Apple Eyes iOS 27 Public Beta on July 13-14 After 3 Developer Releases

Q: Apple's controversial 'Liquid Glass' design was widely disliked. Does the new control slider in iOS 27 finally fix it?

Yes—based on Apple’s WWDC announcements and reporting around the beta, iOS 27 appears to substantially fix the biggest complaint about Liquid Glass: lack of control over readability and transparency. The key change is a new systemwide slider in Settings that lets users adjust the effect from very clear to fully tinted. In practice, that means Liquid Glass is no longer a rigid, one-look design. Users who found the 2025 version too translucent, distracting, or hard to read can now push the interface toward a more opaque, frosted appearance that reportedly comes close to turning the effect off. That matters because the backlash to Liquid Glass was less about the idea itself than about legibility. Critics said menus, icons, and controls could blend into busy backgrounds, especially in dark mode or on complex wallpapers. Apple’s answer in iOS 27 is not just the slider: it has also refined the design with better diffusion of background content, darker edges, brighter highlights, and sharper icon treatment to improve contrast. It is still too early to say the issue is fully solved for everyone. Early testers suggest the default look may still be fairly transparent, and some interface elements can remain harder to read at the clearest setting. But the broad verdict from reports so far is that iOS 27 turns Liquid Glass from a controversial one-size-fits-all design into a customizable one, which is a meaningful fix.

2 articles · Updated · Forbes · Jul 11

July 13 or 14 is the likeliest window for Apple’s first iOS 27 public beta, extending testing beyond developers after the software’s June WWDC debut.
Three developer betas have already shipped on a two-week cadence—June 8, June 22 and July 6—matching the pattern that in 2022-2024 put the public beta about a week after beta 3.
2025 was the exception: Apple waited until after developer beta 4, releasing the public beta on July 24 as it handled the Liquid Glass redesign.
The expected public beta should largely mirror developer beta 3, adding Siri AI, new Screen Time child-safety controls, AI photo editing, Safari tab organization and upgraded Shortcuts.
Apple still treats the release as beta software, so users are advised not to install it on a primary iPhone because bugs and app compatibility issues can persist.