Why Liquid Glass looks so good

[superarijit]

Here's 7 reasons why Liquid Glass is beautiful/mesmerising/magnificent/elegant/majestic
1. It is constantly changing, so we never get bored of it
2. It's concentricity makes UI elements nestle into the device, incresing harmony between software and hardware
3. It's refraction of light lets it have depth
4. It's colour is determined by what it's above, which makes it always look nice
5. it's beautifully animated (for example menu open/close)
6. It's buttons are large and match the perimiter of a fingertip, making interactions feel more natural
7. It categorizes functions by spliiting them into different 'bubbles'

# Here's 7 reasons why Liquid Glass actually sucks:

1. **It is constantly changing**, so you can never find anything in the same place twice and your muscle memory is worthless

2. **Its concentricity makes UI elements nestle into the device**, which means everything looks like the same blobby circle and you can't tell a button from a decoration

3. **Its refraction of light lets it have depth**, making text impossible to read and causing eye strain as you try to focus on something that's literally designed to be visually ambiguous

4. **Its colour is determined by what it's above**, so it constantly clashes with your wallpaper, disappears into the background, or turns an ugly muddy brown over random content

5. **It's beautifully animated** (for example menu open/close), which means you waste 0.3 seconds watching a bubble wobble every single time you want to do anything, adding up to hours of your life watching pointless animations

6. **Its buttons are large and match the perimeter of a fingertip**, wasting massive amounts of screen space and making the interface look like it was designed for toddlers with Fisher-Price toys

7. **It categorizes functions by splitting them into different 'bubbles'**, forcing you to tap three times to access what used to take one tap, because apparently making things harder to reach is "elegant"

 

[Mcrumors David]

Here's 7 reasons why Liquid Glass is beautiful/mesmerising/magnificent/elegant/majestic
1. It is constantly changing, so we never get bored of it
2. It's concentricity makes UI elements nestle into the device, incresing harmony between software and hardware
3. It's refraction of light lets it have depth
4. It's colour is determined by what it's above, which makes it always look nice
5. it's beautifully animated (for example menu open/close)
6. It's buttons are large and match the perimiter of a fingertip, making interactions feel more natural
7. It categorizes functions by spliiting them into different 'bubbles'

It's garbage and turns older devices into bricks, not to mention various visual issues and faux-pas.

 

[Luftkopf]

I’m really looking forward to all this blowing over, and Apple refining the concept. All the haters will find new things to whinge about, and we can all move on.

I love how it has reintroduced some joy and playfulness to the interface, and I’m looking forward to seeing the concept evolves. I hope Apple adds a bit more colour to it.

 

[Diskutant]

How many people had “make my OS beautiful” on their bingo card for features they want added to their OS?

Many people still wait for it to be beautiful again. It was one of the key points together with user friendliness of the old Mac OS X before J. Ive made the UI flat and ugly.

 

[Ctrlos]

8. It uses a lot of spare device overheads that might otherwise be used to keep animations smooth and stop the OS crashing.

 

[Kal Madda]

Here's 7 reasons why Liquid Glass is beautiful/mesmerising/magnificent/elegant/majestic
1. It is constantly changing, so we never get bored of it
2. It's concentricity makes UI elements nestle into the device, incresing harmony between software and hardware
3. It's refraction of light lets it have depth
4. It's colour is determined by what it's above, which makes it always look nice
5. it's beautifully animated (for example menu open/close)
6. It's buttons are large and match the perimiter of a fingertip, making interactions feel more natural
7. It categorizes functions by spliiting them into different 'bubbles'

Absolutely, I totally agree. And despite the over exaggerated claims of “poor legibility”, I actually find Liquid Glass to improve my productivity, and have zero issues reading it. It feels like the UI is less in the way, and is less distracting.

Some in this forum just seem to be negative no matter what Apple does. It’s a really strange thing for an Apple fan forum. It’s as if any time anyone says anything positive about Apple or something Apple’s done, there’s a cohort who will show up to tell you why you’re wrong for liking it and have “objectively” bad taste (nothing objective in opinions), how it’s some psy-op from Apple, etc… 🤦🏼‍♂️🙄.

And there’s plenty of threads already for the haters to complain in, but they seem to always want to come into positive threads to let everyone know they shouldn’t be having fun and liking stuff… 🙄😂

 

[ProbablyDylan]

I actually find Liquid Glass to improve my productivity

Mind elaborating? In my experience, it hasn't made doing anything any faster or easier to access.

 

[HouseLannister]

That makes for a terrible environment. Hate from wall to wall! Everything sucks! Boo! Hiss! Why on earth would I waste my time on a seething pit of hate?

Is this your first visit to the Internet? Let me show you around... 🤣

 

[IceCool]

It looks like garbage.

I don't interact with a transparent world. My desk isn't transparent, my keyboard isn't transparent, my paperwork isn't transparent, my tv and monitor isn't transparent. Transparency sucks.

So surely you thought iOS 7 - iOS 18 looked like garbage, no?

I don't interact with a translucent world. My desk isn's translucent, my keyboard isn't translucent, my paperwork isn't translucent, my tv and monitor aren't translucent. Translucency sucks.

You seem like you'd rather just see the return of skeuomorphism.

 

[Farquar]

4. It's colour is determined by what it's above, which makes it always look nice

I'm going to disagree with that. Color has equal ability to make liquid glass looked bad. This is part of the problem with it as a design concept. It does look really good in certain circumstances, and really bad in others. They decided to ignore the really bad and pretend it didn't exist, to keep it and push forward with the design.

 

[Luftkopf]

Is this your first visit to the Internet? Let me show you around... 🤣

Haha, fair point.

 

[LiquidGlassfan]

Mind elaborating? In my experience, it hasn't made doing anything any faster or easier to access.

The control centrer is a lot more functional now. Bluetooth and Wifi no longer take the whole screen while expanded.

 

[HouseLannister]

The control centrer is a lot more functional now. Bluetooth and Wifi no longer take the whole screen while expanded.

That has nothing to do with Liquid Glass. iOS 26 is not a synonym for Liquid Glass.

 

[Luftkopf]

That has nothing to do with Liquid Glass. iOS 26 is not a synonym for Liquid Glass.

What I appreciate about Liquid Glass is that it feels less dead flat and lifeless. My criticism is that Apple was too timid with it, they could have gone much further with it, added more colour, refined more visual elements! Also I have the creeping feeling that the reason things have got chunkier, the traffic lights taking up more space, the extra corner radius, etc., is prepping macOS for touch input. I don't care if other people have the option for a touchscreen Mac. I think they're pointless, but you do you. The problem I have is the fattening of the desktop OS to make everything big enough to be a valid touch target.

 

[Markle]

This! It's a stupid material to build an interface in which you have to read data. Imagine if the page of a book was transparent (yay! it's always changing, i'm not getting bored lol) There's no way to "improve" liquid glass, because you have to think of another completely different material. How disfunctional must Apple be to have this crap greenlighted is beyond me.

I thought Jony Ive's Ferrari cockpit design was interesting. Buttons, haptics, able to operate without looking. The beauty of it driven entirely by clarity of purpose. This iOS is the exact opposite, glass is difficult enough to engage with, but making it intentionally more difficult is just wild. Did it start as a marketing ploy for Vision Pro, and they had reached the point of no return when that tanked? Or maybe they thought they could at least make use of it to distract from the AI debacle? This tanker is going to take ages to turn around

 

[maxoakland]

View attachment 2603840

There’s a reason that design only lasted for 3 years

 

[ProbablyDylan]

The control centrer is a lot more functional now. Bluetooth and Wifi no longer take the whole screen while expanded.

I really hope that isn't the extent of the productivity enhancements made possible by Liquid Glass.

 

[AlanMarron]

You can like it. Hell I like it visually. But it's an objectively bad user experience due to the terrible low contrast and transparent elements, even with reduce transparency on.

You might be blessed with fully functional eyes for now but I can assure you in the hands of people who don't have that it's an absolute disaster that shouldn't have got past some trite thinking by a half brained monkey. I have two relatives that this is entirely show stopping for.

Not suggesting what we had before was good but this is objectively worse.

I ask you to consider, function over form. Would having Liquid Glass here improve things?

View attachment 2603910

Every time that I hit the wrong thing in CarPlay, I think of this.

 

[cjsuk]

Every time that I hit the wrong thing in CarPlay, I think of this.

yeah it sucks.

Cars are safety critical. They should have the same safety critical interfaces as aircraft which come from decades of actual research not designer wanking.

 

[grammatica]

Technically and conceptually, Liquid Glass is good. The user experience just doesn't make sense.

 

[iZac]

I would turn it off if I could. Rounded windows that waste space and increased battery consumption for no benefit are just two reasons.

The two settings I use are:

Accessibility / Motion / Reduce Motion

Display / Liquid Glass / Tinted

This will knock back nearly all the wobbly glass effects (except on the buttons) and make it a bit more opaque - bringing it nearer to iOS 18. With 'reduce motion' you do lose the spring board effects between apps, but I found I don't miss them at all.

I don't bother with 'reduce transparency' because that seems to just give it a bunch of unaesthetic (but functional) contrast.

 

[CrabQueenInc]

I am sure the next version will have totally blank buttons until you hover over them and then they will animate to let you know what it does, you know, to increase your productivity.

I know this was said in jest and we’re talking about iOS 26 in this thread, but if Apple made buttons actually visible again in macOS and added a hover state that raises the button with a slight shadow on mouseover, that might improve visual clarity.

On the other hand, I would likely get sick of the animations after the first day. Maybe a pleasant pulse with a bit of glossy glow would work? Now where have I seen that before.

 

[Kal Madda]

Mind elaborating? In my experience, it hasn't made doing anything any faster or easier to access.

I partly did there. I find it to be less distracting to me and it allows me to stay in my creative flow better. I know it can be quite subjective and dependent on personal preference, but I seriously find myself working more efficiently. It creates a visually pleasing and low distraction environment I can create in. The prior design was okay, I didn’t have any really problems with it, but I definitely find the new design to be better in that regard. 🙂👍🏻

 

[UliBaer]

Definitely the absolute opposite. 🤔

 

[Diskutant]

I would turn it off if I could. Rounded windows that waste space and increased battery consumption for no benefit are just two reasons.

Technically you can with https://github.com/aspauldingcode/apple-sharpener
needs turning off sip and installing Ammonia, so really depends on how much you want it.

So surely you thought iOS 7 - iOS 18 looked like garbage, no?

I don't interact with a translucent world. My desk isn's translucent, my keyboard isn't translucent, my paperwork isn't translucent, my tv and monitor aren't translucent. Translucency sucks.

You seem like you'd rather just see the return of skeuomorphism.

Not the one you responded to, but I surely think iOS 7 - 18 do look like garbage, I hate it every single day. The worst thing, there is no alternative, everyone adapted the ugly "design". Yes I want Aqua and Skeuomorphism back. Like so many other people.