Apple has redesigned its first-party app icons for the second year in a row, with iOS 27 addressing blur complaints about iOS 26 by integrating additional layers of Liquid Glass directly into the icon artwork itself.
When Apple introduced Liquid Glass with iOS 26 last year, it redesigned its entire line of first-party app icons to give them a layered glass look with subtle depth. The approach drew criticism from some users who found the results blurry, and in some cases a thick specular highlight covered the icon artwork, obscuring details and giving the icons a washed out appearance.
The shimmering motion effect that dynamically animated the icons when the device was tilted also caused a widely reported optical illusion, with asymmetrical reflections in the corners of the icons tricking the eye into reading the icons as tilted. With iOS 27, Apple is going further in icon design rather than restoring it.
The main change in how icons are constructed is the addition of several distinct layers of liquid glass embedded within each icon’s artwork, rather than the thick glass look applied evenly on top in iOS 26. Apple says the new rendering pipeline adds greater visual separation between layers, resulting in sharper edges and more defined refractions.
In practice, artwork is now considerably more visible and detailed, with higher contrast and definition, with the look of the glass functioning as a refined finish rather than a dominant overlay. Refraction effects between layers are also applied selectively.
The motion-based shimmer has also been significantly reworked. The gyroscopic specular highlight effect introduced with iOS 26 appears to have been removed entirely in the first iOS 27 developer beta. The icons still have reflections at their edges, now positioned at the top and bottom, but they no longer move with device movement or produce the illusion of tilt, and are much more subtle overall.
Icon Composer, Apple’s dedicated app icon design tool, has been updated to support creating icons from multiple layers of Liquid Glass. New annotation features allow developers to add refraction effects or refine content effects, while an interactive preview shows how a designed icon will render.
The updated icons are part of broader Liquid Glass improvements Apple announced at WWDC 2026, which also include a new system-wide transparency slider and improved material streaming for better readability. For a full breakdown of all the changes to Liquid Glass in iOS 27, check out our dedicated article.
