{"id":48018,"date":"2025-06-10T16:18:22","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T20:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=48018"},"modified":"2025-06-29T16:30:55","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T20:30:55","slug":"liquid-glass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/10\/liquid-glass\/","title":{"rendered":"Liquid Glass"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apple<\/a> (Apple Design<\/a>, Hacker News<\/a>, MacRumors<\/a>, Slashdot<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Apple today previewed a beautiful new software design<\/a> that makes apps and system experiences more expressive and delightful while being instantly familiar. It’s crafted with a new material called Liquid Glass. This translucent material reflects and refracts its surroundings, while dynamically transforming to help bring greater focus to content, delivering a new level of vitality across controls, navigation, app icons, widgets, and more. For the very first time, the new design extends across platforms — iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26, and tvOS 26 — to establish even more harmony while maintaining the distinct qualities that make each unique.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Sebastiaan de With<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

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If you’re a designer, don’t miss the “Meet Living Glass<\/a>” session on the WWDC Developer app. Incredible.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

If we put aside the functionality<\/em>, such as the return of the bottom toolbar in Safari, I think most of the iOS changes look<\/em> pretty good. I like the icons. I like that buttons look more like buttons. The main problem is that there’s far too much transparency. I don’t know why we have to keep going through this cycle where Apple makes the text hard to read, then gradually fixes most of it, then makes it bad all over again.<\/p>\n\n

Somehow, I don’t think any of this really works on macOS. The glass look just doesn’t seem to translate well. I think the sidebars and the heavily shadowed toolbars look ridiculous. I don’t like the corner radii or the icons in the menus. It’s by far the least attractive version of macOS, in my opinion, and I say that as someone who was not fond of the Big Sur redesign.<\/p>\n\n

• • •<\/p>\n\n

Adam Overholtzer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

It is interesting (and bad) that after the iOS 7 and Big Sur redesigns worked to thin or eliminate borders, these new designs for iOS and macOS have the thickest, heaviest borders those platforms have ever seen. They may say it’s insets and padding and depth and shadows, but big fat borders is what they are.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

I don’t understand how removing borders and chrome (in the previous redesign) and adding them back both<\/em> bring “greater focus to a user’s content.”<\/p>\n\n

• • •<\/p>\n\n

Steve Troughton-Smith<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The visionOS design language was gorgeous. This… this is something entirely different<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Tomas Kafka<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I am not excited about the rumored iOS redesign - current iOS seems fine, and it takes \n@apple\n 3+ years to stabilize a design change and fix the papercuts they accidentally introduced by attempting to do too much.<\/p>

Busywork exercise for both Apple and 3rd party devs.<\/p>

Writing this because I actually like iOS, and I think the current design is strong enough to support everything the next decade years can bring, and those developer-decades are needed elsewhere …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Craig Grannell<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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While I’m more writer than designer these days, I was trained in the visual arts. I was always taught that clarity and legibility should be at the forefront of anyone’s mind when designing. Surely, that’s even more the case when creating an operating system for many millions of users. Yet even in Apple’s press release, linked earlier, there are multiple screenshots where key interface components are, at best, very difficult to read. That is the new foundational point<\/em> for Apple design. And those screenshots will have been designed to show the best<\/em> of things.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Marques Brownlee<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I’m a bit concerned with readability<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Mishaal Rahman<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I’m glad Google decided to heavily blur the background with Android’s Material 3 Expressive redesign.<\/p>

Had they decided to make things more transparent, it would’ve looked worse! iOS 26 suffers from having too much transparency, IMO.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Marcel<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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This might be good graphic design but I’m not convinced this is good software design. Apparently an unpopular opinion in Apple HQ: Text should be readable.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Marco Arment<\/a>:<\/p>\n

This looks awesome as long as you don’t need to read any of the text in the glass blobs with stuff behind them<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Tom Warren<\/a>:<\/p>\n

can’t wait to not be able to read anything on my iPhone<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Kirk McElhearn<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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First impressions of Apple‘s new design: they’re sacrificing usability for bling. And android’s new redesign looks a whole lot better. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Ryan Jones<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Feels exactly like iOS 7 – way too far at first.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Kyle Howells<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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This is awesome! For a few minutes.<\/p>\n

I do not want this enabled constantly on my phone though!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Josh Puckett<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I love that we’re back to ‘ok but which of these toggles is on and which is off’?! in iOS<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Adam Bell<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I genuinely love how much more depth iOS’ icons have now. <\/p>

The Camera icon is night and day<\/em> better.<\/p>

So much more charm than the flat, simpler ones.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Benjamin Mayo<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Time is a flat circle, something something.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Saagar Jha<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

“Thoughtfully designed groups of controls free up space for your content”<\/p>\n

Guys we invented hamburger menus<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Felix Schwarz<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Maybe it’s not so bad when seen on device, but from this screenshot iPadOS’ new look really pains my eye:<\/p>