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

[Aleh]

People acting like they reverted to iOS 18 style are so dramatic lol… it’s still glass with varying levels of transparency, and this beta still isn’t final. These meltdowns are so tiring, it’s like no one on the internet is capable of critical thinking.

 

[crashfellow]

Good old iOS backtrack.. I mean 26 lol let’s be honest I think Apple has run out of ideas.. the ‘design’ wasn’t so much a redesign as making the existing UI transparent… when you see the new opaque view that’s coming through it looks identical to iOS 18… I miss real change.

 

[Ultracyclist]

I want the look of beta 1. I loved that initial look.

 

[ItchyRat2160]

Call me crazy but I think being able to read basic UI copy is a good thing.

It's deranged that people are disagreeing with this statement.

Apple have dug themselves into a hole with Liquid Glass. It's ugly and illegible, so they're having to dial it back and its eventually going to loose any of the "Glass" look about it, which is an embarrassing U-Turn when the new design is the MAIN new thing about ALL of their New OSes. The obvious solution is add a setting to toggle it on or off (or god-forbid, enable OS 'Themes") and then everyone can just shut up about it.

Design is always subjective. You can argue about change being good or bad, or whether you like the glass look or not forever, but that's never going to change. BUT you can be objective about it when it comes to its practicality and utility, and transparent, illegible UI is objectively bad design because if it's not user friendly, accessible and usable, then it's a bad User Interface.

 

[Sputman99]

Can I turn off the liquid glass nonsense though - thats going to be the most wanted feature

 

[GrassShark]

They had shadows in interfaces back in the days and it looked good. The main goal of user interfaces is not to look nice but to be easy on eyes and findable. After iOS 7 they abolished most drop shadows and that was a big mistake, it decreased legibility by a large margin

They can look good, but in general they’re more of a last resort.

In this case, I think they specifically won’t look good because of the glass underneath. Shadows don’t land on glass, so either it’s now a smudgey grey blur under the glass material, or it a floating shadow hovering like a cloud under the text. Either way, I think it’s better to just make the glass a bit more frosted than deal with this.

 

[Pedersenko]

Better, but still pretty awful....

would of course be fantstic if "themes" were optional. Including theme from 2007

 

[mazz0]

To be fair, they didn't roll it back at all. They adjusted the transparency to make it more readable and they did so before any release was made.

Whether you call it a rollback is a judgment call really.

What they showed at WWDC was a very distinct style, kinda radical actually, and quite controversial. What we're seeing now is relatively conservative, much more akin to what we've seen in the past on Windows, and has been popular on Linux for decades.

I call that a rollback.

 

[akbarali.ch]

i hope they have option to slide to more opacity. i'm Preferring more glassy transparently lensy looks than the opaque one. maybe i'm the only one. i would suggest add a slider for opacity for others.

 

[it wasnt me]

I honestly wonder when and how Apple, formerly known as design geniuses, has lost its basic understanding of the word "contrast". Isn't it "cool" and "trendy" anymore to have button legends which you can actually read, regardless on what's behind the buttons?

 

[chfilm]

Oh my gosh what is going on inside of Apple these days!???? I mean, they had to do this because it looked just terrible- but what is left now of the big bold redesign? They seriously need to stop announcing stuff that aint shipping!

 

[xraydoc]

Based on the screenshots alone, I'm OK with the changes. The original design was just too hard to read.

 

[GrassShark]

It's deranged that people are disagreeing with this statement.

Apple have dug themselves into a hole with Liquid Glass. It's ugly and illegible, so they're having to dial it back and its eventually going to loose any of the "Glass" look about it, which is an embarrassing U-Turn when the new design is the MAIN new thing about ALL of their New OSes. The obvious solution is add a setting to toggle it on or off (or god-forbid, enable OS 'Themes") and then everyone can just shut up about it.

Design is always subjective. You can argue about change being good or bad, or whether you like the glass look or not forever, but that's never going to change. BUT you can be objective about it when it comes to its practicality and utility, and transparent, illegible UI is objectively bad design because if it's not user friendly, accessible and usable, then it's a bad User Interface.

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.

 

[philosopherdog]

Some heads have to roll. This is still not great. How on earth did this get so far along the review process?

 

[tyranne201]

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.

apple has a history of valuing beauty more than usability. making devices thin and portless are an example.

 

[definitive]

looks like the original 26 theme is a bust, and we probably won't get the thing sorted out until version 27.

 

[GrassShark]

apple has a history of valuing beauty more than usability. making devices thin and portless are an example.

I’ve been using Apple stuff since the 90s. The obsession with thinness at the expense of usability was actually a relatively small and recent part of their history, around when Ive was left mostly unsupervised. Apple’s actually been pretty good about usability on the whole.

 

[MacAttack2024]

just give users the ability to dial up or down the amount of glass effect they want and call it a day.

 

[okkibs]

If only there was some way to give users a choice over the iOS UI theme they wanna use. Something like a theme selector where you can choose styles from iOS 15 to iOS 18 and another for liquid glass. But that would derail the Apple and iPhone brands as Apple would lose all control and who knows what users would demand next. Home screen app icons that don't snap to grid? The horror!

 

[Premium1]

Apple has no consistency anymore in their software. Another announcement they made then walked back on for a vocal minority. Put a slider in instead of nerfing it for everyone. This looks like 18.7 more so than IOS26..

 

[it wasnt me]

vocal minority

Citation needed.

 

[Sarafay]

Nightmare on glass street.

 

[cocky jeremy]

Wait. You mean people actually wanted to be able to see buttons and read what is on them? No way!

 

[pratax2]

Just remember last major redesign release (ios7) in its first iteration and how awful the control center looked like:

 

[turbineseaplane]

Just remember last major redesign release (ios7) in its first iteration and how awful the control center looked like:
View attachment 2527337

At least it was still "clearly legible"