If you are someone associated with UI designing or even if you are a technology fan and paid close attention to the Apple WWDC event this year, or even updated your iPhone to the recent iOS 26, then you have seen it.
Interfaces that look like glass and behave like glass in the way light is reflected from them.
Apple is calling this new style of design Liquid Glass and it’s available across iOS 26 from the iPhone to the MacBooks as well as the iPads and even the watchOS.
It took the design world by storm because this was the kind of change never really seen before in the smartphone space and especially by a company like Apple, which did not like to take design risks like this.
And it was definitely a risk because some people really liked it and others simply did not, with some people not even choosing to update their devices in order to avoid this design.
So, today we are going to understand the thinking behind this new UI design and why Apple chose this kind of UI design for all its devices. Let’s start with understanding what is this Liquid Glass and then we will dive deeper into the reasons and much more.
What Exactly Is Liquid Glass?
Liquid glass is the latest iteration of design language and rendering system developed by Apple as a part of its “material UI” design language.
This style of design basically behaves like glass and can even react to dynamic light and context of words overlaying it or under it.
This is not simply a texture because it does a lot of things, which makes it quite unique.
Translucency
One of the characteristics of Liquid Glass is that it is translucent and reflects everything that is behind it, as the content behind the layer experiences blur and shifts.
Motion Adaptability
Liquid Glass is dynamic, which means that, just like glass, it is going to be refracting light differently along its edges than in the centre and that is why when you scroll or swipe or even try to open a menu, the surface will seem like stretching a reshaping to convey depth.
Context Response
This UI design language is very responsive to context and will behave differently depending on the tint as well as the opacity of the elements behind it.
Consistency
Liquid glass is going to stay consistent across devices from Mac to iPhone as well as Apple Watches, etc, with a single set of rules.
Liquid Glass changes:
Translucent, Reactive Surfaces
In the iOS 26 Liquid Glass update, you are going to see a material reflective and refractive design in all buttons and menus, as well as sheets and even toolbars.
Motion-Led Clarity
In addition to that, you are also going to see that elements are going to shrink and swell and tab bars are going to compress to fit options etc.
Unified Iconography and Frosted Depth
And finally, you are going to see all icons share uniformity in design across system apps as well as third-party apps with the help of their APIs.
Three Big Forces on Why Apple Is Pushing Towards Liquid Glass
Fresh Visual Identity
If you have been following the Apple design language, then you can see that the designs have been almost the same from iOS 7 to iOS 15, with flat styling that did not really translate as futuristic.
This is where Apple is trying to redefine what design language its devices are going to showcase in the form of the highly futuristic and dynamic Liquid Glass which can make the icons and elements feel like they are in motion.
Continuity with VisionOS
Apple, as you know, has different OS for its different devices, from iOS for its smartphones to Mac OS for its computers and the latest among the OS lineup, VisionOS for its wearables.
VisionOS represents the latest and greatest technological leap for its OSs and VisionOS is all about spatial material as well as dynamic design languages that show depth in AR and VR.
That is why, in order to ultimately tie VisionOS with the rest of its devices, Apple is focusing on uniformity, which can be achieved by Liquid Glass for its non-wearable devices, which can actually translate quite well with the most modern of Apple’s OS ecosystems, establishing a uniform design language.
Apple Silicon
When you are creating something highly computationally intensive, such as Liquid Glass, you are going to need capable and modern GPUs/NPUs that will be able to render these live effects smoothly without actually reducing the performance of the device.
That is finally now possible with Apple’s latest line-up of chips, from the M-series chips on their computers to their A-series chips on their smartphones, which are now equally capable of running something like Liquid Glass.
This indicates that Apple might have had the vision for something like Liquid Glass much earlier but it was simply not feasible with the processing power of chips of those times.
But Wait, Windows Did It Before
If you think Apple is the first to implement a glass-like design language, then that is not really the case, because let us refresh you on Windows Aero (2006–2012).
It was first introduced in Windows Vista and then was continued to Windows 7 and actually followed a lot of design traits similar to Liquid Glass, such as glass window borders that were semi-transparent with blurred backgrounds, along with subtle reflections and highlights that had glossy shine, along with smooth animations.
Aero was revolutionary and this simply made transparency mainstream in design. However, there was only one problem and it was that Aero Glass was very resource hungry and was simply not compatible with the regular kind of hardware people had.
Microsoft’s “Liquid Glass” relied heavily on GPU and hardware acceleration and most computers during the time did not even have GPUs to support this kind of hardware-heavy design language, meaning users were sacrificing precious performance legroom for Aero.
So, Microsoft quietly retired it with Windows 8.
How Apple’s “Liquid” is different from Aero’s “Glass”
The primary difference between Aero’s “Glass” and Apple’s “Liquid” is hardware. When Aero came out, the default mainstream was not high performance and existing systems, on average, were simply not equipped enough to handle the hardware-intensive needs of the OS.
Liquid Glass, on the other hand, comes at a time when all the new devices from Apple are very well equipped to handle the hardware challenges posed by this new design language.
And Apple simply has more reason to push this update because it wants to bring in a unification across all its devices, which Aero never aimed to do, as there was no Aero for Windows phones.
We hope this blog has been helpful for you to understand why Apple went “Liquid” with its new Liquid Glass design language.
Liquid Glass definitely has to be a controversial design choice because some users on older devices have actually complained that it is slowing down their devices and some users simply do not like that design, complaining about how it is a little too transparent and distracting.
We believe it all depends on the user and how you perceive the design, whether you appreciate this new development from Apple.
If you are someone willing to implement something like this Liquid Glass on your website or apps or you are willing to have the finest high-performance iOS apps developed for your business, then we are here for you.
We are Think To Share IT Solutions and we are one of the most reputed names in the website and app development industry and we welcome you to visit our website and check out our past work in our case study page.
We also welcome you to get in touch with us so that we can fulfil all your tech needs.
