UITabBar (Liquid Glass) rendering breaks when UITabBarController is recreated while fully obscured by a fullscreen modal

I’m seeing a rendering issue with UITabBarController on iOS 26 (Liquid Glass), and I’d like to confirm whether others can reproduce this or have a workaround.

Summary

If a UITabBarController is recreated while it is fully hidden behind a fullscreen modal, the tab bar renders incorrectly after dismissal.

• Selected tab becomes nearly invisible
• Unselected tabs appear to show both selected and unselected tint colors
• Looks like multiple rendering states are composited incorrectly

This only happens with:

• iOS 26 (Liquid Glass enabled)
• UIKit UITabBarController

It does not reproduce with SwiftUI TabView.

Minimal Reproduction Code

This is a complete, minimal example:

import UIKit

// MARK: - Root

class RootViewController: UIViewController {
    private var tabBar: UITabBarController?
    private var modalPresented = false

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        installTabBar()
    }

    override func viewDidAppear(_ animated: Bool) {
        super.viewDidAppear(animated)
        // Present once on first appear, simulating an app-launch login flow.
        if !modalPresented {
            modalPresented = true
            presentModal()
        }
    }

    private func installTabBar() {
        let tab = UITabBarController()
        tab.viewControllers = [
            makeTab(title: "Tab 1", systemImage: "1.circle"),
            makeTab(title: "Tab 2", systemImage: "2.circle"),
        ]
        tabBar = tab
        addChild(tab)
        view.addSubview(tab.view)
        tab.view.frame = view.bounds
        tab.didMove(toParent: self)
    }

    private func makeTab(title: String, systemImage: String) -> UIViewController {
        let vc = UIViewController()
        vc.view.backgroundColor = .systemBackground
        vc.tabBarItem = UITabBarItem(title: title, image: UIImage(systemName: systemImage), tag: 0)
        return vc
    }

    private func presentModal() {
        let modal = ModalViewController()
        modal.onDismiss = { [weak self] in
            // Recreate the tab bar while it is still fully hidden by the modal.
            // This seems to trigger incorrect Liquid Glass rendering.
            self?.tabBar?.willMove(toParent: nil)
            self?.tabBar?.view.removeFromSuperview()
            self?.tabBar?.removeFromParent()
            self?.installTabBar()          // ← created while invisible
            self?.dismiss(animated: true)
        }
        modal.modalPresentationStyle = .fullScreen
        present(modal, animated: true)
    }
}

// MARK: - Modal

class ModalViewController: UIViewController {
    var onDismiss: (() -> Void)?

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        view.backgroundColor = .systemBackground

        let button = UIButton(type: .system)
        button.setTitle("Dismiss", for: .normal)
        button.titleLabel?.font = .preferredFont(forTextStyle: .title2)
        button.addTarget(self, action: #selector(dismissTapped), for: .touchUpInside)
        button.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
        view.addSubview(button)
        NSLayoutConstraint.activate([
            button.centerXAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.centerXAnchor),
            button.centerYAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.centerYAnchor),
        ])
    }

    @objc private func dismissTapped() {
        onDismiss?()
    }
}

Expected Behavior

The tab bar renders normally with correct Liquid Glass appearance:

• Selected tab is clearly visible
• Unselected tabs show only inactive tint

Actual Behavior

• Selected tab becomes nearly invisible
• Unselected tabs show a mix of selected + unselected tint
• The issue resolves after backgrounding and returning to foreground

Observations / Workarounds

The issue does not reproduce if:

1. The tab bar is recreated after dismissal:

self.dismiss(animated: true) {
    self.installTabBar()
}

1. Using SwiftUI TabView
2. Using a presentation style that does not fully cover the screen (.pageSheet, etc.)

Question

• Has anyone else encountered this?
• Is there a recommended workaround besides delaying creation until after dismissal?

It seems like Liquid Glass rendering may not initialize correctly when the view is attached while fully obscured, but I’m not sure if this is expected behavior or a bug.