Safari 26 "Liquid Glass" — facts, gotchas, and what to do

1. The model

iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 gave Safari a "Liquid Glass" chrome: the status bar (top) and the address/tab bar (bottom) are translucent overlays that show whatever the page paints behind them, live, as you scroll. Apple dropped theme-color as the bar tint — the bars just reflect the page now.

This is the iPhone Safari layout model. It also applies on iPadOS — and there it's gated by the browser window width, not the device: a narrow Safari window (Split View, Slide Over, a portrait small iPad, or just a narrow window) gets the iPhone model with the glass bars; a wide one gets the desktop-ish model. So decide "is this the glass model?" by width, not by user-agent (e.g. innerWidth <= 760), because the same iPad flips between the two.

Think of the screen as two viewports: