How to Add iOS 26 Liquid Glass Icons to Your Expo App

iOS 26 introduced liquid glass — a new design language that gives app icons real depth with translucency, gradients, and shadows. They look incredible on the home screen.

If you’re building with Expo, adopting this takes about 5 minutes. No code changes, no native modules — just a new asset file and a one-line config update.

Step 1: Create Your Icon with Icon Composer

Apple ships a new app called Icon Composer with Xcode 26. Open it and:

1. Drag your icon image onto the canvas
2. Adjust the fill — use a solid colour or automatic gradient
3. Tweak translucency and shadow until it looks right
4. Save as a .icon file (e.g. my-app.icon)

It outputs a folder bundle containing:

my-app.icon/
├── icon.json          # Defines fill, shadow, translucency, layers
└── Assets/
    └── your-image.png # Your icon artwork

The icon.json controls the glass effect — gradient type, shadow opacity, translucency value, and which platforms to target. Here’s what it looks like:

{
  "fill": {
    "auto-gray:0.25000,1.00000"
  },
  "groups": [
    {
      "layers": [
        {
          "fill": {
            "solid": "srgb:0.98658,1.00000,0.96916,1.00000"
          },
          "image-name": "your-image.png",
          "name": "your-image"
        }
      ],
      "shadow": {
        "kind": "neutral",
        "opacity": 0.5
      },
      "translucency": {
        "enabled": true,
        "value": 0.5
      }
    }
  ],
  "supported-platforms": {
    "circles": ["watchOS"],
    "squares": "shared"
  }
}

Step 2: Point to It in app.json

Drop the .icon bundle into your project (I put mine in assets/) and reference it under ios.icon:

{
  "expo": {
    "icon": "./assets/images/icon.png",
    "ios": {
      "icon": "./assets/my-app.icon"
    }
  }
}

Keep the top-level icon field for Android and other platforms. The ios.icon field takes priority on iOS.

That’s it. Build your app and the liquid glass effect shows up on iOS 26+. Older iOS versions automatically fall back to a flat icon.

Tips

• Keep your artwork simple. Translucency and gradient effects work best with clean, high-contrast icons.
• Use a large source image. The PNG inside the .icon bundle should be at least 1024×1024.
• Test both modes. Check how your icon looks in light and dark mode — the liquid glass effect adapts to system appearance.
• No code changes needed. This is purely a build-time config. Your app code stays exactly the same.

No native modules. No ejecting. Just a new asset and one config line.