First impression of iOS 26 Beta 3: A glass that's both "liquid" and "solid", and an indecisive Apple.

Apple's Indecision

At the beginning of June, Apple made two major moves regarding its systems all at once —

Firstly, it unified the naming of its previously chaotic terminal device systems. From now on, the system versions of devices such as iPhones, Apple Watches, Macs, and iPads will all be named in the format of "year + 1", completely bidding farewell to the confusing naming method of the past.

The other cross - terminal move was that, following the flat design of iOS 7, Apple's design language underwent a major overhaul for the first time in twelve years. The new design, "Liquid Glass" (also known as Liquid Glass), will become the standard for Apple's new - generation design language, covering all devices with screens and systems.

Early this morning, Apple pushed the third developer preview version of each system as usual.

At this time point, the significance of this third developer preview is rather delicate — if nothing unexpected happens, the first public beta version will be updated in a week, and the first public beta version is usually the developer preview version we see today.

In other words, this developer preview is the solution that Apple currently thinks is most suitable to be introduced to the public.

The Retrograde Liquid Glass and the Current Best iOS 26

As the device with the largest number of users and the widest coverage under Apple's umbrella, the iOS installed on the iPhone naturally attracts a lot of attention. And on iOS 26, the most controversial aspect is undoubtedly the effect of the Liquid Glass design.

In the first developer preview, the Liquid Glass design had a disastrous effect — whether it was the Control Center or the navigation bar in native apps, due to the extremely high transparency of the Liquid Glass, the background content below greatly interfered with the display effect of the content above.

This problem was partially solved in Beta 2. Apple made very obvious changes to the Control Center, improving its readability by adding blur.

Left: iOS 26 Beta 1 / Right: iOS 26 Beta 2

In the latest Beta 3, Apple extended the same solution to the system's native apps. For example, the navigation bar and control bar of Apple Music have a blur effect added at the bottom, so that no matter how the bottom changes, the readability of the information on the surface can still be maintained.

This solution is effective and has indeed greatly improved the readability of the screen information, but it has not won the approval of everyone —

In iOS 26 Beta 3, the originally crystal - clear "Liquid Glass" has become gray as a whole. Some people even bluntly say that this texture is very cheap, believing that this is a "step backward" in design.

Left: iOS 26 Beta 2 / Right: iOS 26 Beta 3

Let's put aside the most obvious design changes and turn our attention to other aspects.

After a day of experience, ifanr found that in iOS 26 Beta 3, the incomplete functions and highly - concerned bugs in the previous versions have been more comprehensively supplemented and fixed:

The Settings - Battery interface has been fully localized;

In native software, the pre - selection box of the built - in input method has been optimized;

The color of the icon switches in the Control Center has been optimized;

The bug of icon offset in the desktop Dock has been fixed, and the icons are centered again when there are less than four;

The bug of screenshot with AssistiveTouch has been fixed;

The bug of AirPods connection has been fixed;

When swiping up to enter the background, it stays on the current app by default instead of prioritizing other apps;

Three new wallpapers, Sky, Halo, and Dusk, have been added;

These series of fixes seem great, but don't get too excited. Although this update has fixed several key bugs, new bugs have also appeared —

In the Contacts app of iOS 26 Beta 3, contacts without avatars will show garbled avatars, while previously the first letter of the name was used as the default avatar. During use, the battery icon may occasionally disappear after pulling down the Control Center.

Thankfully, compared with the previous bugs, these bugs don't affect normal use too much. From a personal experience perspective, the power consumption and heat generation of iOS 26 Beta 3 have been well optimized, and the frame - dropping frequency has also been significantly reduced.

Taking my iPhone 15 Pro with a battery health of 89% as an example, when using WeChat, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin normally, the battery life experience has basically returned to the level of iOS 18.5;

It can be said that iOS 26 Beta 3 is the developer preview version with the fewest bugs and the best experience since the release of the iOS 26 developer preview. In the next week, the public beta version will also join the update process. Obviously, the current iOS 26 Beta 3 is already close to the state that a public beta system should have.

iPadOS with Greatly Increased Productivity and Troublesome macOS

Different from the controversy surrounding iOS, iPadOS 26 has received much better reviews, and the reason is not complicated —

The iPad equipped with the desktop - class M - series processor has finally shown some signs of productivity.

In iPadOS 26, Apple removed the traditional split - screen and small - window modes and introduced a new window management system that supports operations such as free scaling, dragging, and tiling, providing the iPad with a multi - tasking experience close to that of a desktop;

In addition, iPadOS 26 introduced a new menu bar that supports drop - down operations and search functions, and developers can also customize the menu;

In terms of the File app, iPadOS 26 has also made significant improvements, adding an elastic list view and a collapsible folder structure, greatly optimizing the file management experience. This time, the upgrade of the productivity tool is indeed quite significant.

In iPadOS 26 Beta 3, Apple introduced a pointer cursor closer to that of the Mac for the iPad and added a cursor search function.

This function first appeared in macOS El Capitan. When the user moves the cursor quickly, the cursor will automatically enlarge, helping the user locate its position more quickly.

Now, this function has also appeared in iPadOS 26 Beta 3, bringing a smoother experience to iPad users.

Compared with the smooth sailing of iPadOS, macOS 26 Beta 3 has not been so lucky.

Generally speaking, as the main productivity device, Mac users are more cautious about system updates. But as the saying goes, "what you fear will come to you." This time, there was a problem with the update of macOS 26 Beta 3.

At 1 am, when iPhones and iPads received the developer preview update push, a considerable number of Mac users waited in vain for the update of macOS 26 Beta 3. After some investigation, it was found that the problem was a legacy issue — Rosetta 2.

Rosetta 2 is a compatibility layer provided by Apple for Apple Silicon Macs, allowing the operation of applications with Intel architecture. When pushing macOS 26 Beta 3, Apple did not update Rosetta 2 synchronously, causing the M - series Macs with Rosetta installed to show a prompt of "unable to check for updates" when trying to update.

The predecessor of Rosetta 2 appeared when Mac switched from PowerPC to Intel

After discovering the problem, some users solved it by entering a command in the "Terminal" to uninstall Rosetta 2 and successfully received the update push of macOS 26 Beta 3 after restarting. However, the cost of uninstalling Rosetta 2 is that applications dependent on the Intel architecture may not run properly.

Another group of users had to wait until around noon today when Apple realized the problem and repushed macOS 26 Beta 3 before finally completing the update successfully.

After this hilarious little episode, let's take a look at the most significant update of macOS 26 Beta 3 — the return of the Launchpad.

In the first two developer previews, besides the Liquid Glass design also coming to the Mac, the most - concerned change was the departure of the Launchpad. Users could only view the applications installed on the Mac in "Spotlight". The solution at that time was to enter a command in the "Terminal" to bring back the blocked Launchpad.

In macOS 26 Beta 3, if you use the familiar five - finger pinch gesture, the "Spotlight" App Library will automatically appear, where you can find all installed applications.

It's back, but not completely

In the previous version, the much - criticized Safari browser tabs have also been optimized in macOS 26 Beta 3, and now they have better visual readability.

In addition, macOS 26 Beta 3 has also updated the Tahoe Day screensaver, showing the scenery of the rocky coastline of Lake Tahoe, with a smooth transition to the wallpaper when unlocking.

A New Test after Twelve Years

After looking at the third developer preview versions of the main hardware, we can draw a rather obvious conclusion —

Function addition and deletion are secondary. The biggest challenge Apple faces this year is how to end the bet on the cross - terminal and cross - platform design language of "Liquid Glass".

Taking iOS 26 as an example, let's review the twists and turns of Liquid Glass in the past month:

Judging from the first three developer preview versions, the first version was the most radical and controversial. The second version adjusted the Control Center. Although it didn't cause much reaction, in Beta 3, Apple extended the solution of setting a blur effect at the bottom of the Liquid Glass to all aspects of the system, and the controversy broke out again.

This kind of back - and - forth is ultimately because the ambition of Liquid Glass is too great — it tries to use a unified design aesthetic to bridge the fragmented experiences of all devices.

One person's meat is another person's poison. On devices with larger screens such as Macs and iPads, Liquid Glass can fully display its delicacy and hierarchy. But on small - screen devices like iPhones, the high - density design will greatly increase the information density per unit area, becoming an obstacle to information reading instead.

There is a similar dilemma in the user experience —

As a design language suitable for multiple terminals, Liquid Glass involves multiple aspects such as vision, interaction, and HDR, and requires all - around cooperation from the hardware. This also results in greater power consumption and performance pressure on small - screen devices like iPhones, while it is much more relaxed on "large devices" like Macs and iPads.

Aesthetics is subjective