve the low-contrast design, it significantly reduces the blurry or smeared feeling. It helps your brain quickly separate foreground elements, like text, from background elements.

1. Go to Settings > Accessibility.
2. Tap on Display & Text Size.
3. Turn the switch for Increase Contrast to ON.

3. Use Bold Text to Make All Words Easier to See

Since overall text contrast is lower in iOS 26, making all the text on your device bold is a simple and highly effective fix. This increases the weight of every letter, making words and sentences much easier to read at a glance. This is especially helpful on smaller iPhone screens or if you find yourself squinting to read notifications or messages. Enabling this setting will require your device to restart.

1. Go to Settings > Accessibility.
2. Tap on Display & Text Size.
3. Turn the switch for Bold Text to ON.

4. Use Button Shapes to See Where to Tap

One of the most confusing parts of the new design is knowing what’s a button and what isn’t. This setting solves that problem. It adds a gray shape or an underline to all text-based buttons. This provides a clear visual cue that an element is interactive. You no longer have to guess where to tap, which makes navigating apps and menus faster and more intuitive.

1. Go to Settings > Accessibility.
2. Tap on Display & Text Size.
3. Turn the switch for Button Shapes to ON.

5. Use On/Off Labels for Clearer Toggles

The standard toggle switches in iOS use color (green) to show when a setting is on. For some people, especially those with color vision deficiency, this isn’t enough. This setting adds extra labels to every toggle. When a switch is on, it will show a “1”. When it is off, it will show a “0”. This removes any doubt about the status of a setting.

1. Go to Settings > Accessibility.
2. Tap on Display & Text Size.
3. Turn the switch for On/Off Labels to ON.

Calming the Distracting Interface Motion

If the new animations and screen transitions feel jarring or make your device seem slow, you can disable most of them. These settings replace the zooming and flying effects with simple, clean fades. This not only calms the visual experience but can also make your device feel more responsive.

6. Disable Excessive Movements with Reduce Motion

This is the main setting for controlling interface animations. When you turn it on, the operating system stops using the parallax effect on your Home Screen, and the zooming animations for opening and closing apps are replaced with a gentle dissolve. This reduces visual noise and can be a great relief if you are sensitive to motion.

1. Go to Settings > Accessibility.
2. Tap on Motion.
3. Turn the switch for Reduce Motion to ON.

7. Soften Transitions with Prefer Cross-Fade Transitions

After you enable Reduce Motion, this second option becomes available. It further refines the animations by ensuring that transitions within apps and menus use a simple cross-fade effect. This is the quietest and least distracting type of transition available. It makes moving between screens a much calmer experience.

1. Go to Settings > Accessibility.
2. Tap on Motion.
3. Ensure Reduce Motion is ON, then turn the switch for Prefer Cross-Fade Transitions to ON.

Customizing Your Home Screen and Text for Clarity

Your Home Screen is what you see most often, and you have some control over making it cleaner and easier to look at. A busy wallpaper or poorly organized icons can contribute to the cluttered feeling of Liquid Glass.

8. Tidy Up Your Home Screen and Icons

A simple background is key. Choose a wallpaper that is dark or has a simple, non-distracting pattern. You can also edit your Home Screen to apply a tint, which washes your wallpaper with a single color, making your app icons pop.

1. Long-press on an empty area of your Home Screen.
2. Tap Customize when it appears.
3. Explore the options to change your wallpaper or apply a Tinted effect to reduce background noise.

Another issue many people face is text that appears squished or overlaps, especially in widgets or notifications. This often happens when you use a larger text size. Unfortunately, there is no single setting to fix this layout bug. The best solution is to find a balance with your font size.

1. Go to Settings > Display & Brightness > Text Size.
2. Adjust the slider to find a size that is comfortable to read but does not cause text to overlap in important places.
3. Combining a slightly smaller text size with the Bold Text setting (mentioned in Tip 3) often provides the best balance of readability and proper layout.

A Final Thought on Updating

If you have not yet updated to iOS 26, and you are concerned about readability, it may be wise to wait. You can prevent your device from updating automatically by going to Settings > General > Software Update > Automatic Updates and turning them off. Future updates, such as iOS 26.1, may address some of these design issues.

For those who have already updated and are deeply unhappy with the experience, downgrading to iOS 18 is a technical option, but it is only possible for a very short time after a new release and requires that you made a computer backup of your device before you upgraded.

By using the accessibility settings outlined above, you can significantly tone down the most problematic aspects of the Liquid Glass design. Experiment with different combinations to find what works best for your eyes. Your device should work for you, and these tools give you the power to make it a more comfortable and legible experience.