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See the iOS 26 Liquid Glass Design in Action

Let’s hope this overhaul gets turned back before it’s too late.
Tested it on iPad. It’s terrible for visibility. The entire OS looks foggy and sharpness is completely lost. My eyes feel like they need glasses! Pun intended. They even hid part of the numbers of the clock intentionally behind a desktop theme on the Lock Screen. An OS is not graphic design it’s functional.
I have never been this shocked by an Apple design change. I seriously thought this was a fake news or April fools prank.

Hard pass
 
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I do have it on two iPhones and one Apple Watch. I must admit, that it really looks good and usable. Readability is excellent and the glass effect is very nice. It does not block the background even if it blockes it. Do not judge screenshots or videos.

Besides that: The perceptible glass effect stops, if you do not scroll or move elements.

On the watch there is no huge difference btw.
 
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Sven G said:
Let’s hope that this “Aero Glass 2.0” done well by Apple will stimulate also other platforms - see Windows and Linux - to return to the beautiful desktop environments of many years ago: flat and ugly design, go home…! For example, Ubuntu with Unity (and 3D effects, etc.) was much more appealing visually than it is today (rather dull)…
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I still miss the Aqua days. I'm with you, this flat design hype, which as far as I remember originated from Google, was just boring, mostly ugly, and can go home. When did people forget to be playful? I have to use Win 11 for work and I can't even with that ugly flat colorless desktop environment
 
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I’m on the developer beta, and everything is harder to see. The Lock Screen clock is nearly invisible with the wallpaper (photo of my kids). Apple went a little overboard here.
 
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clueless, tasteless UI design.

- for colors, things like using white on white
- for using transparency on multiple, stacking UI elements
- for degraded readability (because of abuse of transparency and visual effects)
- for the many inconsistencies throughout the OS

this is apple new " liquid sh*t " UI theme.

apple please, do bring back theme designs from before the big-sur horror.
everything theme-wise since big-sur has been like a masterclass in faillure.
 
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sw1tcher said:
If anything, people wanted visual improvements. This is not it (IMO) when the text isn't so easy to read (using Auto setting). This would probably be very difficult to read outdoors in direct sun light.

View attachment 2519028

Dark setting with more contrast is much better

View attachment 2519030
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This looks like something my 20 year old self would have put on his iPod Touch with Cydia back in the day.
 
I think stuff like this a a result of stagnation. But at least they actually improved something, like the iPadOS.
 
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Ankaa said:
I still miss the Aqua days. I'm with you, this flat design hype, which as far as I remember originated from Google, was just boring, mostly ugly, and can go home. When did people forget to be playful? I have to use Win 11 for work and I can't even with that ugly flat colorless desktop environment
Click to expand...
Windows 8.0 was released in 2012 which, although it still retains most of the design from Windows 7, the glass part of Windows Aero was dropped and its MetroUI/ModernUI adopted flat icons.

iOS 7 followed the flat design when it was released in 2013 while android 5 Lollipop introduced the flat icons in 2014.

Microsoft is slowly bringing back 3D and depth with Windows 11 while Google will definitely follow the footsteps of iOS 26 with android 17 or android 27.
 
Mousse said:
So instead of bug fixes and under the hood improvements, we get eye candy. I'm glad Apple has its priorities straight.🤦‍♂️
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Yeah that’s right. There is exactly one team for software development at apple. You can only have one: UI, under the hood improvements… and as we see for this year, they had once again to choose one(!) and they did it with the liquid glass. You have to wait at least one more year for any other improvements…
 
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Now after around 48 hrs with the beta my overall impression from the new design is shifted to a more positive direction compared to Monday.
I think there is still a lot room for improvements and they will of course make several changes up until the final releases (and even after).
They definitely need to dial back the blur and these shiny corners of some elements and app icons.
It has potential but in the current iteration it simply doesn’t look good in a lot of areas.

Furthermore: I’m pretty sure that a lot of companies aren’t happy with the design of their app icons with the adaption that iOS 26 did to them. If you look at the YouTube app icon for example, this is a blurry mess and the red isn’t the YouTube red, more a pinky-red colour.
 
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