You Can Change Liquid Glass, and More, in the iOS 26.1 Beta

Apple released the fourth public beta of iOS 26.1 on Tuesday, more than a month after the company released iOS 26, which introduced Liquid Glass, call screening and more to your device. The iOS 26.1 beta brings a few new settings to developers’ and beta testers’ devices, including a new way to adjust Liquid Glass and a useful security feature.

Since this is a beta, I recommend downloading it only on something other than your primary device. The update might be buggy, and battery life may be short.

Also, given that it’s not the final version, more features could land on your iPhone when iOS 26.1 is released. There’s no word on when Apple will release iOS 26.1 to the general public.

Here are the features developers and beta testers can try now, and what could be on your iPhone when Apple officially releases iOS 26.1.

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Another way to adjust Liquid Glass

With the iOS 26.1 beta, Apple is letting you adjust your iPhone’s new Liquid Glass design even more. If you go into Settings > Display & Brightness > Liquid Glass, you can choose for the new design to be Clear or Tinted. 

“Clear is more transparent, revealing the content beneath,” Apple writes for the setting. “Tinted increases opacity and adds more contrast.”

Changing Clear or Tinted appears to only adjust certain Liquid Glass elements for now, like your Notification Center and some search bars throughout your iPhone. However, it doesn’t appear to change Liquid Glass elements on your Home Screen. But you don’t need to be running the beta to adjust Liquid Glass on your Home Screen.

To adjust Liquid Glass on your Home Screen, long-press on your screen, tap Edit in the top left corner of your screen, then tap Customize. From here, make your app icons either Clear or Tinted, then you can tap Light, Dark or Auto along the bottom of the Customize menu to adjust the Liquid Glass elements on your Home Screen. 

If you aren’t running the beta and don’t like Liquid Glass, you can also go to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size and then tap the toggle for Reduce Transparency to adjust the new design.

Automatically install Security Improvements

Apple introduces a useful new security setting in the iOS 26.1 beta that allows your iPhone to download and install Security Improvements on its own. You can find this by going to Settings > Privacy & Security > Background Security Improvements.

“Background Security Improvements provide additional protection to your iPhone in between software updates,” according to Apple. “In rare instances of compatibility issues, these Security Improvements may be temporarily removed and then enhanced in a future software update.”

This menu also allows you to uninstall a Security Improvement. To do so, tap the three dots (…) next to the installed update. A new menu will appear with the option to Remove & Restart. This can be helpful if you feel the Security Improvement is causing you more issues than it’s fixing. 

This feature reminds me of Apple’s Rapid Security Responses. The company introduced RSRs in 2023 as a way to quickly deploy security fixes to devices. While a good idea in theory, Apple hasn’t used iOS RSRs since the release of iOS 16.5.1 (c) in July 2023.

This isn’t a flashy setting, but it’s useful and allows you to stay up to date on smaller security updates without doing any extra work. Once enabled, this setting takes care of the rest, so you don’t have to check your iPhone every day for new updates to potential security issues.

Stop accidentally opening your Camera with this new toggle

The iOS 26.1 beta also introduces a new toggle that could prevent you from accidentally opening your Camera from your Lock Screen. To find this toggle, go to Settings > Camera and scroll to the bottom of the menu. There you’ll see a toggle for Lock Screen Swipe to Open Camera.

“Swipe left on the Lock Screen to quickly access the Camera,” Apple writes for the setting.

Local Capture options

Local Capture is an easy way to record high-quality video and audio recordings of video calls on your iPhone, and the iOS 26.1 beta introduces a new Settings menu for the feature. The menu gives you the option to select a save location for your recordings, as well as a toggle that lets you only record audio when using Local Capture. 

“Add Local Capture to Control Center to record your own audio and video during a call to save and edit later,” Apple writes in the Local Capture settings page.

New Accessibility option

The iOS 26.1 beta also introduces a new option to prefer single-touch actions over sliding actions on your iPhone’s screen. You can find this new option by going to Settings > Accessibility > Touch and scrolling to the bottom of the page.

Alarm gets another update

One of my favorite small upgrades in iOS 26 was the ability to change your alarm snooze length. In the iOS 26.1 beta, Apple makes it harder to accidentally dismiss your alarm. When your alarm goes off in the beta, you now have to swipe to stop it rather than hit a button. This could be annoying if you’re trying to shut your alarm off fast, or it could help ensure you’re actually awake before you turn your alarm off. 

Changing songs in Apple Music

Apple Music got a handful of new features in iOS 26, but the iOS 26.1 beta doesn’t change much about the app or service. Instead, the update lets you change songs in a new way. 

With the iOS 26.1 beta, instead of tapping the next or backward buttons to change songs, you can swipe left or right on the song title from the music player within Apple Music. You can do this when the player is taking up your whole screen or when you’re looking through Apple Music and the player is small and near the bottom of your screen. The song title even appears to jump left or right when you change songs now, too.

More Live Translation languages

The iOS 26.1 beta adds more languages to the new Live Translation feature. Apple introduced this feature to iPhones and AirPods with iOS 26, and the beta lets developers and beta testers use it with these languages.

• Chinese (Mandarin, simplified)
• Chinese (Mandarin, traditional)
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean

Apple Intelligence in more languages

If you have an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone, iOS 26.1 beta 1 brings the AI features to these languages.

• Chinese (traditional)
• Danish
• Dutch
• Norwegian
• Portuguese (Portugal)
• Swedish
• Turkish
• Vietnamese

Calendar update

Not a major change, but the iOS 26 beta updates the Calendar interface. If you view your calendar in List View, any calendar events you have on a specific day will be colored across the whole bottom part of your screen. 

New video scrubbing bar

The iOS 26.1 beta also brings a small change to the video scrubbing bar in Photos. If you go into Photos and watch a video, you’ll notice that the bar across the bottom of your screen is more compact and inline compared to the past scrubbing bar, which had the play/pause and volume buttons above the bar.

This is another small change that you might not have even noticed.

Those are a few of the new features developers and public beta testers can try with the fourth public beta of iOS 26.1. There will likely be more betas before the OS is released to the public, so there’s plenty of time for Apple to change these features. 

For more iOS news, here’s my review of the iOS 26, how to reduce the Liquid Glass effects in the update and how text screening works in the update. You can also check out our iOS 26 cheat sheet.

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