There was also an article in Wired about this and I'll just say this: the fact the most discussed thing about the new iOS version is how to make their terrible new UI (that no one asked for) off is telling something about the state of innovation at Apple. It's annoying to see apps adapt to the new design, making a lot of the navigation in the top and the bottom worse (and great to see a couple of holdouts like Bluesky). A design philosophy where the full width of the screen is used is pretty good, not sure we needed Apple to prove it with a counter example.
Can't wait for them to release iOS 27 and announce they've made a useable UI again. "Hey friends, those accessibility settings you've used for a year? You don't need them anymore. Apple is where innovation happens!!"
Isn't this the case for all UI redesigns? When youtube changed to their current design there were posts about browser extensions to restore the old interface. I remember hating it myself at the time yet now I don't have an issue with it and probably prefer it to the old design.
Yes, but that doesn't contradict the comment about innovation at Apple. They are now at a similar stage to Osprey backpacks. They release a new look every year but with all the same features and functionality that we had a decade ago.
True, and it's the same with any big redesign that it should tend to be the worst it will ever be at the start and then be gradually refined. I expect it will end up quite good by the time they want to start over again in 10 or so years, and people will complain about losing it and how bad the new interface is! At least there are a few good years in the middle to end of each cycle!
> Isn't this the case for all UI redesigns? When youtube changed to their current design there were posts about browser extensions to restore the old interface.
Yes but UI redesigns usually involve UX redesign as well. It's not just visual so you actually gain something from it (even if at first it feels like a regression).
But liquid glass helps me do what... see my background?....!?
It helps Apple sell bigger phones: even wider margins and less readable text (it was already borderline unreadable because we had to showcase Retina hyper-resolution, now we can even do that without contrast!) When you buy a 10" phone maybe you'll be able to read an iMessage...
Seriously unsure who thought it might be a good idea and why. Possibly just a diversion from the AI development falling behind schedule and competitors. I really cannot imagine a user cohort falling for this gimmich in large enough percentage to push this, I'd rather think no serious UX A/B testing was done.
Modern design is already pretty bad and usability and readability being almost ignored aspects, but this is the most arrogant step I met recently, despite the ambitious attempt by Posthog website redesign to be the champion in user-hostile UX category.
This one is particularly bad because it's shit. It makes the device harder to use for most users. It introduces a load of utterly pointless, and/or confusing, patterns/motifs... like:
- why do some navigation buttons hover about 3 meters above the panel they control (the enormous drop shadow around back/next/close buttons)
- why is the settings sidebar floating above the settings panel content, such that only the image carousels but not the text slide under it?
- why are the rounded corners of panels and windows so round that about 40px of every window's height and width becomes unusable?
- why do I have to see my wallpaper, blurry, under every fucking control, icon, component, list and panel? It started with Lion where the wallpaper would bleed through the sidebars of windows, even when they had other windows beneath them
Someone at Apple decided the "desktop" paradigm that made their computers usable has become redundant, but they're taking it apart in tiny steps, drawn out over years and multiple releases. The desktop paradigm was really good: you could have multiple apps open side by side and drag & drop content between them, just like you could if you were assembling physical things on a physical desktop. With Liquid Glass, you wouldn't imagine that was possible, because parts of the apps hover 3m off the surface, making it visually unsettling to navigate your windows. And your windows are made of various grades of glass which is brittle, and smooth, and you can't stick anything to it. Glass isn't a work surface unless you're doing stained glass windows. To do work, you need the confidence the surface will hold up beneath your actions, and a little bit of friction so your materials and targets don't slide all over the place. Why on earth are Apple creating the illusion of an unworkable work surface?
I'm convinced they're trying to deprecate the menu bar entirely by making it less and less usable (thinner text, transparency), but they're not willing to move it to the tops of windows like on Windows. Are they hoping we'll all give up using (because they've made it shit) it so they can just let it go? (like iOS?).
For what it’s worth, I’m definitely leaning “Apple fanboy” and have been amenable to their past UI redesigns. This is the first that I truly think is a regression, and I immediately turned on Reduce Transparency after updating.
> I'll just say this: the fact the most discussed thing about the new iOS version is how to make their terrible new UI (that no one asked for) off is telling something about the state of innovation at Apple.
I observed that too. Polled a few people I know who upgraded and they all have the same impression that they'd rather turn it off. I shared the accessibility settings with some to help them out. I haven't upgraded my main phone might have to wait a while longer.
This has to be resume driven. I presume designers at Apple have to end the year with a review to justify their salaries. "So Bob, what would you say you do here?". The answer "Well not much, we designed things nicely already, and now we're just chilling, listening to podcasts and having 2 hour lunches" is not going to fly. They want to say something like "That flashy glass thing, we did that!". Except, in this case I wish they'd all just be chilling and having 2 hour long lunches, instead of messing with the interface since they apparently managed to make things worse.
I have an iphone 11 (non pro) I use as a GPS. The update works fine on it, I haven't noticed any unusual slowdown. If I'm not mistaken, that's a 6 year-old model, and I think it's the oldest one supported.
I can't comment on the battery life, since it's plugged in almost all the time. I haven't noticed any change on my regular phone (14 pro).
So basically it is to have shorter battery life despite advances in battery technology, and have planned obsolescence? This makes this even more compelling to leave their ecosystem.
This is just jumping the shark, as they need to push out something that can be talked about their products, and Apple Intelligence is a flop so far. As the saying goes: “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
It’s shareholder driven. They have to act like they’re still innovative even though they have no idea where to actually innovate at this point. So they chose to change something very visible that they could point to as a big innovative change to keep share prices moving in the right direction. Ever heard of end-stage capitalism? Well, this is it - when every principle is sacrificed in the name of revenue.
“We’ve heard a lot of feedback about the incredible design changes we made in iOS 27. In order to meet the challenges set out by our users, we invented a new type of glass that is both transparent and opaque… at the same time! Physically impossible, you say? Not at Apple.”
There is switchable glass that can change between transparent and opaque. It’s used for some car sunroofs and various other applications. While it’s not “at the same time”, as a theme idea for the OS that has analogs in the physical world, it could be done.
It looks like there are adhesive films to add the feature to existing windows, if you don’t want to go all-in on entire windows (which is also an option).
I've seen this used for the restroom doors at trendy bars. The glass is clear until you lock the door. It then turns opaque while you do your business.
Apparently, solid doors made of steel or wood are too last century.
There are a lot of Apple employees here that are going to downvote this but I cannot turn a blind eye to this abomination.
I’ve been an early adapter since my first iPhone in 2009. But the new UI is plain ugly, lacking general accessibility, and full of bugs to the point that it’s just user hostile at this point.
They broke almost all of their design guidelines and make everything useless bubbles, I just cannot believe that Apple released this ugly thing to billions of devices.
A lot of these UI bugs are also of the kind where once I notice them, I can no longer un-notice them. The border around the Home Screen icons being one. When you swipe up from bottom to go back to Home Screen, the app icon doesn't initially have border while the animation is ongoing. Once the animation finishes, the border suddenly shows up. Once I noticed this, it's been annoying me everytime I swipe to go back.
I thought the latest dev beta of iOS would fix this but it's still here.
Exactly. It’s especially bothering because the previous version had a lot of thought put into it, macOS specifically would allow you to drag a file onto terminal to get its path etc. such small but incredibly powerful things all around. It’s the thought behind the design and its consistency that matters.
Instead now we have a phone operating system UI posing as macOS. There’s no proper text alignment, padding, or good margins. It’s just not elegant at all, it feels like a knockoff.
The other day, the keyboard stopped showing up in Safari, I was getting an empty keyboard tray when I click into a text input. How in the frozen hell are they able to achieve this level of incompetence. What’s the goal of this, just extract money from people and enshitify everything. I’m just so tied of macOS at this point that I started enjoying my work computer which is Windows 11.
I truly, genuinely wanted to like Liquid Glass. I think the default reaction to ANY change in UX, even changes that are generally improvements, is: "I don't like this, it's different!"
I thought that'd be the case for ios 26. But after installing it... yeesh. I can barely see anything. It's just awful.
Overall I don't mind Liquid Glass. I really just want to turn off the borders around the Home Screen app icons. They look okay for white background but very ugly with black or dark background. It looks too chaotic.
I remember in the early 2000's when compositing window managers first came about people went wild with the effects in the most tacky way possible (me too -- it was fun at the time!) Everything transparent, rotating cubes for different desktops, weird animations on everything. Once it became common place though, actual designers started to show some restraint...
Anyway, whatever Apple is doing right now reminds me a lot of that.
The main difference: installing Compiz was a decision and effort from the user, an opt-in feature. I also did tried it, and ditched it after a week. With this I have less freedom. This is more like gnome 3, which caused my ditch Gnome and linux desktop completely, and switch to windows (which has its downsides and quirks).
These settings are only half interesting. In iOS it's not bad, but on desktop there's really no actually usable set of configuration parameters that result in a sane experience across the board.
It is amazing how much time and effort must have gone into developing this liquid glass and rolling it out across products and platforms, all for a worse outcome in the end.
From what I've seen the Apple apps all have the same radius but 3rd party apps are largely yet to update. Same thing happened when they changed the stoplight window buttons and some 3rd party apps still had the glossy ones years later.
there is a difference between apps that have toolbar of any kind and the ones that don't and then there's inspector window (the one that shows file properties), again, different close button size and different radius. Three types, just in the OS alone
compare: Safari, Finder settings, "Get Info" in finder
What I dislike the most isn't even the liquid glass itself, it's how much more rounded a lot of UI elements are. And as others have mentioned, the border radius can vary from app to app. If someone can figure out how to modify the border radius of apps and UI elements across the board (at least on macOS) please let me know!
Is looking at notifications from the notification centre on iPhone while it's halfway down a common use case?
I see many critics of Liquid Glass (for iPhone, anyway) use the notification centre half down as an example of how bad Liquid Glass is, but it's way more legible when it's completely down and the background tints significantly.
Yeah a lot of these discussions revolve around half way states or animations in progress which run very quickly. Feels like pausing a movie on a frame that's blurry and declaring the movie unwatchable.
Liquid glass is one thing, but I want my 13 mini to go back to not being janky and glitchy and not suddenly dropping dead when the battery hits 5% again. These are new problems since the update.
That's probably a hardware issue. Old batteries start to drop voltage under high load or on low charge %. This causes the phone to glitch or just hard reboot if the voltage drops below spec. Likely just have to get a battery replacement.
I think it is probably only a hardware issue in the sense that the iPhone 13 mini is probably too old/slow to run iOS 26 as quickly as the old version.
I updated my old/spare phone - an iPhone SE3, which I think has a similar processor and memory (A15 and 4GB). It became a lot more sluggish. I learned my lesson not to upgrade my main phone, also an iPhone 13 mini.
I also noticed a disappointing slow down on a 9th gen iPad, which has even older internals. Actually, perhaps I should be quickly looking into downgrading that if it's possible.
I updated a 13 mini and it stared off really, really slow for about a day, when background processing happens I assume. But then it got to similar speed as before, however jankier, as usual with iOS 26. That being said, it’s a unit with over 80% battery health. Otherwise the CPU gets throttled.
iPad Pro 3rd gen definitely got much more sluggish with 26. Wish I hadn't updated it now, but wanted to try the new windowing paradigm (not really worth it on a 12" screen).
I'd be willing to bet it's more likely entrenched leadership that needs to be replaced. All of the 10x engineers in the world can't fix a bad vision forced on them.
I'm assuming it's because nobody can just leave something alone. It's always gotta change, it's always gotta be made "better". And it probably generates a lot of marketing, good or bad.
If they leave it alone on what else would they be working on? Not on something in somebody's else department so it's either being layed off or convince the board that each year's iteration on the same things is the next groundbreaking invention.
You're describing the classical dichotomy between progressives and conservatives, a dichotomy which extends far beyond the political sphere to which is usually is applied. Whether it is in the arts, in architecture, in engineering, in design or in software development. UI design in particular seems to attract the type of person who is among the first to pull down Chesterton's fence [1] with no though given about what might be lost by this action.
A lot of design in the early era of UIs (until sometime mid-~90s~ Edit:: mid-2000s) was based on a lot of research. From academic research to ergonomics to plain old user research. They wouldn't always get it right, but they were learning.
Modern designers wouldn't understand what a book is if one hit them in the face. And their "research" is all vibes: "Quantified factors" are "32% increase in subculture perception", "a 34% boost in modernity" and "a 30% jump in rebelliousness" https://design.google/library/expressive-material-design-goo...
Bloody hell that google design webpage is terrible to read. And it changed my mouse cursor and made it lag too?
It looks to me that the research they did only showed them mockups, not actually using this new design. And why are all color choices so bad right now? They just scream, it puts you on edge just looking at it.
Now that I'm getting older I like to pull out my "curmudgeon card" and blame it on the younger generation. New graduates entering the work grew up spending more time on mobile phones than laptops/desktops, and I wonder if these changes are to cater to this market that's shifting from mostly-mobile screen time to mostly-desktop. I imagine it's not too long before this segment is the majority.
I feel like we saw similar changes with the previous shift where new graduates knew GSuite and MS Office was some the software their parents would complain about. It's my shibboleth for identify my generation of computer users.
Android is _mostly_ OK. Their stupidest move (so far) was mandating edge-to-edge apps without a way for users and apps to opt out of them.
Otherwise, the UI stays mostly the same, just becoming a bit more bloated ("finger friendly") with every release.
The most annoying thing for me is the waste of screen space from the bubbles around notifications and menu options. Apparently, having stuff floating now gives a "perception of lightness and motion".
[EDIT] I removed an extremely sarcastic comment. It was quite puerile.
I am a bit skeptical that they are "reaching for the best."
Once you start to hire and promote folks with a certain "corporate culture," they start hiring and promoting folks that fit that culture (and driving out ones that don't). I suspect that the problems actually started years ago, and now, those managers are hiring less-than-stellar SWEs, managers, and designers.
The thing about the really good people at Apple, is that they don't need to be subjected to an ugly corporate culture. They'll take their toys and go home (or to other companies), which is pretty much exactly what the less-than-stellar people want. The dichotomy of hiring high-Quality talent, is that they don't need to work for you, so you have to figure out ways to keep them. Often, money isn't the biggest driver. The good ones don't do it [just] for the money, and they'll always be able to make plenty, so, as their manager, you need to figure out what they really want.
I personally wouldn't rely on the `defaults write -g com.apple.SwiftUI.DisableSolarium -bool YES` preference working for more than another OS release or two. Seems like a temporary stopgap to give third-party developers time to upgrade their apps, not a permanent way to disable Liquid Glass.
If you develop apps, you can add this into your Info.plist file[0]. It turns off LG. Apple says that it's "temporary," but I think they'd be insane to start ignoring it.
Yeah, that would suck. The designer I'm working with, is already projectile-vomiting over LG. I think he'd quit, if I insisted that he help me to transition to it (we're a volunteer team).
I'm hoping that some of the senior management will realize what a clusterf**k this is, and let it stay (they still support ObjC apps, and I will bet that lots of AAA apps can't be easily converted to LG).
The thing that we have to keep in mind, is that some very "strong-willed" folks have staked their egos on LG, and will choose it as their hill to die on. We've seen that happen in many other instances (not just at Apple).
Heh funny, I was wondering why after the Tahoe update I wasn't noticing much of a difference and wondered why everybody was complaining about the glass effects - turns out I had checked the 'Accessibility => Display => Reduce Transparency' checkbox already in some earlier update for reasons I forgot.
The Glass UI distracts me a lot, especially on Mac. Too many buttons, too much roundness... When I switch back to the old UI later, it feels so much better and more structured. I hope Apple has taken all this criticism on board. I submitted at least 4 Feature requests...
FYI: The iOS 26.1 beta has an improved Accessibility setting: It replaces Button Shapes with Add Borders, which gives everything a really nice Classic Mac OS look with black lines around grey containers. Helps a lot.
Tbh. after the initial shock I got used to the macOS 26 UI. Seeing Finder in the new UI for the first time is a really interesting experience. But you get used to it. (And the sidebar-over-content style is kinda neat).
I'm currently in the process of adding support for the new UI to my macOS app. The biggest problem is to make it look good on the previous macOS version and on the new one. I still have more than 50% users on pre-glass.
If only users had any power and could simply ignore all that unreadable garbage by simply continuing to use that system-wide theme they installed from less obnoxious designers a few years ago...
I have an iPhone SE 2nd Generation. After a recent repair I was forced to upgrade to iOS 26.
My biggest gripe is the buggy keyboard. It shrinks a bit horizontally every time I open it. When using a mobile browser (I tested on a few), website footers and similar elements will get stuck above where the top of the keyboard would normally be, as if there was an invisible keyboard.
These tweaks to minimize the glass effect go a long way, such that I'm not as put off by the overall design as I was in its stock configuration.
Honestly, as someone who just purchased his first MacBook, Liquid Glass is... fine? The control center could use a little more opacity, but besides that, my opinion tends to range from "whatever" to "hey, that looks pretty nifty!"
Me too. I honestly don’t understand why it provokes so strong reactions. In fact, I find all of the changes fairly minor. I expected something much more radical when Apple announced a major design overhaul. Things look slightly different, but work pretty much the same.
I don't mind the liquid glass itself, but a lot of iOS and macOS seems badly designed when liquid glass is applied. Bright white default backgrounds with transparent panels on top featuring white titels. Misaligned screens for some reason. Unresponsive controls while they're animating. Safari introducing weird viewport bugs because it tries to be fancy with the address bar.
On iOS it feels unfinished, on macOS it feels unpolished. This has the potential to be pretty, or at least usable if you don't like the glass look, but someone needs to finish the process of porting to liquid glass.
I installed Tahoe on my desktop and laptop the day it came out. I really stopped noticing it after the first day or two, there aren't a lot of places that have overwhelming, liquid glassy-blur/transparency on macOS that you run into often. I think the only time I'm reminded that Liquid Glass is "a thing" is in the Apple Music app where they went ham with it.
I have Tahoe on my personal laptop and the previous release on my work one and tbh I hardly notice any of the differences. It's more noticeable on the iphone where the system UI takes up more of the screen but on the mac it's 99% just the same full screen apps you always had.
Ventura got a security update last month. Sequoia will get updates for at least another 3 years. These glaring issues will get resolved eventually, even if it is the 'Frosted Glass' update.
It's worse than that. The Apple apps have all the variance too. It's not about old apps. It's literally by design. It depends on things like whether they have a toolbar. It's bonkers.
I recommend leaving it on the default settings. It's fine after a while, and I like a lot of the simplification. But I would rather they function on making their software actually work or be good, even if I like playing with the refraction.
exactly my thought. I never made it to Vista. In 2007 I changed WinXP (always used it with the classic grey theme) for OS X Tiger on a MacBook and never went back to Windows since then.
I wonder where a decent alternative will be lurking in the next few years? Apple is losing some grip, but all others are still worse overall.
There was also an article in Wired about this and I'll just say this: the fact the most discussed thing about the new iOS version is how to make their terrible new UI (that no one asked for) off is telling something about the state of innovation at Apple. It's annoying to see apps adapt to the new design, making a lot of the navigation in the top and the bottom worse (and great to see a couple of holdouts like Bluesky). A design philosophy where the full width of the screen is used is pretty good, not sure we needed Apple to prove it with a counter example.
Can't wait for them to release iOS 27 and announce they've made a useable UI again. "Hey friends, those accessibility settings you've used for a year? You don't need them anymore. Apple is where innovation happens!!"
Isn't this the case for all UI redesigns? When youtube changed to their current design there were posts about browser extensions to restore the old interface. I remember hating it myself at the time yet now I don't have an issue with it and probably prefer it to the old design.
Some people are always upset with change.
Yes, but that doesn't contradict the comment about innovation at Apple. They are now at a similar stage to Osprey backpacks. They release a new look every year but with all the same features and functionality that we had a decade ago.
[delayed]
True, and it's the same with any big redesign that it should tend to be the worst it will ever be at the start and then be gradually refined. I expect it will end up quite good by the time they want to start over again in 10 or so years, and people will complain about losing it and how bad the new interface is! At least there are a few good years in the middle to end of each cycle!
> Isn't this the case for all UI redesigns? When youtube changed to their current design there were posts about browser extensions to restore the old interface.
Yes but UI redesigns usually involve UX redesign as well. It's not just visual so you actually gain something from it (even if at first it feels like a regression).
But liquid glass helps me do what... see my background?....!?
It helps Apple sell bigger phones: even wider margins and less readable text (it was already borderline unreadable because we had to showcase Retina hyper-resolution, now we can even do that without contrast!) When you buy a 10" phone maybe you'll be able to read an iMessage...
Seriously unsure who thought it might be a good idea and why. Possibly just a diversion from the AI development falling behind schedule and competitors. I really cannot imagine a user cohort falling for this gimmich in large enough percentage to push this, I'd rather think no serious UX A/B testing was done.
Modern design is already pretty bad and usability and readability being almost ignored aspects, but this is the most arrogant step I met recently, despite the ambitious attempt by Posthog website redesign to be the champion in user-hostile UX category.
> Isn't this the case for all UI redesigns?
This one is particularly bad because it's shit. It makes the device harder to use for most users. It introduces a load of utterly pointless, and/or confusing, patterns/motifs... like:
- why do some navigation buttons hover about 3 meters above the panel they control (the enormous drop shadow around back/next/close buttons)
- why is the settings sidebar floating above the settings panel content, such that only the image carousels but not the text slide under it?
- why are the rounded corners of panels and windows so round that about 40px of every window's height and width becomes unusable?
- why do I have to see my wallpaper, blurry, under every fucking control, icon, component, list and panel? It started with Lion where the wallpaper would bleed through the sidebars of windows, even when they had other windows beneath them
Someone at Apple decided the "desktop" paradigm that made their computers usable has become redundant, but they're taking it apart in tiny steps, drawn out over years and multiple releases. The desktop paradigm was really good: you could have multiple apps open side by side and drag & drop content between them, just like you could if you were assembling physical things on a physical desktop. With Liquid Glass, you wouldn't imagine that was possible, because parts of the apps hover 3m off the surface, making it visually unsettling to navigate your windows. And your windows are made of various grades of glass which is brittle, and smooth, and you can't stick anything to it. Glass isn't a work surface unless you're doing stained glass windows. To do work, you need the confidence the surface will hold up beneath your actions, and a little bit of friction so your materials and targets don't slide all over the place. Why on earth are Apple creating the illusion of an unworkable work surface?
I'm convinced they're trying to deprecate the menu bar entirely by making it less and less usable (thinner text, transparency), but they're not willing to move it to the tops of windows like on Windows. Are they hoping we'll all give up using (because they've made it shit) it so they can just let it go? (like iOS?).
Change for the sake of change is not a good thing.
I'm still mad at Youtube for their redesigns, to the point that I moved over to Freetube, since I found normal Youtube that hostile of an experience.
For what it’s worth, I’m definitely leaning “Apple fanboy” and have been amenable to their past UI redesigns. This is the first that I truly think is a regression, and I immediately turned on Reduce Transparency after updating.
No. This isn’t about preference for certain aesthetics. The new glass UI elements are objectively worse for readability.
> I'll just say this: the fact the most discussed thing about the new iOS version is how to make their terrible new UI (that no one asked for) off is telling something about the state of innovation at Apple.
I observed that too. Polled a few people I know who upgraded and they all have the same impression that they'd rather turn it off. I shared the accessibility settings with some to help them out. I haven't upgraded my main phone might have to wait a while longer.
This has to be resume driven. I presume designers at Apple have to end the year with a review to justify their salaries. "So Bob, what would you say you do here?". The answer "Well not much, we designed things nicely already, and now we're just chilling, listening to podcasts and having 2 hour lunches" is not going to fly. They want to say something like "That flashy glass thing, we did that!". Except, in this case I wish they'd all just be chilling and having 2 hour long lunches, instead of messing with the interface since they apparently managed to make things worse.
I assume it's technology driven. The effect is probably expensive to produce so phones with weaker performance can't do it.
I have an iphone 11 (non pro) I use as a GPS. The update works fine on it, I haven't noticed any unusual slowdown. If I'm not mistaken, that's a 6 year-old model, and I think it's the oldest one supported.
I can't comment on the battery life, since it's plugged in almost all the time. I haven't noticed any change on my regular phone (14 pro).
So basically it is to have shorter battery life despite advances in battery technology, and have planned obsolescence? This makes this even more compelling to leave their ecosystem.
This is just jumping the shark, as they need to push out something that can be talked about their products, and Apple Intelligence is a flop so far. As the saying goes: “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
My humble opinion is they took the opportunity to play “look over here!” after the Apple Intelligence (or lack thereof) fiasco.
It’s shareholder driven. They have to act like they’re still innovative even though they have no idea where to actually innovate at this point. So they chose to change something very visible that they could point to as a big innovative change to keep share prices moving in the right direction. Ever heard of end-stage capitalism? Well, this is it - when every principle is sacrificed in the name of revenue.
“We’ve heard a lot of feedback about the incredible design changes we made in iOS 27. In order to meet the challenges set out by our users, we invented a new type of glass that is both transparent and opaque… at the same time! Physically impossible, you say? Not at Apple.”
There is switchable glass that can change between transparent and opaque. It’s used for some car sunroofs and various other applications. While it’s not “at the same time”, as a theme idea for the OS that has analogs in the physical world, it could be done.
I would pay for windows that can do so that so I don’t need curtains.
It looks like there are adhesive films to add the feature to existing windows, if you don’t want to go all-in on entire windows (which is also an option).
I've seen this used for the restroom doors at trendy bars. The glass is clear until you lock the door. It then turns opaque while you do your business.
Apparently, solid doors made of steel or wood are too last century.
Hotel showers too. When they are transparent they make the room feel bigger.
There are a lot of Apple employees here that are going to downvote this but I cannot turn a blind eye to this abomination.
I’ve been an early adapter since my first iPhone in 2009. But the new UI is plain ugly, lacking general accessibility, and full of bugs to the point that it’s just user hostile at this point.
They broke almost all of their design guidelines and make everything useless bubbles, I just cannot believe that Apple released this ugly thing to billions of devices.
A lot of these UI bugs are also of the kind where once I notice them, I can no longer un-notice them. The border around the Home Screen icons being one. When you swipe up from bottom to go back to Home Screen, the app icon doesn't initially have border while the animation is ongoing. Once the animation finishes, the border suddenly shows up. Once I noticed this, it's been annoying me everytime I swipe to go back.
I thought the latest dev beta of iOS would fix this but it's still here.
Exactly. It’s especially bothering because the previous version had a lot of thought put into it, macOS specifically would allow you to drag a file onto terminal to get its path etc. such small but incredibly powerful things all around. It’s the thought behind the design and its consistency that matters.
Instead now we have a phone operating system UI posing as macOS. There’s no proper text alignment, padding, or good margins. It’s just not elegant at all, it feels like a knockoff.
The other day, the keyboard stopped showing up in Safari, I was getting an empty keyboard tray when I click into a text input. How in the frozen hell are they able to achieve this level of incompetence. What’s the goal of this, just extract money from people and enshitify everything. I’m just so tied of macOS at this point that I started enjoying my work computer which is Windows 11.
I truly, genuinely wanted to like Liquid Glass. I think the default reaction to ANY change in UX, even changes that are generally improvements, is: "I don't like this, it's different!"
I thought that'd be the case for ios 26. But after installing it... yeesh. I can barely see anything. It's just awful.
Overall I don't mind Liquid Glass. I really just want to turn off the borders around the Home Screen app icons. They look okay for white background but very ugly with black or dark background. It looks too chaotic.
I remember in the early 2000's when compositing window managers first came about people went wild with the effects in the most tacky way possible (me too -- it was fun at the time!) Everything transparent, rotating cubes for different desktops, weird animations on everything. Once it became common place though, actual designers started to show some restraint...
Anyway, whatever Apple is doing right now reminds me a lot of that.
The main difference: installing Compiz was a decision and effort from the user, an opt-in feature. I also did tried it, and ditched it after a week. With this I have less freedom. This is more like gnome 3, which caused my ditch Gnome and linux desktop completely, and switch to windows (which has its downsides and quirks).
These settings are only half interesting. In iOS it's not bad, but on desktop there's really no actually usable set of configuration parameters that result in a sane experience across the board.
It is amazing how much time and effort must have gone into developing this liquid glass and rolling it out across products and platforms, all for a worse outcome in the end.
The janky various-radius window borders on mac are crime against design.
From what I've seen the Apple apps all have the same radius but 3rd party apps are largely yet to update. Same thing happened when they changed the stoplight window buttons and some 3rd party apps still had the glossy ones years later.
there is a difference between apps that have toolbar of any kind and the ones that don't and then there's inspector window (the one that shows file properties), again, different close button size and different radius. Three types, just in the OS alone
compare: Safari, Finder settings, "Get Info" in finder
I looked at those shots for macOS and I'm just baffled by how they thought this was a good idea.
What I dislike the most isn't even the liquid glass itself, it's how much more rounded a lot of UI elements are. And as others have mentioned, the border radius can vary from app to app. If someone can figure out how to modify the border radius of apps and UI elements across the board (at least on macOS) please let me know!
Is looking at notifications from the notification centre on iPhone while it's halfway down a common use case?
I see many critics of Liquid Glass (for iPhone, anyway) use the notification centre half down as an example of how bad Liquid Glass is, but it's way more legible when it's completely down and the background tints significantly.
Yeah a lot of these discussions revolve around half way states or animations in progress which run very quickly. Feels like pausing a movie on a frame that's blurry and declaring the movie unwatchable.
Liquid glass is one thing, but I want my 13 mini to go back to not being janky and glitchy and not suddenly dropping dead when the battery hits 5% again. These are new problems since the update.
That's probably a hardware issue. Old batteries start to drop voltage under high load or on low charge %. This causes the phone to glitch or just hard reboot if the voltage drops below spec. Likely just have to get a battery replacement.
I think it is probably only a hardware issue in the sense that the iPhone 13 mini is probably too old/slow to run iOS 26 as quickly as the old version.
I updated my old/spare phone - an iPhone SE3, which I think has a similar processor and memory (A15 and 4GB). It became a lot more sluggish. I learned my lesson not to upgrade my main phone, also an iPhone 13 mini.
I also noticed a disappointing slow down on a 9th gen iPad, which has even older internals. Actually, perhaps I should be quickly looking into downgrading that if it's possible.
I updated a 13 mini and it stared off really, really slow for about a day, when background processing happens I assume. But then it got to similar speed as before, however jankier, as usual with iOS 26. That being said, it’s a unit with over 80% battery health. Otherwise the CPU gets throttled.
iPad Pro 3rd gen definitely got much more sluggish with 26. Wish I hadn't updated it now, but wanted to try the new windowing paradigm (not really worth it on a 12" screen).
Maybe you missed the part where I said this only started happening after the update. Battery health percent has not changed.
What a nightmare Apple UI/UX design has become. Are they hiring real bad people now?
I'd be willing to bet it's more likely entrenched leadership that needs to be replaced. All of the 10x engineers in the world can't fix a bad vision forced on them.
Android design is similarly terrible. I'm not sure what's the explanation for UI design being so fucked up across the board for about 10 years now.
I'm assuming it's because nobody can just leave something alone. It's always gotta change, it's always gotta be made "better". And it probably generates a lot of marketing, good or bad.
If they leave it alone on what else would they be working on? Not on something in somebody's else department so it's either being layed off or convince the board that each year's iteration on the same things is the next groundbreaking invention.
You're describing the classical dichotomy between progressives and conservatives, a dichotomy which extends far beyond the political sphere to which is usually is applied. Whether it is in the arts, in architecture, in engineering, in design or in software development. UI design in particular seems to attract the type of person who is among the first to pull down Chesterton's fence [1] with no though given about what might be lost by this action.
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/w/chesterton-s-fence
A lot of design in the early era of UIs (until sometime mid-~90s~ Edit:: mid-2000s) was based on a lot of research. From academic research to ergonomics to plain old user research. They wouldn't always get it right, but they were learning.
Original Apple guidelines started with things like "Simplified Jungian Perception" on page 18 https://archive.org/details/apple-hig
Microsoft collected and analyzed hundreds of thousands of data points about their software. See "No Distaste for Paste" https://web.archive.org/web/20080316101025/http://blogs.msdn...
Now?
Modern designers wouldn't understand what a book is if one hit them in the face. And their "research" is all vibes: "Quantified factors" are "32% increase in subculture perception", "a 34% boost in modernity" and "a 30% jump in rebelliousness" https://design.google/library/expressive-material-design-goo...
Bloody hell that google design webpage is terrible to read. And it changed my mouse cursor and made it lag too?
It looks to me that the research they did only showed them mockups, not actually using this new design. And why are all color choices so bad right now? They just scream, it puts you on edge just looking at it.
More data points for my "everyone is 12 now" theory of the world.
Now that I'm getting older I like to pull out my "curmudgeon card" and blame it on the younger generation. New graduates entering the work grew up spending more time on mobile phones than laptops/desktops, and I wonder if these changes are to cater to this market that's shifting from mostly-mobile screen time to mostly-desktop. I imagine it's not too long before this segment is the majority.
I feel like we saw similar changes with the previous shift where new graduates knew GSuite and MS Office was some the software their parents would complain about. It's my shibboleth for identify my generation of computer users.
Well, at least they don't change it much
Android is _mostly_ OK. Their stupidest move (so far) was mandating edge-to-edge apps without a way for users and apps to opt out of them.
Otherwise, the UI stays mostly the same, just becoming a bit more bloated ("finger friendly") with every release.
The most annoying thing for me is the waste of screen space from the bubbles around notifications and menu options. Apparently, having stuff floating now gives a "perception of lightness and motion".
[EDIT] I removed an extremely sarcastic comment. It was quite puerile.
I am a bit skeptical that they are "reaching for the best."
Once you start to hire and promote folks with a certain "corporate culture," they start hiring and promoting folks that fit that culture (and driving out ones that don't). I suspect that the problems actually started years ago, and now, those managers are hiring less-than-stellar SWEs, managers, and designers.
The thing about the really good people at Apple, is that they don't need to be subjected to an ugly corporate culture. They'll take their toys and go home (or to other companies), which is pretty much exactly what the less-than-stellar people want. The dichotomy of hiring high-Quality talent, is that they don't need to work for you, so you have to figure out ways to keep them. Often, money isn't the biggest driver. The good ones don't do it [just] for the money, and they'll always be able to make plenty, so, as their manager, you need to figure out what they really want.
I unironically think staying in Cupertino is hurting them.
I personally wouldn't rely on the `defaults write -g com.apple.SwiftUI.DisableSolarium -bool YES` preference working for more than another OS release or two. Seems like a temporary stopgap to give third-party developers time to upgrade their apps, not a permanent way to disable Liquid Glass.
Yeah there was a similar one that undid the stupid new alert window layout in Big Sur and Monterey, and it stopped working in Ventura.
If you develop apps, you can add this into your Info.plist file[0]. It turns off LG. Apple says that it's "temporary," but I think they'd be insane to start ignoring it.
[0] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/BundleResources/In...
My understanding is that this will be removed in iOS 27. Given how Apple has behaved in the past, I wouldn't be surprised if they really did it.
Yeah, that would suck. The designer I'm working with, is already projectile-vomiting over LG. I think he'd quit, if I insisted that he help me to transition to it (we're a volunteer team).
My understanding Apple will remove it sometime next year April.
I'm hoping that some of the senior management will realize what a clusterf**k this is, and let it stay (they still support ObjC apps, and I will bet that lots of AAA apps can't be easily converted to LG).
The thing that we have to keep in mind, is that some very "strong-willed" folks have staked their egos on LG, and will choose it as their hill to die on. We've seen that happen in many other instances (not just at Apple).
Heh funny, I was wondering why after the Tahoe update I wasn't noticing much of a difference and wondered why everybody was complaining about the glass effects - turns out I had checked the 'Accessibility => Display => Reduce Transparency' checkbox already in some earlier update for reasons I forgot.
The Glass UI distracts me a lot, especially on Mac. Too many buttons, too much roundness... When I switch back to the old UI later, it feels so much better and more structured. I hope Apple has taken all this criticism on board. I submitted at least 4 Feature requests...
FYI: The iOS 26.1 beta has an improved Accessibility setting: It replaces Button Shapes with Add Borders, which gives everything a really nice Classic Mac OS look with black lines around grey containers. Helps a lot.
Not upgrading to Tahoe for as long as possible.
Tbh. after the initial shock I got used to the macOS 26 UI. Seeing Finder in the new UI for the first time is a really interesting experience. But you get used to it. (And the sidebar-over-content style is kinda neat).
I'm currently in the process of adding support for the new UI to my macOS app. The biggest problem is to make it look good on the previous macOS version and on the new one. I still have more than 50% users on pre-glass.
That liquid glass really looks like ass. I don't know who thought it was a good idea
If only users had any power and could simply ignore all that unreadable garbage by simply continuing to use that system-wide theme they installed from less obnoxious designers a few years ago...
Sometimes the best innovations come from fixing what's broken rather than adding new shiny things. I hope Apple learns from this feedback.
The borders from "increase contrast" look great! I think I'll keep em
That was available on previous versions as well. It gives the OS a System 7 vibe.
I only wish I could get them on iOS as well as macOS.
I disabled liquid glass and most of my menubar icons just didn't appear. I reenabled it and they're back.
There's no winning with this release.
I have an iPhone SE 2nd Generation. After a recent repair I was forced to upgrade to iOS 26.
My biggest gripe is the buggy keyboard. It shrinks a bit horizontally every time I open it. When using a mobile browser (I tested on a few), website footers and similar elements will get stuck above where the top of the keyboard would normally be, as if there was an invisible keyboard.
These tweaks to minimize the glass effect go a long way, such that I'm not as put off by the overall design as I was in its stock configuration.
Honestly, as someone who just purchased his first MacBook, Liquid Glass is... fine? The control center could use a little more opacity, but besides that, my opinion tends to range from "whatever" to "hey, that looks pretty nifty!"
I don't mind the liquid glass
Me too. I honestly don’t understand why it provokes so strong reactions. In fact, I find all of the changes fairly minor. I expected something much more radical when Apple announced a major design overhaul. Things look slightly different, but work pretty much the same.
I don't mind the liquid glass itself, but a lot of iOS and macOS seems badly designed when liquid glass is applied. Bright white default backgrounds with transparent panels on top featuring white titels. Misaligned screens for some reason. Unresponsive controls while they're animating. Safari introducing weird viewport bugs because it tries to be fancy with the address bar.
On iOS it feels unfinished, on macOS it feels unpolished. This has the potential to be pretty, or at least usable if you don't like the glass look, but someone needs to finish the process of porting to liquid glass.
I also don’t get the hate. I personally prefer the older one but I also don’t see the big issue.
I have more a problem with the menu structure then the glass effect.
Same here. I don't mind it at all. If I had to choose I'd go for the previous design language, but I don't personally get the hate.
On desktop? Doesn’t it make it harder to see? I used a phone with it recently and I wanted to turn it off immediately.
I installed Tahoe on my desktop and laptop the day it came out. I really stopped noticing it after the first day or two, there aren't a lot of places that have overwhelming, liquid glassy-blur/transparency on macOS that you run into often. I think the only time I'm reminded that Liquid Glass is "a thing" is in the Apple Music app where they went ham with it.
I have Tahoe on my personal laptop and the previous release on my work one and tbh I hardly notice any of the differences. It's more noticeable on the iphone where the system UI takes up more of the screen but on the mac it's 99% just the same full screen apps you always had.
Ventura got a security update last month. Sequoia will get updates for at least another 3 years. These glaring issues will get resolved eventually, even if it is the 'Frosted Glass' update.
The non-tweaked optics are so ludicrously bad. How Apple could release something that shitty is beyond me.
What really annoys me is the variance in corner radius now. Because some apps have released an upgrade and others haven't.
It's worse than that. The Apple apps have all the variance too. It's not about old apps. It's literally by design. It depends on things like whether they have a toolbar. It's bonkers.
+1 for using bonkers
I recommend leaving it on the default settings. It's fine after a while, and I like a lot of the simplification. But I would rather they function on making their software actually work or be good, even if I like playing with the refraction.
> How to Turn Liquid Glass into a Solid Interface
> Looks Inside
> Long Article about how to turn of liquid glass
Well done Apple
Cool!
(get it?)
Liquid Glass on mac is sort of like Apple's windows XP
I feel as if Vista is the best comparison.
XP is sort of like Fisher-Price for Windows, but is usable. Vista ... was something else.
I really liked Windows XP. Do you mean Vista?
exactly my thought. I never made it to Vista. In 2007 I changed WinXP (always used it with the classic grey theme) for OS X Tiger on a MacBook and never went back to Windows since then.
I wonder where a decent alternative will be lurking in the next few years? Apple is losing some grip, but all others are still worse overall.