Liquid Glass Disbelief
If someone had told me 12 months ago what was going to happen this past year, I wouldn’t have believed them. Skipping swiftly past all the political, economic and social turmoil, I come to the interface changes brought in macOS Tahoe with Liquid Glass. After three months of strong feedback during beta-testing, I was disappointed when Tahoe was released on 15 September to see how little had been addressed. When 26.1 followed on 3 November it had only regressed, and 26.2 has done nothing. Here I summarise my opinions on where Tahoe’s overhaul has gone wrong.
[…]
In real life, whiteouts are dangerous because they’re so disorienting. There’s no horizon, no features in the landscape, and no clues to navigation. We see and work best in visual environments that are rich in colour and tonal contrasts. Tahoe has continued a trend for Light Mode to be bleached-out white, and Dark Mode to be a moonless night. Seeing where controls, views and contents start and end is difficult, and leaves them suspended in the whiteout.
[…]
I’m sure that, in the right place and time, transparency effects of Liquid Glass can be visually pleasing. Not only is this the wrong time and place, but those with visual impairment can no longer remove or even reduce these effects, as the Reduce Transparency control in Accessibility settings no longer reduces transparency in any useful way. That was one of the regressions in 26.1 that hasn’t been addressed in 26.2.
I don’t mind how Liquid Glass looks at all. It’s just insane how buggy the system has become. Even Messages will bug out, like deleting my first word if I type too fast after opening a conversation or auto scrolling and not letting me scroll down until I exit and re-enter.
Unacceptable for the premium you pay for Apple software. Unacceptable for any software one is paying for. I hope they get their shit together and start fixing before they continue adding new stuff. 26.2 doesn’t inspire me that they’re on that trajectory.
Previously:
- Belated Liquid Glass on iPhone First Impressions
- macOS 26.2
- Alan and Aaron
- Alan Dye Leaving Apple for Meta
- Liquid Glass Toggle in appleOS 26.1 Beta
- Shipping Liquid Glass
- Tahoe Window Corners
- Tahoe’s Terrible Icons
- Liquid Glass: Content vs. Controls
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Liquid Glass has not become less infuriating the more I use it. It seems like the kind of half-baked interface we would get from Linux or Windows. Nothing in the UI is better than iOS 18, and many, many things are substantially worse. I appreciate some of the new features, but not the design. Liquid Glass is a total failure. I can't even tell what's a UI bug and what's working as intended, because all of it just looks wrong.
Example: Today I turned on the "alarm" function in Reminders. At least I think I did because I guess that's what the "Urgent" toggle is for? I don't know why it asks me if I want to turn on Alarms for Reminders, but then it's not called "Alarm" in the UI? WTF. And with something else I was doing in a native app earlier today (can't remember which one), there was an on/off toggle, but instead of showing green when it's "on" it just showed the toggle completely filled with white when I toggled it to the "on" position. Again, who knows if this is a bug or the intended UI.
I hope Apple realizes what a disaster Liquid Glass is, and completely pivots away from it in iOS 27. Send it down the Apple memory hole and pretend like it never existed. Don't try to polish the turd.
It still worries me that Apple let this happen and apparently intended to continue encouraging it. And the only thing that might stop this mess is its designer having even less integrity than talent.
IF this gets turned around in the coming years it will only be out of sheer luck that the right person was able to get the job despite everything working against it.
> Not that I want to turn the clock back, but it would be really helpful if I could read clearly what’s on my display once again.
I do. Turn the clock back to 10.9. That's around when the macOS UI peaked, before the first major UI facelift that made everything worse. 10.10 wasn't nearly as bad as Big Sur or Tahoe, but it was a step in the wrong direction. And then it just got worse and worse.
It's hilarious that Meta hired Alan Dye at the point in time that his magnum opus is still being refined to a point of relative usability.
Two entities couldn't deserve one-another more.
I'm sure the timing of his departure was down to Dye realising he was a busted flush at Apple now that his fellow execs have to use the crap for which he was the main architect / designer.
The disregard for everyday usability let alone for people with special requirements is astounding.
