I would like some consistency to the UI. Specifically, in the music app. Put the playback info back to the top of the window frame. It looks like it's placement was a tragic afterthought.
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How would you improve Liquid Glass?
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Especially given most other apps have their controls on the top of the window.
From Apple’s perspective, it’s another example of being overly efficient - taking iOS code and slapping it onto macOS.
I actually like Liquid Glass. I think it makes things feel fresher and more modern. But on iOS, I loathe the navbars that require you to reach to the left side of the screen before you can use any of the buttons (i.e. Apple Music & Podcasts).
I know you can slide to the button you want so you don’t have to tap twice. But it still requires me to reach my thumb all the way across the screen when I’m right-handed. And in Apple Music, when I’m just trying to quickly get to my library or a different tab, I either have to double tap or tap and slide to the correct tab. It’s frustrating.
I miss just being able to use my muscle memory without thinking about it. It’s been 4 months, and I’m still not used to it.
I know you can slide to the button you want so you don’t have to tap twice. But it still requires me to reach my thumb all the way across the screen when I’m right-handed. And in Apple Music, when I’m just trying to quickly get to my library or a different tab, I either have to double tap or tap and slide to the correct tab. It’s frustrating.
I miss just being able to use my muscle memory without thinking about it. It’s been 4 months, and I’m still not used to it.
Sounds like a bad design to me.
Yep... and I have seen this type of muscle memory behaviour before. This is where the individual's innermost thoughts resist or do not like the change, and it is reflected in the inability to change that memory muscle. Sort of a subconscious denial. It has happened to me.
I understand the motivation behind threads and discussions like this.
Having said that, it should be none of our business.
Improving their OS is Apple's job.
Having said that, it should be none of our business.
Improving their OS is Apple's job.
I would change the philosophy that is driving this decision. Liquid Glass makes sense on visionOS. visionOS needs to display modals in the air. Liquid Glass on a flat display (iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, Apple Watch) doesn't make sense. In other words, remove the transparency and go back to blur.
I know you’re wanting 'a more positive thread’ here, but I’m with @Genelec8341. I wouldn’t waste more time and resources trying to fix Liquid Glass—I’d ditch it. It’s like, if I’m using AI to help me with some coding and it generates a big block of garbage that fails to build or introduces a heap of new bugs… I don’t then ask it to fix all the problems—I revert back to the previous working version and start again.
For me, Liquid Glass is a fundamental loss of focus—a brain fart from Apple, revealing that they’ve forgotten what makes a great UI and UX. A great UI doesn’t shout out, ‘HERE I AM! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!!!’ A great UI is happy to sit there quietly and help the user do whatever it is the user wants to do. While Apple may talk the talk about this new design bringing ‘more focus to content’, that’s marketing BS IMHO.
Sorry for being so negative—it’s just my honest opinion as a designer/developer and longtime Apple customer.
For me, Liquid Glass is a fundamental loss of focus—a brain fart from Apple, revealing that they’ve forgotten what makes a great UI and UX. A great UI doesn’t shout out, ‘HERE I AM! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!!!’ A great UI is happy to sit there quietly and help the user do whatever it is the user wants to do. While Apple may talk the talk about this new design bringing ‘more focus to content’, that’s marketing BS IMHO.
Sorry for being so negative—it’s just my honest opinion as a designer/developer and longtime Apple customer.
These words from Kalsta above address a fundamental problem with Apple's approach to designing and introducing Liquid Glass. They're worth reading and thinking about. I particularly like "While Apple may talk the talk about this new design bringing ‘more focus to content’, that’s marketing BS IMHO."
What is "more focus on content"? it might be relevant in many situations but as Kalka puts it: "A great UI is happy to sit there quietly and help the user do whatever it is the user wants to do."
In Human Factors and UI design the user is central!
How about just letting us choose a system theme. I'm not even asking for them to allow custom 3rd party themes.
They would get so much praise and love if they just had like Apple designed themes. like add one for each major era of the iPhone design, like from 2010, 2015, 2020, 2025, and just add one every 5 years of the evolution.
And make it downloadable so all of them just dont take up useless space on a device. I would freaking PAY for this.
They would get so much praise and love if they just had like Apple designed themes. like add one for each major era of the iPhone design, like from 2010, 2015, 2020, 2025, and just add one every 5 years of the evolution.
And make it downloadable so all of them just dont take up useless space on a device. I would freaking PAY for this.
What would be even nicer if Safari, Music, and all other apps could have their respective and individual controls move along with the app throughout the display. For example, on a large display or monitor dragging Music to the right corner of the display with its controls moving the right. In this case I have more than one app on the display, each with its own controls placed at the top-center of each app.
Right now I have Safari at the right of the display, and Music at the left side, so I can switch back and forth between these two apps, but the controls only appear at the left corner of the display, regardless of which app I "click" the mouse's pointer to choose.
Yes, yes...this is a crazy thought of mine 😀
This is the primary reason that I reverted to Sequoia.
This is such an interesting topic! Thank you for bringing it out.
For me, my ideal UI would be a subtle neumorphism, but I know Apple is not going to make a 180° turn now that they just introduced this Aqua 2.0 style.
So, my changes to Liquid Glass would focus on toning down the shadows, the “volume”, the juicy buttons that want to be licked, and evolving the interface towards something flatter. Flat Glass?
However, I know this would make the interface too similar to what we previously had: a flat interface with translucent layers. So maybe they shouldn’t go back to a flat interface, but rather just tone down certain “volume” effects. And of course, keeping the transparency of glass with that sweet chromatic aberration effects, I must admit that I love it.
As for the squishiness, bounciness, and liquidness of the UI, I think I like it now that I got used to it! Those animations look great, and they are snappy enough to not bother about them making the experience slower, even on my relatively old iPhone SE 3. If you feel the animations slow you can tweak the Haptic Touch menu animation speed in settings.
One thing I’d implement tho, is menu customization. Specifically, the menu that appears when you’re selecting text, and now requires to open a bigger menu if you want, for instance, “select all” or “look up” that selected word. So that I could access those options without having to unfold that extra menu.
EDIT: please excuse me. I didn’t realize I was on the macOS 26 Tahoe subforum. Nah, I honestly don’t like how Tahoe looks at all, I think it’s been a second class citizen in this Liquid Glass transition. There are many things to be done on macOS UI that I don’t know where to start with.
The overlapping sidebars and overlapping horizontal bars would be a good beginning.
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Consistency across all devices seems overdue.
Some options to reduce the shimmer effect are also needed, at least for people that use solid black wallpapers, where you can really see the effect fall apart.
Worst about the shimmer effect around icons is when they reset. They just fade out and back in at a different location. In older iOS versions we had the (pretty useless and choppy) depth effect of hen moving the device, the app icons would also move, but once you stopped moving they’d slowly return to their original position. Do the same thing with the shimmer, please Apple.
Everything else that needs more attention is mentioned in the thread.
Oh no wait. Efficiency. Like someone wrote in a thread some days ago, traveling or hiking with a Liquid Glass iPhone isn’t a fun experience when you have to charge your phone twice to triple as often, even when not even using it.
Some options to reduce the shimmer effect are also needed, at least for people that use solid black wallpapers, where you can really see the effect fall apart.
Worst about the shimmer effect around icons is when they reset. They just fade out and back in at a different location. In older iOS versions we had the (pretty useless and choppy) depth effect of hen moving the device, the app icons would also move, but once you stopped moving they’d slowly return to their original position. Do the same thing with the shimmer, please Apple.
Everything else that needs more attention is mentioned in the thread.
Oh no wait. Efficiency. Like someone wrote in a thread some days ago, traveling or hiking with a Liquid Glass iPhone isn’t a fun experience when you have to charge your phone twice to triple as often, even when not even using it.
transparency i don’t have any real issue with.
My issues are with the different radius corners on macOS (the old radius was correct) and the UI layout bugs in windowed mode on the ipad.
the iphone UI is … fine.
For what its worth, i see liquid glass as a unification of all the different platform UIs along with vision pro.
I can see why they’ve probably done it, and i think long term with tweaking it will work out. Just v1.0 is a little rough, as always.
My issues are with the different radius corners on macOS (the old radius was correct) and the UI layout bugs in windowed mode on the ipad.
the iphone UI is … fine.
For what its worth, i see liquid glass as a unification of all the different platform UIs along with vision pro.
I can see why they’ve probably done it, and i think long term with tweaking it will work out. Just v1.0 is a little rough, as always.
I really dislike how often each icon gets its own disc/island. Massive waste of space and adds so many distracting visual edges. A single floating bar with everything on it (especially the title!?) makes 1000x more sense.
Ditto on the absurdly rounded corners. The lens distortion effect is not pronounced enough to be worth the compute, and even then it's just noise. Living in a house of glass sounds cool and futuristic, but it would be a visual processing nightmare.
Boggles my mind how Apple's most popular machines (watch, phone, laptop) have small screens and they went with a highly padded spaced-out design... 🙄 another clue this UX was only meant for AVP.
Ditto on the absurdly rounded corners. The lens distortion effect is not pronounced enough to be worth the compute, and even then it's just noise. Living in a house of glass sounds cool and futuristic, but it would be a visual processing nightmare.
Boggles my mind how Apple's most popular machines (watch, phone, laptop) have small screens and they went with a highly padded spaced-out design... 🙄 another clue this UX was only meant for AVP.
Comparing two web browsers using the same "liquid glass" effect: Opera Developer is at the front, while Safari is at the back. The curvature of the corners should be more subtle; I believe Opera handles that curve much better. It also handles the "liquid glass" effect much better.
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If I recall correctly, in one of their WWDC videos they show different types of borders, and I think one of them was a “hard” border that wasn’t a shadow or a gradient, but rather a uniform translucent edge.
Maybe I’ve dreamed it, but I suspect this may still be an option…
However, I find that floating tab horrendous. And the position of the vertical bar.
Reduce corrner roundness and completetly get rid of that fake floating sidebar thing where its edges are so close to the edges of the window but not exactly. It's such an ugly design.
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