The updated Liquid Glass design looks great, but isn't as dramatic as you think. That's a good thing. Here's how iOS 26 ...

Similarly, to make the Avatar invisible, just download an invisible background from the Internet, go to the account section, click on Edit User Profile, and now go to your profile and click on it.

The background on notifications is clearly different between the two OS versions, with iOS 18 providing more opacity and a black text versus iOS 26's near-transparent background on white text.