iOS 26 Liquid Glass Design Makes App Icons Look Crooked, Report Users

[berrymetal]

It’s crooked icons, or the appearance of crooked icons, caused by a feature.
This is my phone sitting flat on my desk. Voice Memos clearly looks crooked.

it's not crooked it's just your brains failing at understanding that this is a highlight, just a visual trick

 

[TMRJIJ]

What happened to the 'tick tock' releases announced when Snow Leopard (best OS ever) was launched? Snow Leopard was perfect and we have never had another 'tock' since. Everything new has come with added fluff and bugs. We need a new Snow Leopard to clear out all the bugs and useless crud.

We're almost at a point were pro users need a separate OS to get stuff done without all the gimmicks.

Snow Leopard was not perfect…

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/snow-leopard-bug-responsible-for-loss-of-user-data-gaining-notice.801736/

 

[TonyC28]

it's not crooked it's just your brains failing at understanding that this is a highlight, just a visual trick

Ah, so it’s not crooked, it just looks crooked. You do understand that at the end of the day, either result is bad?

 

[TMRJIJ]

eeek never noticed until read this .. oh dear screenshot is on 15 pro max that said i dont feel drunk 🫣


View attachment 2550543View attachment 2550545

I just noticed it in that second screenshot

 

[Act3]

The liquid glass UI may look fancy, but in terms of functionality, it doesn’t add much value.

That said, not everything has to be purely logical or robotic. Sometimes, good visuals can still enhance the experience by making us feel good, even if they don’t contribute much to functionality.

I do not see any functional value of it.

 

[sflagel]

This is not even “glassy”. It’s just distracting colours and shapes shining through and making everything looks messy and hard to read. There are no thick, lovely glassy beads or stones. It’s just dirty.

And hiding menu items that are frequently used, like access to Favourite Bookmarks in Safari, so that we can see snippets of illegible text to the left and right of that bonbon shaped “address bar”. Zero benefit, 100% annoying.

 

[surfsofa]

Please just give us a toggle to turn liquid glass off.

 

[btrach144]

Like I get what Apple was trying to do but man, it’s rough.

Accessibility concerns, compact Safari is extra clicks, and unified phone app is too simplistic.

It’s kind of messy

 

[sflagel]

This still drives me nuts. It was one of the first indications that Apple had stopped giving a crap about the user experience. Copy/pasting an element from one (vertical) product category to another (horizontal) without any adjustment is illogical. No one should have approved this.

The post-Jobs Apple is lacking anyone with any sense of responsibility to the users. No one seems to care about the products they’re putting out. It’s the investors who matter most. Feels like we’re living in the “if Scully succeeded” timeline.

Apple is no longer investigating and solving problems with the user interface experience. Perhaps all the problems have been solved. So they’re just rehashing hits from the past to make something comfortable feel fresher. They can’t even come up with original ideas or challenge themselves to think outside the box.

Have you listened to any Apple product launches lately? It’s all about specs. Worse than Microsoft or IBM in 2000.

 

[sflagel]

Is iOS Glass a Sonos App moment?

 

[Act3]

Please just give us a toggle to turn liquid glass off.

might make older devices feel more "responsive" then... can't have that

 

[turbineseaplane]

Is iOS Glass a Sonos App moment?

No, because Apple is so far up its own rear end that it will never revert this or admit any error here.

 

[Starfia]

Liquid Glass comes from the Vision Pro right? Do people not have any issues with it there? Or does the 3d-ness help or make it less of a problem?

That seems to be the root of the issue.

Liquid Glass is inherently a cool effect, worthy of being called a "material," and when it really dazzles me on iOS is when it's moving, when I'm touching it, or when something else is moving behind it. I (sadly) haven't used the Vision Pro, but I can imagine it would be close to ideal in a situation where interface elements are practically always moving, and things are practically always moving behind them.

But when things stop moving on iOS, such as app icons in a folder, or buttons in a toolbar, seated and fixed in what we know is a flat display? That's when it seems to transition from a delightful and useful ingredient to a classical ornamentation – the kind of thing it took the enthusiastic and nerdy industry an age to begin benevolently outgrowing, with Apple arguably leading the maturation. And on the Mac, where most everything deliberately stays in place, nothing is touched at all, and precision is the distinguishing trait of the way you use it? "Grafted" seems the most elegant word available. And even having acceded to the temptation to curve curves around other curves, what possible reason for toolbar buttons to become not just circles, but bulbous circles on the Mac?

 

[canadianreader]

This right here should have been enough for Apple to put a halt on development to consider if this may have been a bad idea. View attachment 2550665

What a mess

 

[turbineseaplane]

This right here should have been enough for Apple to put a halt on development to consider if this may have been a bad idea. View attachment 2550665

Goodness gracious ... it's like the UI got sick (maybe all the Liquid Glass crooked icons?) and vomited all over itself.

🤮

 

[turbineseaplane]

it's not crooked it's just your brains failing at understanding that this is a highlight, just a visual trick

It's irrelevant if icons are actually crooked.
All that matters is how the human looking at it perceives it.

 

[Belisama]

The worst icon on my phone is the Roblox icon 🤣
It now looks like the Tower of Pisa desperately trying to fight gravity 🤢
My teenage son updated his iPhone yesterday and his reaction was hilarious: yuck yuck yuck 😖
I don't know if there is something good in iOS 26, but the "Liquid Glass" BS is a complete failure.

 

[Eureka20]

I updated my work phone and it absolutely nauseates me. I can't look at it, and it's still screwy even after turning off motion and transparency. This is the worst update--- the old look was just fine!

 

[nelamvr6]

Oh my god. People are "Suffering" from this "effect"... for christ's sake. Just reduce the transparency and quite whinging! Better yet, switch to an android.

 

[ypl]

#LiquidAss

#LickWeedAss more like?

 

[kostof]

Oh my god. People are "Suffering" from this "effect"... for christ's sake. Just reduce the transparency and quite whinging! Better yet, switch to an android.

Reduced transparency doesn't seem to affect the "highlights" on the app icons. Which are what's causing the issue. The gray background on the non transparent dock actually makes the tilting effect more pronounced for me. The better solution may be switching to light mode icons until this is fixed.

 

[iisdan]

How did this make it to production? This is really hard on the eyes and brain

 

[zooland]

Meh, non issue.

 

[mrr]

I hate the typography of the time on splash screen.

 

[Canubis]

Can we please just get a toggle in Accessibility to disable the glass shader and use an opaque background blur instead? And while they're at it, same for macOS please and remove these unnecessary margins around sidebar.
Call it innovative Classic mode for 300% focus increase if you like and just add it as an option next to Light and Dark mode…