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Liquid Glass Appreciation Thread

As someone who’s not trying the beta, I’m growing to like liquid glass through the videos of the Developers State of the Union and other WWDC ‘25 videos on the Developers App. Especially after watching the ones dedicated to Liquid Glass.

However, I still think there might be some legibility issues due to the high transparency of the notifications, on certain backgrounds. Let’s hope they polish it (or make it a bit more matte). Or maybe refine the black/white font algorithm.

By the way, is anyone with an iPhone SE 2/3 trying the beta? I’m really curious as to how liquid glass looks on this squared screens.
 
ian-mac said:
There is an option to remove the effect entirely but it’s does make it look very basic and ugly.

I think a slider is required to set the tone of the translucency in my honest opinion.
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Yeah, I think the same. A slider to set the strength or the degree of translucency would be great, and a great feedback we all should send to Apple.

A slider to move between the two extremes: the complete translucency of Liquid Glass, and the matte look of the Frosted Glass.
 
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Mr. Awesome said:
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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Absolutely loving this energy! That prism edge detail is subtle but stunning, and those folder animations are pure eye candy—definitely gives Aqua vibes. Also blown away by how seamlessly those glass icons blend in; it's a smart way to preserve cohesion across the system. Total props to the design team!
 
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ThomasJL said:
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.
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Should we should also put a physical keypad on the iPhone as well?
 
I will be honest: at first I hated the glass look. But now I got used to it and I think it is cool. There are a few changes I would love to see. The animation of liquid glass in the Photos app is a bit too much.

But if you look at the address bar in Safari, the notification in the notification centers and such, I really feel like: “holy cow, this is cool, new and fresh!”

At first the animations were a Menieres trigger, but I figured out it was a trigger because of the stutter under the glass, not the glass itself. Now I love the glass. It’s cool.
 
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Liquid Glass v1

1750011322923.png
 
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BMox81 said:
I’m still really torn on this new OS-in certain screen shots I’ve seen it looks ok but the rest and it looks really bad! Lol
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Same here. It feels like dark mode is generally pretty solid, but light mode needs some love. A great example of this is Messages - looks great in dark, not so much in light.

Guess it's a good thing it's very obviously unfinished!
 
Can someone post images with a solid black wallpaper (my preference) and full-color icons, please.
 
stiligFox said:
I started with iPhone OS 2 when I got my first iPod touch… I remember the same general feelings of dislike when iOS 7 first came out. And, to be fair, iOS 7 was not great - over saturated icons, the new San Francisco font was used at way too thin.

But over the years it’s been tweaked and refined and it’s now what everyone knows and loves, and Liquid Glass will have the same evolution. As someone who still loves and misses Apples old Aqua UI and Windows old Aero UI, I love Liquid Glass personally!
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For a company this large they should have zero difficulties designing a UI which takes into account both style and usability/accessibility. If this was, say, OpenAI releasing a garbage interface, we could give them some slack, they're a new company with many other priorities. But Apple isn't a startup. They're very far from "strapped for cash", and they should have enough people with enough experience to design competent UIs. The fact that you brought up iOS 7 is just a further example of why none of these Liquid Glass problems should exist: they already went through this.

The fact that you bring up that it improved slowly over time is also not a good thing. No one wants to deal with garbage for 5-10 years while Apple slowly gives in and abandons all their ambitious yet obviously impractical design decisions. I can hold out for 5 years while Apple re-learns why computers need ports. Can't just not update the OS for half a decade or more.

stiligFox said:
So don’t forget to leave feedback for Apple! Remember they don’t read messages here - gotta leave feedback in the Feedback app so they can get a consensus of how everyone’s feeling about the new design!

But I feel the big one is to be patient a bit and remember - it’s a beta, and iOS 26 is a big jump - it may take until 27/28 before things are smoothed out and *refined* back to the way things were in iOS 6 and iOS 18.
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Feedback is borderline useless: https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2023/11/2.html

"it's a beta" is just more cope pretending Apple is a startup that's just learning how things work. They are neither a startup nor is this a new experience nor is this a new thing in the world. 45 years of HCI and Apple releases this garbage? "it's just a beta"
 
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turbineseaplane said:
Liquid Glass v1

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Wow, just take a look at that beautiful skeuomorpic design! It shows the innovative minds of Scott Forstall and his team. In additon to its beauty, it was playful and fun.

The flat design Apple started using in 2013, as well as the flat design variants like glassmorphism and neumorphism that Apple uses today, use flat design elements that make a computer not look playful and fun, but rather flat like the command prompt on MS-DOS, which is the ultimate in flat design.
 
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ThomasJL said:
Wow, just take a look at that beautiful skeuomorpic design! It shows the innovative minds of Scott Forstall and his team. In additon to its beauty, it was playful and fun.

The flat design Apple started using in 2013, as well as the flat design variants like glassmorphism and neumorphism that Apple uses today, use flat design elements that make a computer not look playful and fun, but rather flat like the command prompt on MS-DOS, which is the ultimate in flat design.
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Can't innovate anymore, my ass!
 
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!!! said:
Feedback is borderline useless: https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2023/11/2.html

"it's a beta" is just more cope pretending Apple is a startup that's just learning how things work. They are neither a startup nor is this a new experience nor is this a new thing in the world. 45 years of HCI and Apple releases this garbage? "it's just a beta"
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This is true, on both counts. Feedback is very rarely acknowledged from my experience unless the same report is reported a LOT by people. But they do keep their finger on the pulse of what people are saying, and reports I'm sure get analyzed by some kind of aggregator to give a sense if there's a lot of complaints about any one particular thing.

Also it's not really cope. It's exactly how it went with iOS 7. It was a very controversial change back in the day, I was there running the first betas. And the betas didn't really change a lot, it wasn't until iOS 8 and later that stuff started becoming more usable and legible. It's not ideal and sure Apple could and should just get it right the first time, but this is how it is.
 
turbineseaplane said:
Liquid Glass v1

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Aqua, my beloved, How I miss thee...

I remember back in the day theme-ing Windows XP to look like this. Completely borked my computer!

Was so excited when I was gifted a PowerBook G3 Pismo and I could put Mac OS X Tiger on it, with all its Aqua goodness. Though they'd moved to a lot more brushed aluminum in Tiger I think. I remember going back a few versions and liked how Aqua looked a bit more originally.


Same reason I liked Windows Vista and even more, Windows 7. That frosted glass look in the early 2000's was peak UI design for me, so I'm super stoked to see it come back in a modern way!
 
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ThomasJL said:
Wow, just take a look at that beautiful skeuomorpic design! It shows the innovative minds of Scott Forstall and his team. In additon to its beauty, it was playful and fun.

The flat design Apple started using in 2013, as well as the flat design variants like glassmorphism and neumorphism that Apple uses today, use flat design elements that make a computer not look playful and fun, but rather flat like the command prompt on MS-DOS, which is the ultimate in flat design.
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I’m starting to wonder whether you’re Scott Forstall’s sock-puppet account, or just his #1 fan…

The pre-iOS 7 interface design was great for its time, but now just looks hopelessly dated, cheesy, and boring, as does Aqua. There’s nothing to be gained from clinging desperately to the past, it’s gone, and it wasn’t all perfect either, no matter what our memories tell us!
 
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I don't do the beta thing, but I'm cautiously optimistic to see how this looks and feels once it's released. Some of the screenshots look gorgeous (and some terrible!).
 
turbineseaplane said:
Liquid Glass v1

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The crazy designs of yesteryear.. at the time, I liked it but didn’t love it. I mean really, those icons are so awful to me! Haha

It’s been said so many times already, but I’m loving the new Liquid Glass.. it’s excellent, fun, alive, and after some good tweaks it’ll be solid

I’m glad that outside of the GUI, there are SO many very welcome changes. Watch Brandon Butch’s video to catch a bunch that one may not have had time to notice =)
 
Windows Vista in 2025…

The glass effects are ridiculous eye candy. But i like what they did to Terminal in regards to readability
 
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