Ex-Apple Designer Reveals 'Living Glass' iOS 26 Concepts

[Ctrlos]

I read Sebastian's article yesterday, incredible concept. If this comes close to what iOS 26 will be, we will again have fun with the iOS interface. Who cares about AI

Indeed! The idea of AI becoming the 'engine' of lots of other products is probably the future. Imagine an AI accessibility test on phone setup that then sets the distance of interactive elements from the bottom of the screen in accordance with how far you can personally reach!

But as a centralised, server-contained tech-God? No Thanks.

 

[boswald]

I'm so excited for this. I love the trends moving toward frosted glass/blur. It looks so sleek to me.

 

[jonblatho]

I fear he put more effort into thinking about this than Apple probably put into the real thing.

 

[iMac The Knife]

Wow, innovation at its finest. There is nothing groundbreaking or even remotely interesting about this so called 'living glass'. It's called "a clear icon w/ an app logo" where I come from.

 

[baconcat_8964]

Youtubers went through a phase of using glass side panels for old aspect ratio videos. They are incredibly distracting for the content. It's way better to just have black borders instead. I hope it's not the same effect here.

I noticed that enabling this on iPad may drastically reduce Safari performance.

 

[GrassShark]

For those concerned about usability or accessibility due to lower contrast elements, Apple has always offered some robust features to reduce transparency, increase contrast of UI items and the boldness of text, and other options for those who's eyes would struggle with the eye candy, and I'm sure this would be no exception.

Just because they offer a solution to fix bad design doesn't mean it's not bad design. Ideally they would just design stuff to have sufficient contrast from the start (like they tell developers to do in their own Human Interface Guidelines). And this isn't me complaining because my eyes are bad, I say all this as someone with perfect vision. Accessible design is good for everyone.

 

[Schtibbie]

“Reveals” a concept? So what? Nothing is revealed here. How bout “makes up a concept”?

 

[crsh1976]

Aside from the blatant accessibility issues inherent to the low contrast in the few examples here, sure why not - it doesn't reinvent the wheel (nor does it pretend to), it's easy enough to understand, but ultimately it's just a styling update that matches what we've been seeing in VisionOS.

 

[MrENGLISH]

And why is there a giant holding an iphone 3?

iPhone 3 ??? What timeline are you from?

 

[lazyrighteye]

Youtubers went through a phase of using glass side panels for old aspect ratio videos. They are incredibly distracting for the content. It's way better to just have black borders instead. I hope it's not the same effect here.

See example below. Look at the sides. Super distracting to the main content - especially in motion.

View attachment 2516228

Not at all helped by the fact that the blurred section repeats the edge of the actual image. While subtle, this is a very different experience than blurring a portion of a continual image. Not sure your example is what we can expect from iOS 26.

It’ll be interesting to see how this all works. The biggest challenge of recent UI elements is there’s inconsistency and lack of clarity, in what is/isn’t a touchable button. There can be too much tap-exploring to find features. I’m not sure something like live glass solves that challenge. Until it releases, we can’t know (obviously), but I’m very curious to see how this new interface works (or not). I have my quiet concerns.

 

[simon3163]

I like it.. looks nice.
Looking forward to buttons actually appearing under my thumb popping up from the glass.

 

[Scipster]

Is Forstall back at Apple?

I enjoy the visual cues that visionOS provides, but it works because the device is see through and it feels as though the UI is floating on air. iPhones, iPads, and Macs don’t have the same feel. They feel like dense objects, better suited for a flat design to give it a sense of lightness. But perhaps this is all part of Apple’s grand plan. Rumors are of an all glass iPhone in the future — maybe they will all feature video pass through in the future, which actually would be a cool feature! See through iPhones, iPads, and Macs - the next big thing!

 

[verniesgarden]

honestly think this looks terrible and dated

 

[panjandrum]

As someone who spends 50% or more of his professional life teaching, training and tutoring persons from the ages of 6 to 96 on a variety of Operating Systems and hardware, I can't even begin to tell you how welcome a return to skeuomorphism would be. It doesn't have to be the *same* designs as before, but a UI that functions like real-world objects will be a huge, huge boon. Clarity (make things you need to click/tap look like actual buttons again), visibility (reduce the use of low-contrast UI design elements and bring color back to elements that have been reduced to grey and grey), and consistency need to return as well. Our wonderful, consistent Apple-centric micro-world, where software all looked and functioned in at least a reasonably similar fashion in the Apple world has spent the past 15 years tumbling into an abyss of random ******tified crap that feels an awful lot like Microsoft at their worst. This design may include skeuomorphism, and maybe consistency, but it still appears to desperately lack clarity and visibility.

 

[trusso]

For those concerned about usability or accessibility due to lower contrast elements, Apple has always offered some robust features to reduce transparency, increase contrast of UI items and the boldness of text, and other options for those who's eyes would struggle with the eye candy, and I'm sure this would be no exception.

Except that the Increase Contrast option, while wonderful to have, is generally hideous. Moreover, the baseline contrast for the OS should not be so bad that the average person needs to resort to Accessibility features to overcome it.

 

[cupcakes2000]

I hate it already

Never even seen it but hate it anyway. I suppose that’s the world today.

 

[macman01101]

As an Apple user, I’d much rather have Living Glass ™️ buttons that functional AI. Google and Samsung need to take the “L” on this one 🙄

 

[turbineseaplane]

So many of these designers think looking sexy or cool or futuristic = "great design"

It does not.

 

[Corefile]

I can't imagine this theming engine being support on Intel Macs.

 

[jacjustjac]

Lowkey reminded me of the very first “iPod video” interface mockups in 2006.

 

[turbineseaplane]

My favorite part of the whole blog post

All writing, conceptual UI design and iconography in this post was made by hand by me. No artificial intelligence was used in authoring any of it.

 

[BJMRamage]

Its worth reading his whole thesis before commenting. He makes some really interesting points about the graphic design of iOS. Notably its a kind of return to some sort of physicality to the OS, where the glass buttons on the screen betray the idea of the glass in your phone display coming to life.

His concepts further down are gorgeous. Opening up the app icons to layering creates all sorts of interesting and playful animations. If you have an AppleTV have a play with tvOS. If you caress the touchpad on a Siri remote (.....) you'll see that the App icons have individual layer elements that react to the smallest movement. Adding this to the icons on iOS would be incredible, not least of which would be the requirement for UX designers to happily stretch their Photoshop skills 😉

If Apple have even half of what he is suggesting, Monday can't come soon enough.

Well said.

Ever since the new UI talk with they next OS started to pop up I have heard about a frosted glass and thought of the older Aqua look and have seen possible renders with a similar feel. They felt dated and ugly. We don't need frosted robust bubbles for an interface...but this writeup suggests the idea of a subtler approach.

Seeing the concept of "dark" or "Liquid Glass" home screen app icons is a WOW! moment for me. that does not have the frosted glass, bubbly round feel overlayed on the actual app icon but a reimagining similar to the Dark App Icons...we don't just "make it dark or inverse the app" we make it feel cohesively correct. The Floating Tabs bar seemed a "whatever" to me prior but seeing this compared to the current full-width state (as written in the post) does give it a ever-so-slightly new feel.

Making the App Icons slightly more rounded doesn't feel crazy, but feels closer to the more rounded WATCH screen design. It feels consistent. Just like the idea of the updated Share Icon. Showing the current and projected New Email Composition screen shows the subtle grey button behind Cancel, the more rounded edges, and even the text softening with lines that do not just jump to the edges. This concept makes the current look already feel old.

The full article gives me better hope to a New UI reimagining. We've already seen some similar instances in the WATCH buttons, TV UI, some other the newer apps, and even with VisionOS.

 

[Naraxus]

So many of these designers think looking sexy or cool or futuristic = "great design"

It does not.

In your opinion.

 

[Jashar7]

Youtubers went through a phase of using glass side panels for old aspect ratio videos. They are incredibly distracting for the content. It's way better to just have black borders instead. I hope it's not the same effect here.

See example below. Look at the sides. Super distracting to the main content - especially in motion.

View attachment 2516228

I mean come on man you comparing YouTube with Apple designers is ridiculous lol, YouTube has been a joke since forever in it’s design philosophy.

 

[robertosh]

I'm a bit more concerned about performance. From my experience developing SwiftUI, shadows/gradients/animations are the hardest (in terms of performance) to draw. Wondering how older devices will coup with all that visual candy.