{"id":330320,"date":"2025-10-25T00:12:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T00:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/330320\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T00:12:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T00:12:16","slug":"ios-26-1-beta-liquid-glass-battery-drain-test-tinted-vs-clear-mode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/330320\/","title":{"rendered":"iOS 26.1 Beta Liquid Glass Battery Drain Test: Tinted vs Clear Mode"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2025\/10\/20\/ios-26-1-liquid-glass-toggle\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">fourth iOS 26.1 beta<\/a>, Apple added a &#8220;Tinted&#8221; option that reduces the translucency of Liquid Glass for those who prefer a more opaque look. I <a href=\"https:\/\/forums.macrumors.com\/threads\/ios-26-1-beta-4-lets-users-control-liquid-glass-transparency-with-new-toggle.2469470\/post-34235829\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">saw some comments<\/a> wondering whether the setting might preserve battery life, so I thought I&#8217;d do some testing.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/iOS-26-Battery-Glass-Feature.jpg\"   alt=\"iOS 26 Battery Glass Feature\" width=\"2500\" height=\"1406\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1016307\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Test Settings<\/p>\n<p>I did four separate tests using the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/roundup\/iphone-17-pro\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">iPhone 17 Pro<\/a> Max, and I kept the parameters as similar as possible. Here are the settings I used for each test:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Liquid Glass set to Clear.<\/li>\n<li>Liquid Glass set to Tinted.<\/li>\n<li>Liquid Glass set to Tinted with Reduce Transparency and Increase Contrast on.<\/li>\n<li>Liquid Glass with Reduce Transparency, Increase Contrast, and Reduce Motion turned on.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>For every test, I used Light mode and not Dark mode, I turned off True Tone and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/guide\/night-shift\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Night Shift<\/a>, and set my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/guide\/iphone\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">iPhone<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;d use my \u200ciPhone\u200c. My <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/guide\/home-screen\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Home Screen<\/a> was set to the standard icons.<\/p>\n<p>How I Tested<\/p>\n<p>I did the exact same series of actions for each test, timed to the second.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>30 minutes of scrolling TikTok.<\/li>\n<li>30 minutes of YouTube videos.<\/li>\n<li>30 minutes of scrolling Instagram\/watching reels.<\/li>\n<li>30 minutes of Safari on the MacRumors website. Scrolling and tapping to a handful of different pages.<\/li>\n<li>30 minutes of the Maps app. I routed myself to the same location, but I didn&#8217;t actually go. It was more of a test to have the Liquid Glass interface up for a solid 30 minute period.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>When I swapped from one app to another, I swiped up to close it and exit to the \u200cHome Screen\u200c, swiped down to bring up search, typed in the app name, and tapped to open it.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>I only charge my \u200ciPhone\u200c to 80%, so between each 2.5 hour period, I charged my \u200ciPhone\u200c 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.<\/p>\n<p>Test Results<\/p>\n<p>The results weren&#8217;t what I expected. I went into this test thinking that turning on Reduce Transparency and Reduce Motion would have an effect, but it didn&#8217;t. I didn&#8217;t find a selection of settings that changed the battery that my \u200ciPhone\u200c used.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Round 1<\/strong> &#8211; This was the &#8220;Clear&#8221; round, and my baseline. I started at 80% and ended right at 70%.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Round 2<\/strong> &#8211; Tinted mode. I started at 80% and ended at 69%.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Round 3<\/strong> &#8211; Tinted mode, Reduce Transparency, and Increase Contrast. I started at 80% and I ended at 69%.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Round 4<\/strong> &#8211; Tinted mode, Reduce Transparency, Increase Contrast, and Reduce Motion. I started at 80% and ended at 70%.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I did end up with 1% less battery with the two middle tests, but there wasn&#8217;t enough of a deviation to draw any conclusion. I can&#8217;t see fractions of a percent with battery measurements, so it&#8217;s possible that the two 70% tests were close to 69% and I had minor differences because of the small variations in content between tests.<\/p>\n<p>Test Results Expanded<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to include the percent totals for each segment of testing because there were some minor differences.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Round 1<\/strong> &#8211; TikTok ended at 79%, YouTube ended at 77%, Instagram ended at 74%, Safari ended at 72%, Maps ended at 70%.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Round 2<\/strong> &#8211; TikTok ended at 78%, YouTube ended at 75%, Instagram ended at 72%, Safari ended at 70%, Maps ended at 69%.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Round 3<\/strong> &#8211; TikTok ended at 78%, YouTube ended at 76%, Instagram ended at 73%, Safari ended at 70%, Maps ended at 69%.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Round 4<\/strong> &#8211; TikTok ended at 79%, Instagram ended at 77%, YouTube ended at 74%, Safari ended at 72%, and Maps ended at 70%. In this round, I accidentally swapped Instagram and YouTube, but restarting would have changed the time of day of the test so I just did those two apps swapped.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Caveats<\/p>\n<p>I wanted my test to mimic how I might regularly use my phone, but it was only a 2.5 hour period. It&#8217;s possible that a full 16 hours of swiping in and out of apps and features that use Liquid Glass could have more of an aggregate battery saving effect. I&#8217;m guessing it would only be a tiny percent of overall battery usage though, and mostly inconsequential.<\/p>\n<p>The apps that I used don&#8217;t all have Liquid Glass-heavy interfaces. TikTok and Instagram, for example, barely use Liquid Glass at all. Heavy use of apps that have more Liquid Glass elements could change the results, but there aren&#8217;t many apps that I spend a lot of time on that use Liquid Glass like that.<\/p>\n<p>I use an \u200ciPhone 17 Pro\u200c Max. I am curious if there would be a difference in battery life on an older \u200ciPhone\u200c that might struggle more to render Liquid Glass effects.<\/p>\n<p>If anyone with an older \u200ciPhone\u200c wants to do similar testing, I&#8217;d be happy to revisit this with another article that includes more testing from MacRumors readers. I am also able to do more testing if anyone has suggestions on what I might be able to change to actually reduce battery consumption.<\/p>\n<p>Conclusion<\/p>\n<p>On the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/roundup\/iphone-17\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">iPhone 17<\/a> models, I don&#8217;t think there are Liquid Glass-related settings to change that will make a meaningful difference in battery consumption.<\/p>\n<p>There seems to be no reason to turn on something like Tinted mode or Reduce Transparency unless you want the opacity for visual preference reasons.<\/p>\n<p>Low Power Mode, Adaptive Power Mode, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/guide\/ios-dark-mode\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dark Mode<\/a>, and turning down screen brightness seem to still be the most effective ways to eke out more battery life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the fourth iOS 26.1 beta, Apple added a &#8220;Tinted&#8221; option that reduces the translucency of Liquid Glass&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":204064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[239,2019,4961,2020,16333,6534,158,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-330320","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-apple","9":"tag-ios","10":"tag-ipad","11":"tag-iphone","12":"tag-mac","13":"tag-rumors","14":"tag-technology","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115431915698431483","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}