iOS 26 Liquid Glass Design Drama: Beta 2 vs. Beta 3 Changes in Every App

[Saint_Blaise]

Liquid Glass may have been the wrong solution to the long-missing element of depth.
Aqua for Mac OS and iOS worked well because it communicated depth through texture and shadows without sacrificing legibility. UI elements were clearly separated from content, and that separation was totally lost in the jump to flat design.
There's no happy medium with Liquid Glass – legibility will be poor if it's too transparent, but if it's too opaque it'll feel just as flat as the very bland design it was meant to replace.

Yeah the current design is mature. It’s disappointing that liquid glass is the next step. Guess they got bored with it.

 

[tim_apple]

Seems like all that is needed is a “make UI elements more opaque” option in accessibility. This would be an additional setting. The glassers (like me) can have their glass and anyone that wants more legibility can have that as well. The setting would add the frostiness of beta 3 to the glass elements.

 

[pentabular]

Liquid Glass is taking the piss. UI jazz-hands is not any kind of fundamental or computational improvement on the platform. They already had pretty good translucency that could have just been tweaked a little without drastic results, any need to announce, or complicating Accessibility settings. Highlighting that instead of real valuable improvements is pretty disappointing. Maybe having the design team reporting to Tim will help. I'd like to hope he's kind of a practical no-BS person.

 

[con2apple]

DRAMA?

Really? We are on DEVELOPER BETA 3 - d e v e l o p e r - right now the "drama" should have a very small audience.

First: you are in a Apple fanboy forum.
Every criticism is the end of the world.

Second: do you know the term for baiting people to click on a link?

 

[platinumaqua]

Honestly, that’s still just a version of the frosting essentially. I feel like it would be weird to have that in the middle of a button when, then immediately go to the blurry translucent glass, and then immediately after that is the shiny outer rim of the button. In title bars it works a little better since there’s a lot of room on either side of the text.

But all that said, I’m not a designer, so maybe they could make it work. I just know that from my many years working with designers, they always tried to avoid using dropshadows like that unless there was no other solution.

The drop shadow can be very subtle but still significantly improve the readability. If you want another example, see the Launchpad icons' drop shadow in Mac OS X Lion:

 

[Harvey Zoltan]

After spending a few days with beta 3 the inconsistency is driving me nuts. The Liquid Glass theme for the most part seems to have been thrown out the window. Was that gradient at the top of the screen (Mac) always there? What a mess.

 

[ItchyRat2160]

I think they’re probably going to try land somewhere in the middle. I really dislike the liquid glass aesthetic but if they at least make it usable I’ll learn to live with it.

It’s crazy considering how Apple has long been known for its design chops, but Google’s expressive material stuff looks so much more thought through and lively and appropriate for its task.

It's no wonder Apple's design is off the rails, because they don't have any actual designers in charge of design. Jony Ive left, and then his replacement left, and they filled that position with a COO. A numbers/finance person. Not a designer. They really think they have intrinsic design chops and don't need any Creative Direction. They're finding out now.

 

[reno]

We're all gonna need glasses after a few weeks of Liquid Glass. It's shaping up to be the WORST software update ever released by Apple. Meanwhile, Siri is still dumb as a rock. What a wasteful allocation of resources!

 

[neotint]

Is there any UI to entirely turn off all the "glass" UI bloat? Has anyone run power drain tests on how much "glass" increases GPU usage? It seems so needless and not about solving any real HCI problems. Especially if it drains battery or slows down UI it seems like it could be a legal way to do coercive nudging to force more people to upgrade even if they wouldn't need to if there was no "glass" design. Last I saw people are holding on to their phones longer due to the performance and needs plateau. This is why "glass" seems so sus.

 

[zenmacx]

Apple knows the value of appealing to children and young adults. It's been one of the companies long standing revenue streams. Cutesy UI elements, Image Playground and various animations sell well to that demographic.

Liquid Glass fits the bill, but seriously hampers adults that prefer a legible fast and efficient UX to get stuff done. Some consumers don't understand the difference between UI and UX, they just buy into whatever Apple is selling.