Fuzzy blurry mess

[code-m]

So why have a 4k tee vee if our eyes see soft?

Sitting too close to a 4K TV is probably not recommended and that’s probably the time you will notice the unrealistic super high details.

Example: view a night shot of a city skyline on a 4K TV with low, medium and high brightness in this example SDR/HDR. Now go outside in the night and view a similar city skyline of light up buildings, etc. The atmosphere (air pollution, smog, dust, etc), light pollution, your visual acuity, etc will have it perceive much differently between people standing besides each other compared to that image or video you see on the 4K tv.

People also don’t need to see other people’s skin pores while watching tv. In day-to-day life it’s mundane for our brains to spend time to notice every detail on another human. We will notice anomalies such as an individual having brighter skin, duller/pale skin etc but we don’t notice skin pores unless there is something unusual about it.

What 4K TV and content seeks to capture is your focus and attention and it has accomplished that. Some people report that text on a page if not a bit soft is not a comfortable experience and the eye muscles are unable to relax causing fatigue.

 

[I7guy]

My stepdaughter got suckered into installing 26.1 and began sending me freaked-out messages. She immediately said something about switching to Android. I swear—Apple has really stepped in it when non-techie 30-something’s are freaking out.

My family is in iOS 26. Non-techie 30 somethings. While I haven’t polled them to see if they like it or not, we do as a family talk tech at times and there have not been any complaints.

You should actively encourage your daughter to switch to android - she may be happier.

 

[I7guy]

Had a couple of comments from a non technical user with an iPhone 13 user yesterday when I was out. She had some problems with her entire calendar disappearing so phoned Apple support. They disabled iCloud calendars and turned it back on again which fixed it. However they told her to push an iOS26 update through.

The first comment she said was everything is fuzzy and soft and hard to look at now. Also laggy on the iPhone 13.

I really don't disagree with her.

My anecdotal experience is I don’t find iOS 26 fuzzy or whatever. My old eyes aren’t the greatest. All of our experiences are different. YMMV.

 

[Fallforward]

I hate liquid glass and have managed to reduce it almost to nothing, but comparing two devices with different pixel density and pixel count per icon due to size is odd.

What made liquid glass virtually disappear for me....
1. Reduced transpareny (as you have)
2. Reduced motion
3. Prefer dark mode (really helps)
4. Disable Wallpaper Blur on Home Screen (though not sure I can see the effect given #5)
5. Solid black wallpaper (have always done this anyway)

Two often recommeneded changes that only made it worse, not better to me, are...
- increase contrast, as you have
- disable “Reduce White Point”

 

[minimo3]

I just shoved all the apple apps into a folder and hid them away. Then I switched to alternatives with nice crisp icons. Life is better. About the only apple app I have to use is phone, clock to set alarms and settings every so often.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I hate liquid glass and have managed to reduce it almost to nothing, but comparing two devices with different pixel density and pixel count per icon due to size is odd.

What made liquid glass virtually disappear for me....
1. Reduced transpareny (as you have)
2. Reduced motion
3. Prefer dark mode (really helps)
4. Disable Wallpaper Blur on Home Screen (though not sure I can see the effect given #5)
5. Solid black wallpaper (have always done this anyway)

Two often recommeneded changes that only made it worse, not better to me, are...
- increase contrast, as you have
- disable “Reduce White Point”

Good tips.
What’s worked for me is staying on iOS 18.

I’m hopeful things will get a lot better next year with Dye gone now.

 

[cjsuk]

It’s so incredibly obvious if one is being objective.
I can’t believe anybody is denying it here (ok …. I guess I can believe it actually.)

Yeah it’s really obvious. Sharpness is literally the rate of transition between two contrasts. if you put some intermediate step in there, regardless of the design aesthetic or why it’s there, it’s going to look blurry.

 

[I7guy]

Good tips.
What’s worked for me is staying on iOS 18.

I’m hopeful things will get a lot better next year with Dye gone now.

Ios 18 at some point won’t be supported if you have an iOS 26 eligible device.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Yeah it’s really obvious. Sharpness is literally the rate of transition between two contrasts. if you put some intermediate step in there, regardless of the design aesthetic or why it’s there, it’s going to look blurry.

I don’t even know why people are denying it.

Apple, obviously did this on purpose because they think it looks better or cooler or whatever when trying to do the whole multiple layers of transparency glassy effect stuff, or whatever the hell they are trying to do.

 

[Contact_Feanor]

You’re literally saying that just because something looks like it’s blurry, that doesn’t mean that it’s blurry. Alan Dye, is that you?

So you're saying that anything that looks like x is x? I've got a sexy drag queen to sell you as a woman.
I'm saying that something that has soft edges isn't necessarily blurry. Would you consider every jellyfish to be blurry?

 

[Contact_Feanor]

It’s so incredibly obvious if one is being objective.
I can’t believe anybody is denying it here (ok …. I guess I can believe it actually.)

I'm not saying it's not fuzzy or soft. I and many posters with me are saying it's not blurry, which you're conveniently leaving out.

 

[cjsuk]

I don’t even know why people are denying it.

Apple, obviously did this on purpose because they think it looks better or cooler or whatever when trying to do the whole multiple layers of transparency glassy effect stuff, or whatever the hell they are trying to do.

People are denying it because they have little to no design experience or have muck in their eyes. Whoever loves it, get them to post their living room decor. I guarantee it's horrid.

I don't think Apple had a clear vision, or clear vision. Whoever designed this does not understand basic design principles. You can see where the poor buggers who had to implement it had to paste over the turd as well by changing the legend contrast if you scroll up and down a web page for example. That's because the design doesn't bloody work in the first place.

Whole thing is a crapfest. They should just roll it back.

And I say this as someone who likes the glass effect. Just not here!!!!

 

[code-m]

So you're saying that anything that looks like x is x? I've got a sexy drag queen to sell you as a woman.
I'm saying that something that has soft edges isn't necessarily blurry. Would you consider every jellyfish to be blurry?

Anti-Aliasing was never a thing, we should have just kept with blocky jagged edges on everything digital with the exception of vector. /s

 

[cjsuk]

So you're saying that anything that looks like x is x? I've got a sexy drag queen to sell you as a woman.
I'm saying that something that has soft edges isn't necessarily blurry. Would you consider every jellyfish to be blurry?

The issue is not whether or not the jellyfish is blurry or not.

It's whether or not bits of the jellyfish have any contrast to other bits of the jellyfish or the surrounding.

Human vision depends on contrasts and edges which is why sharpening stuff is so effective at making images stand out. When you remove that contrast it makes it more cognitive effort to understand what the hell is going on.

This is incidentally why jellyfish get stood on. Because they are low contrast with their surroundings.

 

[cjsuk]

Anti-Aliasing was never a thing, we should have just kept with blocky jagged edges on everything digital with the exception of vector. /s

Anti-aliasing is stupid.

It exists only because we don't have enough pixel density for human vision. It hints at shapes. And there's good and bad anti-aliasing. ClearType for example is much better than anything else out there.

However you don't anti-alias vertical and horizontal lines because that reduces the contrast, which is the sort of issue here.

 

[code-m]

People are denying it because they have little to no design experience or have muck in their eyes. Whoever loves it, get them to post their living room decor. I guarantee it's horrid.

I don't think Apple had a clear vision, or clear vision. Whoever designed this does not understand basic design principles. You can see where the poor buggers who had to implement it had to paste over the turd as well by changing the legend contrast if you scroll up and down a web page for example. That's because the design doesn't bloody work in the first place.

Whole thing is a crapfest. They should just roll it back.

And I say this as someone who likes the glass effect. Just not here!!!!

If I am not mistaken the purpose of LiquidGlass is to focus on your content. In this regard your content is clear and sharp as one would expect it to be. The purpose of the UX/UI is to provide an unobtrusive method to not overtake or compete with your content hence it is semi-transparent/opaque like glass as to not intrude on your focused content.

Will it take people to adjust; absolutely, just like people had to adjust to the flat UX/UI promoted by Jonny Ives.

Fast forward another decade and the UX/UI changes again and people will be vocal that LiquidGlass is perfect. Does it need refinements; yes, Aqua GUI also went through many years of refinements though I loved version 1.0 deliciously.

 

[cjsuk]

If I am not mistaken the purpose of LiquidGlass is to focus on your content. In this regard your content is clear and sharp as one would expect it to be. The purpose of the UX/UI is to provide an unobtrusive method to not overtake or compete with your content hence it is semi-transparent/opaque like glass as to not intrude on your focused content.

Will it take people to adjust; absolutely, just like people had to adjust to the flat UX/UI promoted by Jonny Ives.

Fast forward another decade and the UX/UI changes again and people will be vocal that LiquidGlass is perfect. Does it need refinements; yes, Aqua GUI also went through many years of refinements though I loved version 1.0 deliciously.

Nope. The purpose of liquid glass is to look a certain way. There is a net negative impact on usability and the user interaction design is terrible on it. What Ive did with the flat user interface was a net negative as well. This just makes it worse. Much worse.

What we have is the design descendent of Dieter Rams' crap picked up by an extremist minimalist coke head and then regressed further every time someone farts near it.

The user interface should be discoverable with no magic behaviours. It should be easy to infer what something does. Elements should have contrast between them and be grouped well. Intents should be clear. We have none of that any more.

I will give you the lowest of low. The evolution to crap.

And that doesn't even invoke the wrath of glass...

Ask a normal human how they feel about navigating that one.

 

[turbineseaplane]

You will not convince me that Liquid Glass is better than doing a refreshed version of something like this:

 

[Bungaree.Chubbins]

I like Liquid Glass and appleOS 26 so I’m a bad person with horrible taste. Got it.

Are there elements that aren’t perfect, and that I’d like improved? Sure! But that’s always been the case! The outgoing minimalist flat look was a nice change from the toy-like aqua interface of old, but it too was getting stale. There’s not enough nuance in it, and it just ends up looking very plain all the time.

 

[Contact_Feanor]

The issue is not whether or not the jellyfish is blurry or not.

It's whether or not bits of the jellyfish have any contrast to other bits of the jellyfish or the surrounding.

Human vision depends on contrasts and edges which is why sharpening stuff is so effective at making images stand out. When you remove that contrast it makes it more cognitive effort to understand what the hell is going on.

This is incidentally why jellyfish get stood on. Because they are low contrast with their surroundings.

Thing is I completely agree with everything you say. But to say the icons are blurry is the same as saying the jellyfish is blurry. Which it objectively is not. It has low contrast and soft edges, but it's not blurry.

 

[SparklyApple]

You will not convince me that Liquid Glass is better than doing a refreshed version of something like this:

I would love that to return. Get rid of the sodding rounded corners. It's not like they even match the rounded corners of my laptop screen, and different apps have different sized rounded corners as well. It's just a mess.

 

[whatnot]

If I am not mistaken the purpose of LiquidGlass is to focus on your content. In this regard your content is clear and sharp as one would expect it to be. The purpose of the UX/UI is to provide an unobtrusive method to not overtake or compete with your content hence it is semi-transparent/opaque like glass as to not intrude on your focused content.

ok, I'll bite your press release waffle. I'm on sequoia, so please enlighten me what exactly is 'obtrusive' and 'competing with my content', whatever content is. is my wallpaper some very important content that I have to see it through everything? why do I need to see my content through some menu I open whilst working with my content? we don't all have the attention span of a fruitfly.

 

[minimo3]

I promise to tolerate Liquid Glass and not complain if Apple would just fix the stupid keyboard and revert it to iOS 18 (and earlier behavior). I make so many more typing errors now I resort to dictation instead of typing it out. I’ll take iOS 1.0 behavior over this.

 

[macbookj0e]

Mine is on ios26.1. Does 26.2 improve anything or is it just as bad?

I have turned off automatic updates on my iPad so it can stay on ios18 thank goodness.

I can understand what some people are saying about things we see in the distance having softer edges but a phone is used up close so it should be sharp. The blurriness keeps making me squint, as if my eyes are trying to fix it. I’m stuck with it so I’ll have to get used to it but I really can’t understand why any company would deliberately do this to their product.

Exactly, at the distance a phone is used it really should be sharp. It’s an insanely baffling decision and a terrible design decision in my opinion.

26.2 is the same for the icons as far as I can tell, though you can at least tint the liquid glass to be less opaque.

I feel this was a change for changes sake.

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

"softer and without hard edges" = "looks a little blurry to people".



It doesn't matter the "how", but the result.

Whatever they've done, for whatever reason, DOES make a result that looks less sharp (blurrier is one way to say that) to people.

Compare them closely -- this is pretty easy to see.

View attachment 2587143View attachment 2587144

it is also not just about the borders, not sure why you're validating his statement. it seems they're going for a refraction of spectular highlights onto the inside of the icon, or, most likely, just reflecting the white background , given than the issue isn't present in dark mode