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iOS 26's Liquid Glass Design Draws Criticism From Users
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When I bought my 16 Pro last year, I remember thinking, “Right… so basically my 14 Pro with a new receipt.” Great phone, sure, but underwhelming.
Now with Liquid Glass? It actually feels like a new device. The icons have some personality, the animations add a bit of theater, and the whole thing finally feels distinct from the last few models. Honestly, it’s the first time in a while the software has made the hardware feel exciting again.
I know some people can’t stand it — the “cartoony bubbles” and “Barbie phone” comments are everywhere. Fair enough. But personally, I’d rather have a UI that feels alive than another few years of flat beige minimalism. And if scrolling an extra inch to reach a button is a dealbreaker, maybe smartphones aren’t the hill to die on.
So yeah, I thought I’d be in the hate-it camp. Turns out, I love it. And for me, it finally makes the 16 Pro feel worth what I paid for it.
Now with Liquid Glass? It actually feels like a new device. The icons have some personality, the animations add a bit of theater, and the whole thing finally feels distinct from the last few models. Honestly, it’s the first time in a while the software has made the hardware feel exciting again.
I know some people can’t stand it — the “cartoony bubbles” and “Barbie phone” comments are everywhere. Fair enough. But personally, I’d rather have a UI that feels alive than another few years of flat beige minimalism. And if scrolling an extra inch to reach a button is a dealbreaker, maybe smartphones aren’t the hill to die on.
So yeah, I thought I’d be in the hate-it camp. Turns out, I love it. And for me, it finally makes the 16 Pro feel worth what I paid for it.
I love the Liquid Glass UI! I understand that some have concerns about it, but having used it for the summer testing the betas, I really like what Apple is doing here. And I have not experienced any issues with performance, even when I was running the developer betas on my iPhone 12.
I would probably be fine with it if it wasn’t for my crappy vision.
I turned on reduce transparency and increased contrast. I find it completely usable now.
I turned on reduce transparency and increased contrast. I find it completely usable now.
One of my biggest gripes since updating to ios26 is in relation to the keyboard when typing on this, and other forums. I used to have the spellcheck suggestions above my keyboard and now when I type a post it has a spot to click to autofill my password for this site. I obviously don’t need my password when typing a post because I am already logged in to make said post to begin with!
I love it. It feels luxurious. I’m in aw of how real the glass effect looks. I love how it’s become anti google/android as android copied all design cues from iOS over the last decade. I’m using on a 16 pro so not sure how it behaves on much older devices though.
The only thing I’ve slightly disliked so far is the iMessage conversation layout seeing these floating icons at the top. I understand it gives more real estate to the content. Maybe I need to get used to it.
The only thing I’ve slightly disliked so far is the iMessage conversation layout seeing these floating icons at the top. I understand it gives more real estate to the content. Maybe I need to get used to it.
Me too, so that's good to hear. (Though apparently this is not consensus.)
Heck – my list of minor and bizarre little glitches in places I never even thought to look for them has grown beyond the easily countable. But I appreciate hearing some people unequivocally like and just feel good about the update; it bestows at least a subtle vicarious satisfaction while I exercise patience with respect to direct satisfaction.
When using the camera and pointing in a bright area, the .5, 1X, and 3 lens icons completely disappear. And as it was before, when they were always easy to see, I still often touched off-center when trying to change lenses and got the annoying continuous zoom selector. Now it's even more touch-and-miss, try again.
Generally related: there is no obvious Search feature on the discussion threads here at MacRumors. How many people are releasing a comment when they'd just Like one already posted, or add details to one, instead of just adding more potential me-too's?
Generally related: there is no obvious Search feature on the discussion threads here at MacRumors. How many people are releasing a comment when they'd just Like one already posted, or add details to one, instead of just adding more potential me-too's?
For my two cents, I’m not totally sold on the new theming. There’s a lot of superfluous little animations that don’t really add anything except slowing things down. And the transparency makes things look cool but overall reduce legibility. I think the iOS 7 era and subsequent evolution was simple and more plain and that made really functional. I suspect they may scale back some of the changes and settle somewhere between ios 26 and 18 as I can’t see this new theme fully landing.
It’s more about the herky-jerky animations that don’t serve a purpose other than to stress out the graphics cores.
I do not like Liquid Glass. I changed the accessibility settings on my iPhone to reduce transparency and increase contrast. As one of the first people to post in this thread said...it would be really nice if there were a toggle setting to revert the "look and feel" to what iOS 18 offers. There are other new features in iOS 26 that offer value, so I'm hopeful that this will be a significant leap ahead in overall user friendliness and functionality. I am guessing that modern iPhones get more usage hours than laptops these days.
Love it! I didn't like the first public beta at all, but when the second one came out, I gave it a shot and it was way better. I've been a fan ever since. For those who complained, they probably didn't realize it was still indexing after installation, so it takes a bit of time. But once that's done, it's super smooth. They're attention-grabbing, for sure.
Fanboys, you do realize that Tiny Tim is perpetrating a fraud on your sorry backs. This isn't innovation, this is fashion nonsense and magic sleight of hand that says there is NO innovation at Apple today.
So far my two biggest complaints:
1. Why does everything have rounded edges? This doesn't always make sense, especially in Tahoe. Yes, I get it matches the radius of the screen... but the top is never prefectlly in the top corners of the screen, so you always have a weird triangle peeking through.
2. Messages. Having the name/photo just floating as a circle in the middle of the top makes it harder to read. We have tall screens now, we aren't starve for vertical space.
1. Why does everything have rounded edges? This doesn't always make sense, especially in Tahoe. Yes, I get it matches the radius of the screen... but the top is never prefectlly in the top corners of the screen, so you always have a weird triangle peeking through.
2. Messages. Having the name/photo just floating as a circle in the middle of the top makes it harder to read. We have tall screens now, we aren't starve for vertical space.
The real problem is that LiquidGlass is inconsistent as such. It’s like creating math where 1+1=3. What they were doing from the first beta was making it LESS LiquidGlassy to improve usability. You can like it visually, but it’s broken by design from usability perspective. From now on, with every update, it will be compromise between consistency and usability. Unsolvable equation.
Imagine how refined, feature complete and bug free the OSes could be if they would spend time and resources on that, over a few years, as opposed to doing things like Liquid Glass and also insisting on a "new" OS every single year.
Instead these moves just reset the counter on endless new issues to deal with...annually.
Instead these moves just reset the counter on endless new issues to deal with...annually.
I did end up opting to toggle on the reduce transparency setting after two days living with it. Mostly for the lock screen notifications but also for a few other places. For those notifications, I often read those without my reading glasses which would work well enough in the past but not with transparency. For a few other places it took an extra second or so to find a button because the background was partly obscuring it. With the new setting it seems fines so far.
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For what it’s worth, I like fresh coat of paint iMessage has received. I got change is sometimes difficult and MR forum posters have a cadre of opinions. But to me, good job Apple in providing something new and yet familiar.
iOS 26 broke Widgy, which played a big part in my home screen layouts. That alone is pretty frustrating, but as mentioned in the Complaints section, any change that adds more taps is also incredibly hard to stomach.
'New yet familiar' isn't the same as 'better.'
"Animations run slow and the interface feels sluggish on older iPhones"
Isn't that the main purpose of Liquid Glass, to make people upgrade? Apple has always tanked the performance of the older phones with new iOS releases, going right back to the iPhone 3G. At least now it sounds like reverting back is a possibility.
I updated my mother's 16e and just found the liquid glass concept so odd. I mean the -main- identifying feature of most app icons is their colour. Why take that away?
Windows Phone had a really interesting take on such an idea, where the live tiles could inherit the background image, essentially becoming transparent. It looked great where it worked, but it was Windows Phone and most tiles didn't actually support the feature, including first party ones lol ... so you had to choose what was on your home screen carefully. But that was still better than the liquid glass look.
I recently realised that the iOS UI prior to 7 was actually designed to hide performance issues. The slow animations of dialogue boxes and the like covered up the actual loading time. Nimblebit kept those styles in Pocket Frogs even when it came to Android, and earlier this month they put out an update that had "snappier UI" as a prominent feature, and boy is it evident ... not like the usual is Safari snappier lol.
It really seems like we shouldn't still be challenging older devices with just running the basic UI. Like we learnt nothing from the original Aqua in OS X or Aero Glass in Windows!
Isn't that the main purpose of Liquid Glass, to make people upgrade? Apple has always tanked the performance of the older phones with new iOS releases, going right back to the iPhone 3G. At least now it sounds like reverting back is a possibility.
I updated my mother's 16e and just found the liquid glass concept so odd. I mean the -main- identifying feature of most app icons is their colour. Why take that away?
Windows Phone had a really interesting take on such an idea, where the live tiles could inherit the background image, essentially becoming transparent. It looked great where it worked, but it was Windows Phone and most tiles didn't actually support the feature, including first party ones lol ... so you had to choose what was on your home screen carefully. But that was still better than the liquid glass look.
I recently realised that the iOS UI prior to 7 was actually designed to hide performance issues. The slow animations of dialogue boxes and the like covered up the actual loading time. Nimblebit kept those styles in Pocket Frogs even when it came to Android, and earlier this month they put out an update that had "snappier UI" as a prominent feature, and boy is it evident ... not like the usual is Safari snappier lol.
It really seems like we shouldn't still be challenging older devices with just running the basic UI. Like we learnt nothing from the original Aqua in OS X or Aero Glass in Windows!