Samsung’s One UI 9 Beta is already turning heads, and one change in particular has caught the attention of Galaxy S26 users. According to tipster @IceUniverse, Samsung has quietly reworked how home screen widgets look, and the result is a noticeably cleaner, more polished aesthetic.
The key change is the removal of the white background layer that sat behind widgets in previous One UI versions. That layer made widgets feel opaque and visually heavy. In One UI 9, it’s gone. What you get instead is a proper blur effect that lets the wallpaper bleed through, giving widgets a glass-like transparency that feels much more at home on a modern flagship. If that sounds familiar, it’s because iOS has had a similar approach to widget styling for a while now.
It’s a relatively subtle tweak, but the difference on screen is hard to ignore. Widgets no longer look like sticky boxes plastered onto your wallpaper. They blend in, which makes the home screen feel more cohesive overall. Whether you think Samsung took inspiration from Apple here or simply arrived at the same logical conclusion, the end result works.
This is just one piece of what One UI 9 is shaping up to bring. Samsung began One UI 9 development earlier this year, and beyond the visual changes, the update is expected to include better animations, smoother system performance, and new AI-powered features. Testing has also been expanding to upcoming foldable devices, which gives us a sense of where the rollout is heading.
For now, the One UI 9 Beta is limited to the Galaxy S26 series in select regions. Samsung hasn’t said when the program will expand to more devices or countries, though that’s typically how these betas go. The stable release is expected later this year, likely tied to the launch of Samsung’s next foldable lineup. More devices are entering One UI 9 testing in the meantime, so the rollout picture should get clearer soon.
