In the fourth iOS 26.1 betaApple added a “Tinted” option that reduces the translucency of Liquid Glass for those who prefer a more opaque look. I saw some comments wondering whether the setting might preserve battery life, so I thought I’d do some testing.
Test Settings
I did four separate tests using the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and I kept the parameters as similar as possible. Here are the settings I used for each test:
- Liquid Glass set to Clear.
- Liquid Glass set to Tinted.
- Liquid Glass set to Tinted with Reduce Transparency and Increase Contrast on.
- Liquid Glass with Reduce Transparency, Increase Contrast, and Reduce Motion turned on.
For every test,I used Light mode and not Dark mode,I turned off True Tone and Night Shiftand set my iPhone to 50% brightness. The display was also set not to turn off. My battery health is still 100%, and ambient temperature during testing was 68 to 72 degrees.
I left my notifications turned on because I get a fairly even distribution of notifications throughout the day and I wanted to mimic how I’d use my iPhone. My home Screen was set to the standard icons.
How I Tested
I did the exact same series of actions for each test, timed to the second.
- 30 minutes of scrolling TikTok.
- 30 minutes of YouTube videos.
- 30 minutes of scrolling Instagram/watching reels.
- 30 minutes of Safari on the MacRumors website. Scrolling and tapping to a handful of different pages.
- 30 minutes of the Maps app. I routed myself to the same location, but I didn’t actually go. It was more of a test to have the Liquid Glass interface up for a solid 30 minute period.
During each of the five segments, I swiped to access notifications on the Lock Screen four times, and swiped to open Control Center four times. I opened up notifications and Control center 20 times total for each test,then swiped back to close them. These were timed to roughly 3.5 minute intervals.
When I swapped from one app to another, I swiped up to close it and exit to the Home Screen, swiped down to bring up search, typed in the app name, and tapped to open it.
Every test was 2.5 hours, with a few extra seconds between each segment to switch apps. Tests were split over two days, one at approximately 3:00 p.m., and one at 5:30 p.m.
I only charge my iPhone to 80%, so between each 2.5 hour period, I charged my iPhone back to 80% before starting the next test. The only wildcard factors were notifications and the content that was on TikTok and Instagram as I scrolled.
Test Results
The results weren’t what I expected.I went into this test thinking th
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