Liquid Glass Is Permanent
If you read the comments on my articles or browse the iOS subreddits, there is a vocal contingent of developers betting that Apple is going to roll back Liquid Glass. […] I shared this exact sentiment with the Apple team.
Their reaction? Genuine shock. They were actually concerned that developers were holding onto this position. They made it emphatically clear that Liquid Glass is absolutely moving forward, evolving, and expanding across the ecosystem.
Their exact warning to me was that those who don’t adopt it now “are gonna find themselves in a tough position later.”
[…]
We had them confirm the hard truth: Xcode 27 will absolutely not have the deferral flag, and it will not respect it if you leave it there, anyway. When Q1 2027 rolls around and Xcode 27 becomes the mandatory minimum for compiling to the App Store, glass will be enabled globally, period.
What’s truly astonishing about the macOS Tahoe UI is that it’s now been SIX MONTHS since Tahoe was released to the public, yet it’s still full of glaring bugs. […] So many little things are off, out of alignment. It’s like Apple rushed out an alpha version.
The Apple engineers explained that a massive part of the initial Liquid Glass rollout was simply ensuring the foundation was solid. It had to be functional, it had to meet incredibly strict styling guidelines across every single Apple platform, and most importantly, it just had to work.
[…]
The team was visibly enthusiastic about what is in store for WWDC26 and Xcode 27. While they wouldn’t drop any specific spoilers, they gave the very strong impression that this upcoming cycle is where Liquid Glass takes its first massive step into maturity.
This is the Safari search field on Tahoe. Notice the position of the clear button.
Perfect MacOS 26 Tahoe screenshot from the Journal app. Apple shipped this.
Liquid Glass is a catastrophe.
I have SO many examples of this. Text fields that are cut off, text color choices that render text completely unreadable. In this regard, Apple design has lost the thread.
Leon:
the thing about modern Apple UI is they go for some deeply flawed vision that seems developed in a vacuum away from third parties, accessibility experts and engineers, and then when that fails they water it all the way down until people say “huh okay this isn’t that bad any more”
it just lurches from catastrophe to milquetoast and back again, with most of the time firmly in milquetoast territory
what i’d love, love to see is them - or anyone - come up with is a system vision that bakes in accessibility and pro / studio app design first.
Previously:
- Whither Liquid Glass?
- 2025 Six Colors Apple Report Card
- Building Zavala 4.0
- NetNewsWire 7
- Sebastiaan de With Rejoining Apple
- Liquid Glass Disbelief
- Alan Dye Leaving Apple for Meta
- Shipping Liquid Glass
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> Their reaction? Genuine shock. They were actually concerned that developers were holding onto this position.
Have they been into the marketing team's stash again? This is actually insane and completely disconnected with reality.
Apple is unbelievably arrogant and out-of-touch. Even Microsoft undid the Vista and Windows 8 UI experiments after users rejected it.
I read Danny's article differently:
> those who don’t adopt it now “are gonna find themselves in a tough position later.”
Not Electron guys, not the MS Office team, not game devs. Basically, everyone *not* using AppKit/UIKit/SwiftUI doesn't have to worry much about Liquid Ass. Their stuff isn't going to break much.
Apple's stack should be viewed as a liability and timesink, where you get taken for a ride because Apple can't take criticism so they keep doubling-down on stupid. I see it with UI, Swift, basically everything.
> it’s time to accept and get into the new system.
It's time to de-Apple my dev and stop caring about "fitting in" and being "native" with a platform that's turned into a broken, inconsistent, ugly mess.
What’s completely disconnected from reality is this idea that Apple might completely roll back Liquid Glass. Uh huh, sure. Take a breath, put on your big girl panties, and figure out how to handle it.
In five years, you can go on Marco’s podcast and whine like little boys about it.
> “Now, we are living through a reset. We are back at Version 1.0.
The Apple engineers explained that a massive part of the initial Liquid Glass rollout was simply ensuring the foundation was solid. It had to be functional, it had to meet incredibly strict styling guidelines across every single Apple platform, and most importantly, it just had to work.”
Do they **really** think what we got was a solid functional foundation that just works‽
