Why I Love Clear Icons on iPhone: Muting Visual Distractions & Garish Colors

Ever since Liquid Glass debuted, there has been some debate about using Clear Icons on the Home Screen of iPhone and iPad, with some users really liking the feature and the look, and many other users questioning the usefulness and utility.

Some seem to dislike the Clear icons look because of Liquid Glass in general, but I find it’s actually one of my favorite features of Liquid Glass on the newer OS 26/27 interface style. I’d go so far as to say I’m a huge fan of Clear Icons on iPhone and iPad. I think they look really nice and offer a much more subtle appearance to the iPhone and iPad Home Screen. But appearance alone is not the reason I like the Clear Icons on iOS/iPadOS, and there’s a distraction specific reason that Clear Icons are by far my favorite look for my iPhone and iPad.

So, what’s the best part of using Clear Icons? In my opinion, it’s that the Clear look removes all of the obnoxious bright neon colors that are intentionally designed to capture our attention, over and over again, until we click and engage with the apps. Enable clear icons, and every single one of the garish bright Home Screen colors that are visually distracting and attention-hungry, are now muted. Ahhh, the relief!

Clear Icons = Minimal Distraction Home Screen & No More Obnoxious Red Alert Badges

Not only does using Clear Icons strip away the garish neon color from app icons, but perhaps best of all, is that that the Clear look also strips away the obnoxious attention-demanding bright red badge icons that sit atop many icons when there’s a notification or alert related to that app.

The red notification badges drive me up the wall, and there’s no way to disable them universally across every app, aside from clearing out whatever is causing the alert/notifications to begin with. But the red is so bright and attention hungry, and they force your eyes to notice them whether you are concerned about whatever they’re alerting you to or not.

Yes, bright red badge on Phone app, I know I have 240+ voicemails and 117 missed calls, no I do not intend to ever listen to them all, and many of the missed calls are spam.

Yes, bright red badge on Mail app, I am aware I have 5,000 Mail app emails and no I do not intend to read or mark them all as read.

Yes, bright red badge on Messages app, I am aware that I have a dozen unread Messages.

No, bright red notification badge on Instagram app, I do not care that Instagram has 200+ unread messages, also more than half spam.

No, bright red badge on Gmail app, I do not care that Gmail has 17000 unread emails.

No, bright red numerical alert badge on Telegram app, I do not care that a dozen Telegram groups have led to 800+ unread posts.

Ok App Store bright red badge, I have 80 apps that I rarely use that need updating, I really do not care and no none of them demand the urgency of a bright red badge.

And so on and so on.

The urgency presented by these, and others, with their bright red badge and number indicating whatever the thing is we’re supposed to be immediately concerned about, but in actuality does not truly demand our attention, is offensive to me.

Clear icons do away with all of that. No more bright neon icons shouting to be looked at, no more garish bright red notification badges screaming for attention. With the Clear icon look, the icons are still obvious, the notification badge is still present, but they aren’t nearly as intrusive. And on my iPhone, and iPad, where apps overuse notifications and bright neon colored icon slop is at an all time high, I find the Clear look to be a sight for sore eyes.

A simple clean Home Screen with Clear icons and widgets, offer a hugely welcome relief, and makes my iPhone and iPad so much more pleasant to use.

I have also dabbled with using Clear Icons on the Mac, which offers similar benefits of a nice neat look and removal of the obnoxious neon colors and bright red badges, but the way my Mac is setup is such that there is less need for that. My Dock is set to auto-hide, and if I am not opening apps that way then I launch apps through Spotlight, so there’s not as much visual clutter on my Mac. So for my Mac, I tend to use automatic dark and light icons along with automatic dark and light theme mode. But you better believe that if the Mac experience degrades to the point where every single app is showing some bright red notification badge, I’ll start using Clear to hush that visual noise too.

Anyway, that’s my thoughts on using Clear icons, and why I really like them, especially on my iPhone. But this particular Liquid Glass feature is somewhat controversial, and some people don’t like or use them at all, and others question the utility of because they could make app icons more difficult to differentiate. I can understand that perspective, but I don’t find that to be an issue for myself. So what do you think?

What are your thoughts on the Clear Icon look for iPhone, iPad, and Mac? Do you use the Clear look? Have you ever tried using Clear icons and changed your mind? Share with us in the comments!