Liquid Glass not appearing for the first launch of the app

Question

we’ve been experiencing issues with Liquid Glass not appearing in our app on the first launch. When the user then goes to home screen or opens notification center the liquid glass seems to load correctly.

The issue is not happening always but fairly often. We implemented some hacks that seem to fix it a little bit but maybe someone encountered this issue and found a reliable way to fix it.

One thing is that we’re setting up the root view for the scene in the SceneDelegate with a small delay on iOS 26.0. Also setting up the tabs without the animation seems to make it a little bit more reliable.

I’m attaching two screenshots - one without the Liquid Glass which is visible in TabBar and the second where it loads successfully. The issue is not only with the tabbar but also with other elements that are using Liquid Glass.

I know that the iOS 26 is still in beta but I didn't see this issue in system apps. I also submitted a feedback but we're still waiting for the response from Apple.

Liquid Glass not loaded:

After app is sent to background and opened again or when the notification center is presented:

Answer 1

We've had the same problem and managed to solve it reliably.

It seems that on first launch the system doesn't fully initialise the liquid glass shared background. When you navigate away and back it gets rebuilt and is then applied properly.

Why? I cannot say. I believe this to be a bug on Apple's side.

On your TabView, attach an .id and increment it inside .onAppear. This forces the TabView to very quickly redraw, resulting in the glass showing immediately.

@State private var glassNonce = 0

TabView {

 // Your content

}
.id(glassNonce)
.onAppear {
    DispatchQueue.main.async { glassNonce &+= 1 }
}

This, for us, has forced the glass to appear immediately.