More of this, please!
26/01/26 - 11:00
Apple's Liquid Glass UI seems to get a lot of hate online. I actually really like it, at least on iOS (I don't have a mac, so can't speak to the macOS side of things).
I'm sure the complaints are just a vocal minority - the people who dislike it really dislike it, and most people who don't care, don't say anything. That's fine, but I'm a little surprised there doesn't seemt to be any love for Liquid Glass.
Trends are often cyclical, and design and aesthetic is no exception. It's been long enough since the turn of the millennium that there's now nostalgia for some of the design language of the 2000's and early 2010's. I'm referring to things like Y2K futurism, Frutiger Aero, skeuomorphic design, etc. They're not exactly making a comeback, but they certainly have their fans, myself included.
For me, Liquid Glass feels like a modern interpretation of the Aero in Frutiger Aero. It reminds of the window transparency effects in Windows Vista and 7, which I miss. I liked the metro theme of Windows 8/8.1, but 10 is bland and inoffensive, and 11 is an eyesore. For someone who doesn't own a mac, I still use macs with suprising frequency (mostly helping other people), and I've always thought macOS looked better than Windows, but that too is going downhill. Snow Leopard was my favourite, but after Mavericks, it just kept getting flatter and blander too.
So with design language getting more boring by the year, Liquid Glass is a breath of fresh air. Transparency, distortion, blur, a 3D look! And done better on modern hardware than was practical back in 2007. I love that the sheen on the edges of folders and widgets on the homescreen shifts as you tilt the phone. My favourite is when certain sliders have a magnification effect, with chromatic abberation around the edges, such as when switching between Home, Library, etc, in the Music app. It makes those simple interactions feel so much more fun. I certainly never found myself admiring the homescreen of my phone before iOS 26.
More of this, please!
I know Liquid Glass has it's problems. There were some bugs at launch, though that's hardly suprising from Apple, and not unique to Liquid Glass. I've also seen people complaining it's caused them accessibility issues that are hard to work around, which really sucks. I've not experienced any problems myself, but if it doesn't work for people, I agree they need to have a solution.
My only problem with Liquid Glass, is that there's not enough of it. It's presence in iOS is pretty minimal, just a few small few effects here and there, and what little there is was dialled back heavily due to backlash at launch. I would love to see more shiny pseudo-3D interactive UI everywhere. Sadly, I expect that won't happen.