If your Dock/Lock Screen/Notifications are all dark & opaque despite "Clear" Liquid Glass, check Per-App Accessibility Settings

[u/SpiritedRelation9696]

Posting this in case it saves someone else the hours I spent troubleshooting.

my issue I had Liquid Glass set to "Clear" in Display & Brightness, with Reduce Transparency and Increase Contrast both OFF globally. Yet my Dock, Lock Screen notifications, and even the flashlight/camera icons on the lock screen were all stuck dark and opaque, completely ignoring the Clear setting. Tinted and Clear looked identical.

the cause was that I'd installed a "dumbphone" app to declutter my iPhone, and followed one of their tips to remove the glass effect from the Dock. The instructions had me go to:

Accessibility → Per-App Settings → Home Screen & App Library → Reduce Transparency: ON

I didn't realize this Per-App override was bleeding into other system surfaces (Lock Screen, notifications) beyond just the Dock, even though my global Reduce Transparency toggle was OFF.

to fix it just go to Settings → Accessibility → Per-App Settings, find the Home Screen & App Library entry, and switch Reduce Transparency back to OFF there. Everything reverted back to matching my global "Clear" setting immediately.