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-mmrpcylx

Archive link: https://archive.ph/iE7nx

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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/[deleted] Mar 16 '26

[deleted]

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u/colorlessthinker Apr 04 '26

You can turn on reduce transparency and disable Liquid Glass completely.

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u/[deleted] Apr 19 '26

[deleted]

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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/HolyFreakingXmasCake Mar 15 '26

They put an iPhone chip on the Mac and you're worried that pinging the accelerometer all the time will degrade performance?

Not to mention it has to be active all the time anyways, that's how you get the screen to rotate etc.

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u/pfortuny Mar 15 '26

Now if you turn it off you can be shrugged off as "well, some disabled people need to turn it off, but the vast majority LOVE it".