As well as a refreshed new look for system components like buttons and tabbars, the Liquid Glass redesign of iOS 26 also extends to app icons. For the first time since iOS 7, Apple has redrawn all of the system apps with new artwork. That means a whole new look is coming to your iPhone home screen this fall.

In this post, we share a side-by-side of the iOS 26 app icon and its iOS 18 counterpart, so you can decide for yourself how much of a step forward the new visual style represents.

The new app icon set presents a holistic reimagining of Apple’s approach to app icons. On earlier operating system versions, iOS, macOS, watchOS and visionOS all had different renderings of the same icons, with the Mac icon set using more 3D effects and shadows. watchOS icons are circular, but looked nothing like the circular icons of visionOS.

Apple has taken this opportunity to unify its platforms icons more closely. The rendering of icons across iOS and macOS is now the same, and all Mac icons use the same ‘squircle’ rounded rectangle shape as the iPhone. Most icons are also now drawn the same on watchOS and visionOS as well, simply cropped to a circle for these platforms.

Apple encourages the user of glass layers to add edge highlights and blur, and new alignment guidelines dictate how much space circular objects in the icon are are inset from the edge. The squircle clip shape itself has also been adjusted, featuring a subtly different ellipse with a larger corner radius. On iPhone and iPad, glass layers of icons even react to device motion, with subtle dynamic directional light effects.

Even without these fancy flourishes, I think the new icons just look better than their iOS 18 equivalents, in almost all cases. Apple has done a really good job with them. Let us know in the comments if you agree:

App Store

Books

Calculator

Clock

Contacts

FaceTime

Freeform

Home

Journal

Mail

Maps

Messages

Music

Notes

Passwords

Phone

Photos

Podcasts

Reminders

Safari

Shortcuts

Stocks

Tips

TV

Weather

Source: 9to5mac