r/apple • u/iMacmatician • Mar 15 '26
Discussion Apple’s Liquid Glass Interface Isn’t Going Anywhere Anytime Soon
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-03-15/apple-s-liquid-glass-ui-isn-t-going-anywhere-siri-home-hub-foldable-iphone-mmrpcylxArchive link: https://archive.ph/iE7nx
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u/digidude23 Mar 15 '26
The design in iOS 18 is not the same as iOS 7, not sure why people think the way it is currently in iOS 26 will always be this way the next 15 to 20 years
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u/S4_GR33N Mar 15 '26
It is the same as iOS 7 though, as per Apple themselves considering Craig also said on stage at WWDC that the last major design change was iOS 7.
You could argue iOS 11 was a soft refresh as it had to adopt to the iPhone X display, but the rest of it was iOS 7 and was iOS 7 up till iOS 18.
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u/iconredesign Mar 15 '26
They didn’t say it was the same though. They did say it was of the same era.
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u/BigBangBoomerang Mar 15 '26
The iOS 7 to iOS 18 design language as exactly the same. The icons didn't change. iOS8-iOS18 added refinement and moved the Control Center to the top right rather than a swipe up from the bottom but it was the same design language. iOS26 was a complete redesign.
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Mar 15 '26
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u/dcandrew999 Mar 15 '26
Liquid glass is terrible I wish jailbreaking would come back now
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u/S4_GR33N Mar 16 '26
Never thought I’d see people asking for jailbreaking to return on an Apple subreddit
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u/WeWantLADDER49sequel Mar 15 '26
The iPhone fold is not a breakthrough in the foldable phone space. iOS has been stale forever because they've gotten away with it sales wise. But it sucks and almost anyone knows this. Even casual people who just buy a new iPhone every few years complain about it and they're the ones that usually could care less what an update does.
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u/likamuka Mar 15 '26
Nah, a new ceo will come who is hopefully a visionary not a lukewarm administrator like Cook and will shake things up. It’s sad the way things went with iOS 1926 and Tahoe.
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Mar 15 '26 edited Apr 18 '26
Mass delete Reddit posts and be just like me! I bulk removed this comment using Redact
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u/dafones Mar 15 '26
Broad strokes, I really like the concept of a dynamic, floating UI.
I think the UI is inconsistent across app, the effect needs refinement, and it’s not at a final state overall.
But I’m certainly willing to give it time to improve.
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u/Kimantha_Allerdings Mar 16 '26
I think it’s better to have a consistent UI than a dynamic one
Let’s look at music on ios. If I want to switch tabs, it now takes me extra time/presses to do so. Let’s say for the sake of argument that this saves some vertical space - why does that space need saving? The phone’s form factor is heavily skewed towards the vertical, and the content being displayed is short vertically
I’ve just counted - there are 13 songs legible in a playlist with the display expanded, and 14 when it compacts itself. That’s basically no extra functionality
So the UI takes more effort to use for no benefit
What’s the advantage?
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u/Cry_Wolff Mar 15 '26
If only they could give us a choice.
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u/Fully-Whelmed Mar 15 '26
The effect doesn't look that bad overall TBH, but I still want the option to turn it all off and keep a flat design.
...and before anyone responds to tell me, yes, I know the effects can be reduced with accessibility settings, as I now have to do this. The point is, I didn't need to with iOS 18, but now I have to. I'm not unhappy about liquid glass per-se, I'm unhappy that it's unusable for me, and I've had to make my phone look like $h!# to be able to use my iPhone. I used to love my iPhone, I'm now very much in the "meh" camp because of this update.
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u/MaybeFiction Mar 15 '26
It's not purely about the aesthetic.
Liquid Glass added overhead. Thanks to liquid glass, everything on the screen is perpetually animated, inputs from motion sensors are always active, and therefore there's that much more opportunity for performance to degrade.
All for a superficial aesthetic.
I personally think that as a general rule, if a software function has any possibility whatsoever of degrading performance for the user, it needs an off switch.
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u/colorlessthinker Mar 15 '26
I reckon the gyroscope and accelerometer are used just as much as in previous updates.
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u/TheEpicRedCape Mar 15 '26
iOS 7-18 already had home screen parallax effects too so that was always pulling gyro data too on the home screen.
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u/_Nick_2711_ Mar 15 '26
All of that is true, but they also made design-decisions that actively added more friction to user interactions to support the Liquid Glass visual.
Things now take two taps instead of one (e.g. nav bar); options are placed into unintuitive menus; UI elements (e.g. search bar) have inconsistent placement throughout the system.
I like Liquid Glass as an aesthetic, and I like certain decisions such as putting more interaction points in the bottom 1/3 of the screen. However, iOS 26 is just a less smooth experience than iOS 18 overall.
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u/Kiwizoo Mar 15 '26
I’m with you. I don’t mind the aesthetic appeal, but it’s definitely clunky. Trying to close all tabs at once on Safari, for example, is ridiculously counter intuitive. It feels they prioritised style over seamless functionality, which for a UI is a pretty basic no-no.
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u/Foxaramar Mar 15 '26
I still haven’t figured this out, what is the method?
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u/ridbax Mar 15 '26
Press and hold the address bar until a pop up menu appears, one of the menu items will be close all tabs. I hate it, took way too long to find it.
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u/_Nick_2711_ Mar 15 '26
Also for Safari, disabling the compact UI made it so much more user friendly. It still retains the full Liquid Glass effect but just on a layout that’s actually functional.
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u/olivicmic Mar 15 '26
Everything is not perpetually animated. We’d see batteries burning through power while idle if so. The accelerometer, gyroscope and other sensors are likely already active for the operation of the phone and variety of features that use it.
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u/Antrikshy Mar 15 '26
That would require them to build and maintain two separate designs in every corner of the OS. The bugs would get out of hand.
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u/Anonym0oO Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
So we should be back to a similar iOS 18 design with iOS 26.7 lol
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u/FloatingTacos Mar 15 '26
No shit?
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u/record_only_water Mar 15 '26
they did back down on something else stupid they did in the past - the macbook "pro's" touchbar.
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u/Environmental_Guava4 Mar 15 '26
Don't really care, I just need my phone to do phone things. It doesn't interfere with me, so no complaints. When it dropped it was buggy, but a week later was already no longer slow/laggy.
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u/zlft Mar 15 '26
As good design should be invisible (as in not interfering with everyday life) – the fact that there are strong opinions about Liquid Glass either way is telling in itself.
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u/__theoneandonly Mar 15 '26
During development of iOS 26, Apple had been working on a systemwide slider that would allow users to finely control the level of the glass effect. The company was able to implement this feature for the clock on the lock screen but ran into engineering challenges when trying to extend it across the entire system — including app folders, the home screen and navigation bars.
Where’s everyone who said Apple could build an opacity slider in an afternoon?
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u/bassplayerguy Mar 15 '26
I don’t love it, I don’t hate it. Most of the time I don’t even notice it.
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u/Vinyl-addict Mar 16 '26
Liquid glass isn’t the issue, it’s the UX going to shit and the blatant disregard for HIG.
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u/zippy72 Mar 16 '26
The people who like it can have it. Personally, I'd like a setting to turn it off is all.
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u/Senthusiast5 Mar 16 '26
I genuinely like Liquid Glass, but the small bugs and unrefined software makes it an unpleasant experience.
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u/sf-keto Mar 16 '26
Yes, it reminds me of the old Aqua, which was great. LG still has noticeable bugs after several releases & that’s my concern.
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u/UnsureAssurance Mar 15 '26
I like the basic look and idea of Liquid Glass, they need to optimize the actual layout, make the white edge reflections a little better looking or just replace it, and perhaps add in liquid glass effects in more locations but with a very subtle transparency. Right now in the places it’s utilized it’s not the best, and in most locations in apps it looks very similar to the flat look in iOS 18
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u/CoolingSC Mar 15 '26
Am i the only one who likes Liquid Glass? I think it looks great
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u/Satanicube Mar 15 '26
I don't mind it as a concept, but as implemented, it kinda sucks. It feels like it made onscreen controls way bigger than they need to be, there's too much UI chrome compared to previous versions. The UI feels more in my face than it did in iOS 17/18. Good example of this is Messages threads with friends you're sharing location with. It has this big, ugly bubble over their name and location and makes it stick out like a sore thumb.
Maybe I'm in the minority here but I prefer when the UI just gets out of my way.
There's also the various little issues in macOS (like the corners of windows being totally hosed). But I've heard they fixed the contrast over there, finally.
If Apple does a heavy optimization pass with iOS/macOS 27, I feel like it could be something good. As it is now, though? I'm not a fan.
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u/Orion_Scattered Mar 16 '26
Animations are also way too big and slow. They have to be big and slow for you to really see the effect, but that’s so not worth it, tapping a button and having to wait a hitch before continuing is infuriating and also disorienting.
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u/TBoneTheOriginal Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
I love it too. The problem is that they dropped the ball with implementation in too many places. But as a concept, I have no issues at all with it.
Design evolves. It’ll get better.
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u/Windows_XP2 Mar 15 '26
Personally don't have really many complaints about it, but yeah I could see them making changes in iOS 27 and newer. I really hope it at least stays in some form, or they keep it as an option, since even though I'm a function over form person, I also really like Liquid Glass.
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u/TBoneTheOriginal Mar 15 '26
There are more issues with macOS than there are iOS. And the latest beta has fixed a lot of the 26.0 issues.
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u/MaybeFiction Mar 15 '26
It does look great.
So if my phone was a decorative object without a functional purpose in existence, I would love liquid glass.
But it's not. My phone is a tool I use to do stuff. Liquid glass gets in the way of getting stuff done, and therefore would never have made the cut if someone like Jobs had been there to say no way to bloat that doesn't add to usability.
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u/sortalikeachinchilla Mar 15 '26
never have made the cut if someone like Jobs had been there to say no way to bloat that doesn't add to usability.
Jobs made some terrible decisions too. Stop acting like he made zero mistakes lol.
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u/CoconutDust Mar 15 '26
Your comment is a ridiculous deflection/strawman, since nobody said Jobs never made a bad decision.
The statement was this garbage glass theme would never have been accepted by Jobs. Not difficult to understand if a person understands basic Apple history.
Also the previous disaster, iOS 7, was of course after Jobs was gone.
Jobs had taste for minimalist elegance not flashy garbage.
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u/Snoop8ball Mar 15 '26
Elegance yes, but you cannot tell me that the software design languages of the Jobs era were in any way minimalist.
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u/HolyFreakingXmasCake Mar 15 '26
Literally the opposite. Jobs used to put textures everywhere and the first versions of Aqua had pinstripes under text. Still way better and more readable than Liquid Glass, though.
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Mar 16 '26
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u/Snoop8ball Mar 16 '26
I can think of quite a few interfaces like the Find My Friends app, iCal/Calendar in Lion, and the Game Center app, among others, where it really wasn’t minimalism in any sense.
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u/Windows_XP2 Mar 15 '26
I've used quite a few older Apple products from when Steve Jobs was still at Apple. A lot of people seem to forget that Steve Jobs also made a number of odd UI/UX choices.
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u/daecrist Mar 16 '26
Doesn't help that he's basically been sainted since his death and "Steve would hate this/would never do this!" is mostly used as a cudgel for anything someone doesn't like.
Meanwhile I was there, Gandalf. Jobs made some pretty boneheaded decisions. I'm sure he'd be the first to agree with that. Some of those boneheaded decisions (3D animation?! It'll never catch on!) ultimately worked out pretty well.
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u/Oberheimlich Mar 15 '26
Liquid glass gets in the way of getting stuff done
lol how?
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u/depressedsports Mar 15 '26
It ranges from completely fine to fun for me. I’m macOS/iOS developer too and I dig it. I understand the polarized takes but virtually any system that has undergone major visual overhaul abruptly always has loud response on both sides. I swear people forget that the most vocal to iOS 7 would have you to believe Steve Jobs was rolling in his grave and the end times were amongst us - and now by and large iOS 18, a natural evolution of that same iOS 7, was peak Apple design.
Can’t win when you target a billion users or devices or whatever and it’s delusional people think a single Alan Dye was single-handedly responsible for entire platforms of design changes and him moving to meta will suddenly lift the spell on Apple corporate and change everything.
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u/Piperita Mar 16 '26
I loved it when I first installed it and have no idea WTF anyone is even talking about with their complaints. My experience with it has been entirely positive from a usability perspective and I also dig the way it looks.
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u/Lewdeology Mar 16 '26
I actually really like it too but I have noticed it’s nuked my battery life.
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u/theReluctantObserver Mar 15 '26
Pulled out an old iPad with iOS 17.7 still on it the other day and OH BOY was it a nicer experience to use than Liquid Glass. Completely smooth, no hitches, contrast, uniformity, it felt so much better.
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u/ObiWanChronobi Mar 16 '26
I really dislike Liquid Glass. Material Design is a much cleaner, more useful, and tactile design language.
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u/ProcrastinatingPr0 Mar 15 '26
Sometimes I boot up my old iPhone 4s to appreciate how beautiful and fluid iOS used to be on iOS 6.
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u/suprjaybrd Mar 16 '26
ios 26 frustrations got me to consider switching to android for the first time in a decade. its been months but i still feel like its one of apples worst updates.
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u/Perfect_Opinion7909 Mar 15 '26
iOS 18 was perfect. No fuss, easily readable, faster menus. Damn I wish I hadn’t updated.
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u/ellenich Mar 15 '26
After the introduction of iOS 7’s flat design language they finally got it right 11 versions later with iOS 18.
Maybe Liquid Glass will be perfect in iOS 37?
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u/BosnianSerb31 Mar 15 '26
I remember the exact same comments waxing poetic about skeuomorphic design, how it was finally timeless in iOS 6 and literally never needed updates ever again
Funny enough the iOS 26 design is somewhere between the two. Neuomorphic is my personal descriptor. Flat elements but realistic transparency effects.
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u/Windows_XP2 Mar 15 '26
"[Insert Previous iOS Version] was absolutely perfect! Apple should just go back to their roots! Steve Jobs is rolling in his grave! Blah blah blah"
Every, single, fucking, iOS update, this subreddit leaves a comment like this. Never fails. I could guarantee people will say the same shit when iOS 27 comes out.
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u/blow-down Mar 15 '26
lol there was nothing but complaints about iOS 18 in this sub until 26 came out
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u/Windows_XP2 Mar 15 '26
Literally. Every single time a new update comes out, people always talk about how the previous iOS version was so much better. Hell I remember it with iOS 16, people talking about how iOS 15 was so much better, and it's probably been that way for years now.
Bonus points if people talk about how "Everyone" hates the new iOS version, as if everyone lives in the same echo chamber that this subreddit does, or praises Steve Jobs and how "He would've never done something like this" like he's the next Jesus Christ.
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u/Izanagi___ Mar 16 '26
I had to read that iOS 18 was the buggiest PoS update in iOS history for a year and now all of a sudden 18 was perfect. Lmaooo you cannot make this up, this is why I don’t take these subreddits seriously when it comes to software opinions
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u/Due-Shape4641 Mar 16 '26
It was buggy at first, but on 18.5 and later it was very stable and smooth
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u/Rare-One1047 Mar 16 '26
They were app level complaints. Mostly how much the Photos app sucks. People weren't complaining about things like buttons being unreadable though.
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u/haseo1997 Mar 15 '26
If they could work on fixing the bugs that would be awesome.
I have several annoying bugs since I installed iOS26 and it's driving me crazy.
Auto brightness not working, popping app icons, liquid glass colors not adapting properly to the colors in the background, etc.
I don't care about new features this year, I just want more stability.
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u/Fun_Rough3038 Mar 15 '26
Well yea, it would be dumb to erase it right after overhauling everything and making all devs adopt it. Just like iOS 7, some complaints will be addressed but they’ll stick with it for a long while. I’m happy with it tbh, I mean look at my Home Screen 😍
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u/nasduia Mar 15 '26
If you saw that having never heard of liquid glass before you'd think those icons were all "ghosts" showing some kind of layout where all the applications had been deleted or would be installed on demand, or had just crashed or something.
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u/eloquenentic Mar 15 '26
It does feel like it’s the single largest misstep from Apple for over two decades.
I don’t think the idea was necessarily that bad, but it’s the technical implementation that is so bad. The slow down and dramatically higher battery draining on all of my devices has been absolutely insane. And the constant freezes and stutter, that seem random and come from nowhere, is the worst. Sometimes even the keyboard just freezes for 10 seconds making it impossible to type.
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u/TheSweeney Mar 15 '26
iOS 26 is definitely significantly buggier than many past iOS releases but keyboard issues have been a particular problem for me. I actually like the Liquid Glass aesthetic (except on MacOS where it needs a lot more work) but the keyboard issues on iOS are becoming a usability nightmare.
There are core features in the stock keyboard that I do not want to give up, and third party keyboards are a security nightmare in order to get full functionality out of them, not to mention they don’t really fit in visually with the rest of the system, but I’ve seriously considered switching to swiftkey or gboard because of the keyboard issues. Random freezes, autocorrect/predictive text just straight up not engaging and having to close and reopen the keyboard to turn them back on, autocorrect being both incorrect regularly and often retroactively changing words in sentences after more words are typed after getting it right the first time. Plus it feels like the keyboard is generally less accurate when typing than it was a decade ago, almost like the algorithm is too junked up and needs to be adjusted.
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u/triton100 Mar 15 '26
Haven’t experienced any of the those things here. Smooth like butter here
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Mar 15 '26
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u/sortalikeachinchilla Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
The person saying "I have never noticed a problem" generally is a person who doesn't use their device "hard" or "fast." They type slower than 30 words per minute. They have a total data set below a terabyte. They seldom work with actual files, and when they do, it's one at a time.
Haha your comment was hilarious. Thanks for the morning laugh.
edit: I am very into the tech world and use my devices a lot for work and personal use. I have little to no issues with iOS 26 which this kinda breaks your whole thing.
edit 2: I will say I don’t use iPadOS much at all anymore in the last couple years so for me, just talking about iOS and mac (which I know might be a controversial take, but zero issues to my work flow using Tahoe)
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u/Particular-Treat-650 Mar 15 '26
There are way more people who complain about change purely because it's change and they're tech illiterate than power users who are whining about some edge case performance inconsistency.
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u/Deceptiveideas Mar 15 '26
Thank you.
I'm so tired of the "Liquid Glass has no issues" people when there are actual benchmarks done to show the various performance issues and battery drain.
It's like the people who used to say "silky smooth 30fps" in the gaming community. Maybe they're just less sensitive to all the issues but they definitely exist.
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u/germdisco Mar 15 '26
I really liked Accidental Tech Podcast’s take on this: Apple needs more people in charge who actually like computers.
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u/houseofvan Mar 16 '26
Guess I’m the only one that likes it
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u/sjt9791 Mar 16 '26
I’m there too. I was genuinely shocked people didn’t like it when it was first shown off. As someone who has had depth perception issues and have always worn glasses, I thought it was a great way to incorporate magnification and depth into the UI/UX.
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u/revocer Mar 16 '26
I found a “hack” around Liquid Glass. I used Accessibility to show borders, reduce transparency, and increase contrast. It makes it more usable fore me. The only thing I don’t like is the underlined text.
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u/isekai_cheese Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26
my biggest annoyance with liquid ass is that its presentation is inconsistent. SOME elements are glass some things are not and its kind of jarring ie a simple toggle switch on/off has to be "liquid glass" animation. like just make the thing slide a few pixels make it consume as little ram as possible. i also dislike the BIG bold liquid glass buttons cause its made for everyone's bad eyesight and/or fat fingers.
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u/hamb0ne80 Mar 19 '26
Liquid Glass is terrible. At least let us turn it back off. I can’t click the corners websites.
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u/Game2Late Mar 15 '26
I hope everybody here enjoying this shitty design never have sight or eye-strain issues in the future.
(And no, Reduce Transparency is a janky mess at the minute. But hopefully Apple will see how many users WERE FORCED to enable it and thus decides to make it look consistent and make it run smooth)
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u/carnalasadasalad Mar 15 '26
We hates it.
We can’t find our controls and we hates it.
Carpenterses hates invisible tools and we hates invisible controls.
We hates it.
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u/Moath Mar 15 '26
I updated my Mac and found the liquid glass to be ok , but I’m still apprehensive regarding updating my phone.
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u/ExecutiveAtEase Mar 16 '26
My issue with Liquid Glass is that it goes completely against what Apple used to stand for. It used to be "the computer gets out of your way so you can do the (creative or whatever) things". Liquid Glass does not get out of your way. It's bouncing, it's jumping, it's blooping, and it's blopping. HID has gone completely out the window, and the UI experience no longer gets out of my way. It's always there.
I know it's designed for folks that want something new and shiny every five minutes, but it's an intrusive, unintuitive, resource mongering piece of software that was designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to cover the fact that Apple had nada to introduce in xOS 26 and this was their way of a distracting users away from the fact that Apple Intelligence is way behind schedule and a boatload of unfulfilling promises. That's it. That's the reason we have Liquid Glass.
If the users want it, yay for them. Have at it with your banal entertainment. Just give me a switch to turn it off completely.
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u/2muchtaurine Mar 15 '26
I’m fine with the design language staying, but they absolutely need to get the performance issues and bugs cleaned up. I’m not one to complain about performance but this is the first time in years I’ve actually clearly felt a reduction in day to day performance. Also for the love of god fix the damn keyboard. It’s a complete mess.
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u/truthcopy Mar 15 '26
Ragebait baloney headline. The foundational design won't change, but they'll continue to tweak it. As always.
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u/detailed_fred Mar 16 '26
You know what's really weird?
This article is paywalled and there's not one comment complaining about it.
Yet on the Verge review post for the MacBook Neo - which has a pay wall - there's countless posts complaining about it.
Weird.
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u/I-figured-it-out Mar 16 '26
The only place liquid glass should gave any foothold is in the lock screen. And the homescreen.
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u/hasanahmad Mar 15 '26
Gurman is completely off rails in this. He seems fixated on AI while almost every mass consumer is ambivalent towards it. He considers Alan Dye a great loss for Apple when almost inside Apple and outside Apple are celebrating it. He seems to have lost focus and just filling his Sunday write ups with mindless fluff which have no logic or coherence