iOS 27 Beta 5 Redesigns Icons for Siri, Safari, and More

Summary

Apple released the fifth developer beta of iOS 27 on Monday, and the most visible change is a wave of icon redesigns for core apps. Safari gets a brighter blue compass with more detailed linework. The Siri icon now mirrors the Siri bubble that actually appears on screen during activation. Settings gains more translucency, the App Store icon lets more of its underlying letterform show through, and Preview is entirely redesigned around a loupe over a colorful background. Apple also tightened Liquid Glass, with the clearest transparency setting now noticeably clearer than it was in Beta 4.

Why it matters

These are finishing moves. Apple is locking down the look of iOS 27 before September, and each beta brings the final software closer to what will ship on every iPhone this fall. If the Liquid Glass design has felt unfinished to you since WWDC, Beta 5 is moving in the right direction.

HTD Says

Apple is nailing down the iOS 27 look with Beta 5, and the icon changes show they are still willing to iterate on the core visual system right up to the release window. I have been through each of these developer betas, so I could truly understand the pain of the development release cycle and get a hint at what is to come.

On macOS, Dev Beta 4 was a bit of a mess, to be honest. There were memory leaks, and I also heard about (but luckily didn’t experience) data corruption on some attached hard drives. I did have issues with the menu bar simply consuming memory and becoming locked or unstable, and I had to run a terminal command hourly to kill and restart it (which got me through the weeks between macOS beta 4 and beta 5).

While I’m only about 12 hours into beta 5 for macOS, iPadOS, Watch OS, and iOS, they all seem much more stable and performant. iOS 27 Beta 5 has been smooth thus far. And iOS Beta 4 was actually quite good (not like its sibling on the Mac). The refinements continue to come!

Source:

9to5 Mac