Liquid Glass Appreciation Thread

[bbates123]

Overall I like it but I think the current outline around icons and folders doesn't really lend much to a glassy 3D look. And there are areas like the Control Center where the transparency is just too much and the bleed through from the background make things look confusing. Hopefully this will all get sussed out in future betas.

 

[aaronage]

I love it!

When Steve Jpbs first demoed Aqua he said something along the lines of “we’ve got a gigaflop sitting here, might as well use it” in reference to the high-resolution glassy icons, transparency effects, smooth resizing etc. enabled by Quartz Compositor and the hardware (G4, OpenGL graphics etc.)

Liquid Glass gives me big time Aqua vibes. Not so much in look (though there are superficial similarities), but in the ambition and technical brilliance it displays. It’s built with the same spirit. Apple Silicon has performance to spare, use it!

This is what Apple should be all about. Art and technology 😍

 

[novagamer]

Edit so I don’t double post:

I like it a lot, more thoughts here: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...wn.2458805/page-2?post=33955971#post-33955971

 

[arc of the universe]

I love the direction of everything in the liquid glass UI except for the app icons. I GET the intention and the concept which looks and sounds gorgeous in theory, but in practice, it just looks like highlights and shadow effects from the 2010s. I have no problem with "skeuomorphism." But the style of the icons specifically is like triggering to my visual design senses haha.

I think it's telling in their WWDC session videos that they love to show this view (attached) of their icon designs a lot. Because this is gorgeous. But you can't emulate this look by looking at the icon head on. Also the screens are not high resolution enough for better highlight details; it just looks like everything is outlined with 2px strokes and another 2px stroke inside that one for highlights. No 3D glass effect.

They also mention the highlights change based on the angle of the phone from the gyroscope but its way to subtle to notice, if its even there at all.

Idk, I hope they keep working at it and get the look right before launch.

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all great points. and thanks for posting. its informative to understand what apple is trying to achieve.
and, in case people didn't see the detail on the Mail envelope from your shot:

 

[Lynxpoint]

Some aspects look refreshing in the Keynote video, but I have found that in dark mode that it leaves much to be desired. To me, it looks like some kind of poorly executed idea where one of the designers got carried away with layer effects in PS... items like the dock (on iPad) just look garishly wrong and thus are distracting, but things might improve by the end of the summer... we shall see. Apple is great at creating very pleasing marketing images that don't quite measure up to the real experience....

 

[LordArchie]

I like the look with darker wallpapers.
..

 

[Edouard Perreault]

The developments speak for themselves. Apple is making remarkable and undeniable progress; even if obviously the perfect OS does not exist anywhere!

People will always find fault, and sometimes rightly so; because without that the OS would never have been transformed to what they look like today 😎

 

[Astuces iOS]

Amidst all the naysaying and beta 1 ranting that’s to be expected, I thought it would be nice to have a place to celebrate some of the technical achievements and beautiful parts of the new UI without any complaining about the bugs or UX issues that are still being worked out.

Some of my favorite details:

• The prism effect at the edge of the Lock Screen and some other glass objects.
• Folders are gorgeous and remind me of “lickable” Aqua.
• The new app icons for the most part look fantastic. The camera icon harkens back to the iOS 6 design.
• The automatically created glass icons for older apps are tasteful and, assuming they’re automatically generated, super technically impressive.

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I don't really care on iOS and iPadOS but I like the fact that they brought dark icons to macOS !

 

[ThomasJL]

Glassmorphism is a variant of flat design pioneered by that tasetless company Microsoft. And Tim Cook was tasteless enough to copy Microsoft starting in 2013 with regular flat design. When Steve Jobs was CEO, Microsoft copied Apple. But under Cook, Apple copied Microsoft.

Apple should revert all current iOS and macOS graphics back to the exact same skeuomorphic graphics used in iOS 6 and Mac OS X Mountain Lion (but enhance the resoulition for the higher resolution screens of today). Ideally, Scott Forstall would be rehired and put in charge of that because he actually cares about customers—so much so that he kept a jeweler's loupe at his desk to examine each pixel of skeuomorphic UI designs.

 

[sunapple]

Glassmorphism is a variant of flat design pioneered by that tasetless company Microsoft. And Tim Cook was tasteless enough to copy Microsoft starting in 2013 with regular flat design. When Steve Jobs was CEO, Microsoft copied Apple. But under Cook, Apple copied Microsoft.

Apple should revert all current iOS and macOS graphics back to the exact same skeuomorphic graphics used in iOS 6 and Mac OS X Mountain Lion (but enhance the resoulition for the higher resolution screens of today). Ideally, Scott Forstall would be rehired and put in charge of that because he actually cares about customers—so much so that he kept a jeweler's loupe at his desk to examine each pixel of skeuomorphic UI designs.

Somehow I knew where this comment was going before I read it.

 

[Madonepro]

I absolutely love it!!

Me too, some 'counter culture'.

It's angered me enough, to write to Tim Cook, and suggest developer betas shouldn't be provided to anyone but actual 'paid up' developers. 😳

 

[Madonepro]

Mine is not cherry picked lol, literally took 2 screenshots off my actual screen.

Can you not read the room? Or perhaps read the threat title 😂

 

[bbfc]

The more I use it the more I really appreciate the redesign. Yes there’s some issues with readability that Apple will likely address in future betas, but the overall concept I really like.

 

[Cattivik83]

In my opinion we have gone back quite a bit, IOS 7 comes to mind. I really hope that the transparencies will be fixed, because this way it is quite confusing, and it seems to me like I am dealing with WIN VISTA.

 

[Didz81]

I think the new Liquid Glass design looks absolutely amazing and I honestly haven't been this excited for an upcoming iOS since iOS 7. I might even jump back on the public beta train again like I did with iOS 16 and I wonder how my iPhone 12 Pro Max will handle the beta of iOS 26 and also its final version in September. I remember running the public betas of iOS 16 on the iPhone XR I had at the time and I had almost no issues with it, things were fast and snappy pretty much throughout and I hope that will be the case too if I decide to get on the public beta with my iPhone 12 Pro Max for iOS 26.

 

[NUFC2025]

I am not going to comment until I have tried but I need to see and hear what this runs like on an SE3 that I use. It is not even one year old and I don't use beta software until the final RC.

 

[MagicHAM]

So far I don’t seem to have issues with it, it is much better in dark mode, where it isn’t much noticeable. But it’s still interesting that they have gone this route. The dock looks so much better with it though.

 

[Nate455]

This looks very nice, I am looking forward to using it one day.

 

[patseguin]

I love Liquid Glass. I find myself using my devices way more just because of how slick it looks and feels. Note - I had installed 26 on both my iPads and my iPhone 16 Pro Max and the glass effect was barely noticeable and things like control center had a weird shadow to them. After a couple days, I happened to look in Accessibility and saw that "reduce transparency" was turned on. I turned it off and voila, nice glass effects! Does apple turn that option on by default for some reason? I never turned it on.

 

[dreadlord]

While I was watching WWDC, I quite liked the Liquid Glass but I was afraid about legibility at the same time. Looking at the DB1, there are quite a lot of problems about legibility. However, I am going over the design guidelines and developer videos from Apple, these are all considered in the first place. From what I can tell, the DB1 is certainly lacking all the changes, and does not align with the Apple's own guidelines in the places where people criticize the most. So it is almost certain that these issues will be addressed in the future betas.

 

[krspkbl]

I like it but needs a good amount of polish which I expect to happen over the next few months.

I'm only really talking about iOS 26. It looks amazing on my watch and Mac.

 

[GioGiusi]

Ultimately, great design is only great design when it fully incorporates things like usability and accessibility. Design is much more than what something looks like. So people are rightly cautious to go into full on love-in mode for this. Whilst it does look beautiful in certain scenarios, it ISN'T great design - not yet anyway. It needs a hell of a lot of work.

Yeah, no. It needs minor tweaks, here and there. You don't even know what design is.

 

[turbineseaplane]

The developments speak for themselves. Apple is making remarkable and undeniable progress; even if obviously the perfect OS does not exist anywhere!

People will always find fault, and sometimes rightly so; because without that the OS would never have been transformed to what they look like today 😎


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I prefer the image on top

 

[Rychiar]

Around 75% of the global adult population requires some form of visual correction (according to Stat Can, NIH, etc.). Sounds like a market segment to consider when making significant UI changes.

that's who accessibility features are for...

 

[turbineseaplane]

that's who accessibility features are for...

Accessibility features should not be for a majority of a user base.
That has things totally flipped.