How to customize your iPhone Home Screen for iOS 26’s Liquid Glass

The launch of Apple’s latest operating system, iOS 26, introduced a new design language called Liquid Glass. The interface makeover, one of Apple’s largest since the shift from skeumorphic to flat design in 2013, adds a translucent, glass-like material to Apple’s software. This is used across iOS elements, like buttons, sliders, media controls, switches, notifications, tab bars, app sidebars, and in system experiences like the Control Center, Home Screen, Lock Screen, and more.

The design itself is inspired by mixed-reality (AR/VR) devices like the Apple Vision Pro and is potentially gearing up for a future where the OS does, in fact, have to run on smart glasses — like those Apple is reportedly building.

In the meantime, the changes open the door to new ways to customize your most personal device, your iPhone, with support for things like clear icons, glassy widgets, a glassy typeface for the Lock Screen with 3D photos, and more.

Below is a collection of tips and tricks that will help you get started customizing your iPhone to take advantage of the new Liquid Glass design.

Liquid Glass icons

One of the biggest adjustments you can make to your Home Screen is to change your icons’ style. Ever since the introduction of iOS 14, which introduced widgets, users have been actively personalizing their Home Screen with custom icons. Typically, this was done by creating a shortcut to a given app using Apple’s Shortcuts app, then uploading the custom icon there before adding the shortcut to your Home Screen. Several iOS theming apps were also updated to take advantage of this functionality, which made the tedious process a bit easier by allowing you to select which apps you wanted to customize in bulk. These were then installed for you via a downloadable profile.

For those who didn’t want to jump through as many hoops, iOS 18 added the ability to change all your icons to a new color scheme via a built-in tool. Plus, you could set your icons to display slightly larger by removing the text label underneath.

With iOS 26, customization has been updated again with icons that can appear as light or dark glass, tinted glass, or even as clear icons.

While there were some user complaints about tinted icons in iOS 18, the feature has improved with the Liquid Glass design; the tint feels more subtle now. You can also use the eyedropper tool to pick the exact color from your wallpaper to match your icons and adjust sliders to further tweak the color or its opacity.

If you’d rather just skip this customization but still want a glassy look, you can simply set your icons to “Clear” instead.

How to use it: Press and hold on your Home Screen and tap on “Customize” to enter customization mode. Tap the various options to select whether you want a light, dark, or automatically adjusting background, large or small icons, and whether you want your icons to appear as dark, clear, tinted, or with their default colors. Tap on your Home Screen again when your customizations are complete.

Matched icons

If you go caseless or use a clear phone case, you might like the new option to match your iPhone’s icons to your device or case. This is available through the “matched icons” feature in iOS 26.

iOS 26 knows your iPhone’s SKU, which contains information that informs it of your model and color. But if you want to match your case, you have to use the official Apple MagSafe cases.

How to use it: To match your icons to your phone, press and hold on your iPhone Home Screen to go into jiggle mode, tap “Edit,” “Customize,” then “Tinted.” Underneath the color and opacity sliders, tap the button that looks like a little iPhone on the far left. To match the case instead, press the next button to the right.

Home screen wallpaper and layout

Your Lock Screen wallpaper and your Home Screen wallpaper don’t have to match, giving you a wide variety of options for Home Screen customizations. But before you go to set your dog or cat as your background again, take a moment to browse the web for some glassier inspirations.

Pinterest remains a good resource for free ideas, where you can look for wallpapers with search terms like “Liquid Glass wallpaper” or “iOS 26 wallpaper,” for instance.

Another option is to use third-party iOS theming apps. There are tons of these on the App Store, but be warned that these apps are almost always subscription-based or overloaded with ads, if there’s a free version. If you’re new to this world, some that I regularly return to (and even pay for at times) include Brass, Color Themes, Screenkit, Themify, Wallaroo, and Widgetsmith.

Home screen customization is also a good time to support a favorite artist. Many artists offer wallpaper packs for sale through their Patreon or promote their downloads on their social media. Searching for “iOS wallpaper” and related terms on sites like X and Threads could point you to some ideas. Similarly, users often show off their designs on visual mediums like Instagram and TikTok. (I’m currently obsessed with these bright, colorful, and watery flower prints!)

Remember also that iOS 18 introduced a way to put your icons and widgets anywhere you want on the Home Screen, allowing you to leave blank spaces in between them. This can be useful, especially if you don’t want to obscure some part of your wallpaper. However, the icons will still be locked to an invisible grid system to keep the screen looking orderly.

How to use it: To change your wallpaper, press and hold on your Home Screen until the icons jiggle, then tap “Edit,” and “Edit Wallpaper” from the menu that appears. You can also change your wallpaper from its own section within the settings app. To move icons, press and hold on your Home Screen until they wiggle, then drag and drop them where you want them to sit.

While widgets themselves aren’t new, iOS 26 gives them a glassy look-and-feel, which may inspire you to give your Home Screen a makeover.

Instead of using your apps’ built-in widgets, now glassified, you can also turn to third-party resources to find widgets. Brass, Color Themes, Screenkit, Themify, Widgetsmith, and Launcher are among those on my iPhone.

I also like the widget apps from the developer MD Studio — especially the one that puts a little vinyl record player on your Home Screen. For a more modern look, Not Boring also makes its own alternatives to the iPhone’s default apps, like those for the camera, calculator, weather, timer, and more, which come with their own widgets. Music app Airbuds has a fun widget as well.

A more recently popular pick is Dynamic-Lyrics, which puts live lyrics on your Lock Screen, Dynamic Island, or Home Screen.

You can also choose to create and customize widgets of your own with Widgy. The app is one of the bigger resources out there for widget customization, besides the other theming apps linked above. With Widgy, anyone, even those without design skills, can create their own custom widget by adding elements, changing the colors and effects, connecting a data source, and more.

You can also browse through widgets others have made for inspiration and then import them for your own use.

Some designers also sell Widgy widget collections from their own websites. This can get a little trickier because of the extra steps involved, but the end result can be worth the effort. For example, I just bought this “glass glossy” Widgy widget collection to add some unique custom widgets to my Home Screen. But unless you’re familiar with how theming apps work, it could be a bit intimidating to get started.

How to use: First, you’ll want to download the purchased widget zip file to the Apple Files folder on your iPhone or your iCloud Drive. (This might be easier to do if you make the purchase from your iPhone.) Tap to unzip the app if it’s compressed.

Open the Widgy app you’ve already installed from the App Store and go to the first tab, “Create.” Here you’ll tap “Import,” then the option to “import .widgy File from Files.” (Unless you saved the file in the Widgy folder that’s created on your phone, you’ll have to browse to wherever you originally downloaded the files.) After you find the file or folder you want to import, tap on it to pull it into Widgy.

From Widgy’s “Manage” tab, you’ll tap on the available widgets included with your download. To have it match your wallpaper, tap “Set up Transparency” and upload screenshots of your wallpaper in light and dark mode snapped from a blank page of the Home Screen itself. Each widget can then be further customized in this section. When you tap on an individual widget to customize it, you’ll also have to set up the widget position (meaning where on the Home Screen it sits).

After the widget is saved, you add it to your Home Screen using the normal process: tap and hold Home Screen to enter jiggle mode, tap “Edit,” “Add Widget,” Widgy, and then scroll through the options and pick the widget you created.

Liquid Glass Lock Screen

On the iPhone’s Lock Screen, Liquid Glass will now show the time in a glassy, San Francisco typeface that will dynamically adapt its weight, width, and height depending on the image on the screen and your notifications to keep your photo’s subject in view.

However, the best part may be the Lock Screen’s new Spatial Scenes, which give your iPhone’s wallpaper a 3D effect. This feature leverages computer vision techniques running on a neural engine to turn your 2D photos into a 3D image. You can do this on older pictures or those taken on other cameras, too — you don’t need to buy the new iPhone 17 to take advantage of the addition.

How to use it: Press and hold on the Lock Screen, then tap Customize. Browse your photos until you find an image you like for your wallpaper. After adding it, make sure you tap on the new Spatial Scene button to enable the 3D effect. This is on the right side of the Lock Screen’s customization page. The button to the right of it also lets you further configure your Lock Screen’s wallpaper settings, like having it shuffle through different photos on a schedule or with a tap.