Reddit's Liquid Glass UI makeover is rolling out widely for iOS

Reddit is finally rolling out its long-awaited Liquid Glass user interface to the official iOS app today.

The redesign brings Apple’s new visual language to the platform, complete with a translucent tab bar and a unified keyboard layout. It is live for devices running iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 right now. It joins a growing list of apps adopting Apple’s new UI, including WhatsApp, which we highlighted yesterday.

I actually received the new UI update myself after installing Reddit version 2026.19.9 earlier today. The visual bump is definitely noticeable right out of the gate, but it quickly becomes apparent that not much has actually changed.

But the execution is reportedly a little rough around the edges. Over on r/iphone, the reaction is mixed at best. Some users are calling the release completely abysmal because of heavy battery drain and persistent interface glitches.

A lot of the complaints point out that the app is now a weird hybrid. The top toolbar and bottom tabs have the smooth curved Liquid Glass treatment, but the rest of the interface is still totally boxy. It feels like developers just slapped a new skin on top of the old foundation.

Things are not great for iPad users either.

In a post on r/ios, iPad Pro owners are reporting that the swipe-back gesture completely freezes the app. Others are dealing with toggle animations glitching out when shifting from a post back to the main feed.

Reddit also took this opportunity to reduce the number of bottom navigation buttons to three. It is a cleaner look, at least on paper, but it forces users to make multiple taps just to open their chats or find their profile settings.

That said, commenters were quick to point out that it took Reddit long enough to bring the new Liquid Glass design, while third-party clients like Apollo added the new design through custom APIs before Reddit itself.

These reported glitches make it seem like this update was pushed out the door a bit too early.

Apple really needs to patch up some of these underlying OS animation issues in the upcoming iOS 27 release, but Reddit clearly has its own cleanup to do. For now, you either get a shiny new interface with a few headaches or you stay on the old version.

We stand out from the tech-media crowd because we break news stories; we mainly bring you stuff that you won’t find anywhere in the mainstream tech media. Our stories have been picked up by some of the world’s most popular websites and media outlets—more info is available here.