How to turn off and tone down the iOS 26 features you hate the most

The iOS 26 update is one of the most significant software changes to land on the iPhone in years. Not only does it bring with it the all-new Liquid Glass redesign, but there are also major adjustments to your iPhone’s functionality across the board.

While you might be glad to see some of those changes, others might leave you unimpressed or even frustrated. The good news is that you can revert many of these tweaks to the way they were before iOS 26, all while keeping the latest version of the operating system on your device. Here, we’ll show you how it’s done with five big new features that have arrived in iOS 26.

Tone down Liquid Glass

There’s no question that the Liquid Glass visual overhaul is the headline addition to iOS 26. But its clear, glassy look has proved to be divisive since the moment it was unveiled at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June 2025. Many people have found it decreases the legibility of on-screen elements, while others have taken issue with its return to more real-world, skeuomorphic effects after years of flat design.

Either way, there’s unfortunately no way to disable it entirely if you’ve got iOS 26 running on your device. However, what you can do it significantly reduce the transparency effect. That should make it a little more bearable if you’re not a fan of Liquid Glass.

First, open the Settings app on your iPhone and head to Accessibility > Display & Text Size, then enable the toggle next to Reduce Transparency. You’ll notice that this immediately cuts out a lot of the glass-like effects in iOS 26, such as the translucent Dock and app folders. The Control Center is much more opaque, too, as are many other parts of the operating system. Some glass effects remain, like the slight edge shine on app icons, but this change removes the most prominent aspects of Liquid Glass.

Turn off large screenshot previews

In past versions of iOS, taking a screenshot would produce a small preview in the bottom corner of your display – you could then swipe this away to save the picture, or tap it to start editing. In iOS 26, though, the editing window opens automatically in full-screen mode, taking over your display and requiring extra taps to get on with whatever you were doing before.

If you’re not fond of this new behavior, you need not worry, as it’s very simple to change things back to the old way. Simply open the Settings app and navigate to General > Screen Capture and disable the toggle next to Full-Screen Previews. From now on, you’ll go back to seeing the miniature preview in the corner of your iPhone whenever you take a screenshot.

Disable backgrounds in Messages

The Messages app got a sprinkling of updates in iOS 26, and one of them was the introduction of custom backgrounds for your chats, which can add a bit of character to your group conversations.

The issue is that if one person changes the background in a group chat, every participant will see that wallpaper. But if you don’t like it, you can always disable it and put things back to how they used to be.

To do so, head to Apps > Messages in the Settings app, then find the Conversation Backgrounds toggle and disable it. This will restore the plain white background from before iOS 26 on all your threads.

You can also switch off message backgrounds on a per-chat basis rather than by using a blanket toggle. For this, you’ll need to open the thread in question in the Messages app and tap its title, tap the Backgrounds tab, then select None. Note that this will change the background for every member of the group, not just for you.

Spatial Scenes

When viewing a photo or a wallpaper you’ve selected, you might notice that it seems to move as you shift your iPhone. That’s an example of Apple’s new Spatial Scenes feature, but if you just want to enjoy the image without the slick 3D effect, you can disable it with a few taps.

Start off by long pressing your Lock Screen, then tapping Customize. To the left of the … button should be a hexagonal icon that contains a landscape scene – tap it to disable the effect. You can do this with other images by tapping the background thumbnail in the bottom-left, selecting Choose Photos, then picking an image and tapping the same hexagonal icon to disable the Spatial Scene.

There’s also a way to disable Spatial Scenes in the Photos app. There, you’ll want to tap the small hexagonal icon underneath the … button in the top-right corner when viewing an image. If your image is already spatial, the hexagonal icon will be blue, while a gray icon indicates that it is switched off.

And if you’d like to prevent Photos from turning your images into Spatial Scenes in the first place, open the Settings app and go to Apps > Photos, then scroll to the bottom and disable the toggle next to Control for Creating Spatial Photos.

Call screening and call waiting

Spam calls and long hold times are scourges of modern life, and Apple has taken steps to combat them in iOS 26. That takes the form of call screening—which forces unknown callers to identify themselves before they get though to you, giving you the option to decline the call—and call waiting, which sits on hold on your behalf before ringing back when you’re through to a human.

But you might decide that these features aren’t right for you. If you don’t get much spam and would rather not inconvenience people calling you, you might want to disable call screening, for example. (Note that it only works on unknown callers, so your family and friends would probably never encounter it.) Thankfully, that’s easy to do in iOS 26.

To switch off call screening, open the Settings app and head to Apps > Phone. Scroll down to the Screen Unknown Callers section and tap Never. Alternatively, you can choose to silence calls from unknown numbers completely and send them to voicemail, or just stick with Ask Reason for Calling.

As for call waiting, you’ll find options for this in the same Phone menu. Next to Detect Call Waiting, simply disable the toggle to deactivate the feature.

Apple’s Awe Dropping event is set for September 9, 2025. Want to know what to expect? We’re anticipating new hardware releases including the iPhone 17 (running iOS 26), Apple Watch Series 11, Ultra 3 and SE 3rd-gen (running watchOS 26), and potentially new AirPods. Find out how, when, and where to watch the Apple September Event, and keep tuned to our Event Guide for all the latest coverage. If you just can’t wait, here’s our satirical take on the Apple September Event keynote script – and don’t miss the Macworld Podcast iPhone event preview.