2025-09-18T13:36:57Z

Is your iPhone making you feel tipsy without a drop of alcohol? You’re not imagining things—Apple’s latest iOS 26 update has users seeing the world at a slant, and it’s not just the battery draining fast!

Apple’s iOS 26 was supposed to wow us with its futuristic Liquid Glass UI and promise a sleek, next-gen experience. Instead, it’s left a wave of iPhone users across the globe scratching their heads—and rubbing their eyes. Within hours of the update rolling out, social media exploded with complaints about battery drain, sluggish performance, and, most surprisingly, a brand-new problem: in Dark Mode, app icons now appear awkwardly tilted and skewed. The culprit? Apple’s fancy Liquid Glass effect, which adds subtle glowing highlights to the top-left and bottom-right of each icon, trying to simulate real glass. Cool in theory… but for some, the execution is more like a carnival funhouse mirror.

Hop onto Reddit and you’ll find users describing the icons as ‘drunk,’ ‘off-kilter,’ and even ‘sickening.’ The effect is so disorienting for some that it’s causing eye strain, vertigo, and even motion sickness—hardly what you expect from a premium smartphone update. One unfortunate user joked that their phone was "wobblier than their morning coffee." The visual wonkiness seems most extreme when you combine Dark Mode with a black or dark wallpaper, turning your home screen into an optical illusion you never asked for.

If you’re desperate for relief, here’s what users are recommending: pick a colorful wallpaper to mask the effect, or simply switch off Dark Mode. If you’re tech-savvy, dive into your Accessibility settings, and try toggling 'Reduce Motion' and 'Reduce Transparency' to dial back the shimmer and tilt. Not feeling adventurous? Sadly, you’ll have to wait for Apple to patch things up in a future update—no word yet on when that might be.

Eligible devices for iOS 26 range from the shiny new iPhone 16 series all the way back to the iPhone SE (2nd generation and later). So, if you’re rocking anything from the iPhone 11 Pro Max to the latest 16 Pro, you might already be experiencing the new, queasy look.

This AI generated newscast about iOS 26 proves once again that even the biggest tech giants can trip over their own innovation. Will Apple pull off a quick fix, or is the Liquid Glass era already cracking under pressure?