7 ms·

How to turn liquid glass into a solid interface

223 points by tambourine_man 1y ago

hoppp 1y ago
That liquid glass really looks like ass. I don't know who thought it was a good idea
montroser 1y ago
These settings are only half interesting. In iOS it's not bad, but on desktop there's really no actually usable set of configuration parameters that result in a sane experience across the board. It is amazing how much time and effort must have gone into developing this liquid glass and rolling it out across products and platforms, all for a worse outcome in the end.
- CharlieDigital 1y ago
  I looked at those shots for macOS and I'm just baffled by how they thought this was a good idea.
- clickety_clack 1y ago
  The janky various-radius window borders on mac are crime against design.
  - SchemaLoad 1y ago
    From what I've seen the Apple apps all have the same radius but 3rd party apps are largely yet to update. Same thing happened when they changed the stoplight window buttons and some 3rd party apps still had the glossy ones years later.
    - leshenka 1y ago
      there is a difference between apps that have toolbar of any kind and the ones that don't and then there's inspector window (the one that shows file properties), again, different close button size and different radius. Three types, just in the OS alone compare: Safari, Finder settings, "Get Info" in finder
kleiba 1y ago
Cool! (get it?)
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
IlikeMadison 1y ago
What a nightmare Apple UI/UX design has become. Are they hiring real bad people now?
- andrepd 1y ago
  Android design is similarly terrible. I'm not sure what's the explanation for UI design being so fucked up across the board for about 10 years now.
  - veb 1y ago
    I'm assuming it's because nobody can just leave something alone. It's always gotta change, it's always gotta be made "better". And it probably generates a lot of marketing, good or bad.
    - pmontra 1y ago
      If they leave it alone on what else would they be working on? Not on something in somebody's else department so it's either being layed off or convince the board that each year's iteration on the same things is the next groundbreaking invention.
    - hagbard_c 1y ago
      You're describing the classical dichotomy between progressives and conservatives, a dichotomy which extends far beyond the political sphere to which is usually is applied. Whether it is in the arts, in architecture, in engineering, in design or in software development. UI design in particular seems to attract the type of person who is among the first to pull down Chesterton's fence [1] with no though given about what might be lost by this action. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/w/chesterton-s-fence https://www.lesswrong.com/w/chesterton-s-fence
  - troupo 1y ago
    A lot of design in the early era of UIs (until sometime mid-~90s~ Edit:: mid-2000s) was based on a lot of research. From academic research to ergonomics to plain old user research. They wouldn't always get it right, but they were learning. Original Apple guidelines started with things like "Simplified Jungian Perception" on page 18 https://archive.org/details/apple-hig https://archive.org/details/apple-hig Microsoft collected and analyzed hundreds of thousands of data points about their software. See "No Distaste for Paste" https://web.archive.org/web/20080316101025/http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/tags/Why+the+New+UI_3F00_/default.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20080316101025/http://blogs.msdn... Now? Modern designers wouldn't understand what a book is if one hit them in the face. And their "research" is all vibes: "Quantified factors" are "32% increase in subculture perception", "a 34% boost in modernity" and "a 30% jump in rebelliousness" https://design.google/library/expressive-material-design-google-research https://design.google/library/expressive-material-design-goo...
magnuspaaske 1y ago
There was also an article in Wired about this and I'll just say this: the fact the most discussed thing about the new iOS version is how to make their terrible new UI (that no one asked for) off is telling something about the state of innovation at Apple. It's annoying to see apps adapt to the new design, making a lot of the navigation in the top and the bottom worse (and great to see a couple of holdouts like Bluesky). A design philosophy where the full width of the screen is used is pretty good, not sure we needed Apple to prove it with a counter example. Can't wait for them to release iOS 27 and announce they've made a useable UI again. "Hey friends, those accessibility settings you've used for a year? You don't need them anymore. Apple is where innovation happens!!"
- xattt 1y ago
  “We’ve heard a lot of feedback about the incredible design changes we made in iOS 27. In order to meet the challenges set out by our users, we invented a new type of glass that is both transparent and opaque… at the same time! Physically impossible, you say? Not at Apple.”
  - al_borland 1y ago
    There is switchable glass that can change between transparent and opaque. It’s used for some car sunroofs and various other applications. While it’s not “at the same time”, as a theme idea for the OS that has analogs in the physical world, it could be done.
    - brewdad 1y ago
      I've seen this used for the restroom doors at trendy bars. The glass is clear until you lock the door. It then turns opaque while you do your business. Apparently, solid doors made of steel or wood are too last century.
      - msephton 1y ago
        Hotel showers too. When they are transparent they make the room feel bigger.
baq 1y ago
Not upgrading to Tahoe for as long as possible.
- kybernetyk 1y ago
  Tbh. after the initial shock I got used to the macOS 26 UI. Seeing Finder in the new UI for the first time is a really interesting experience. But you get used to it. (And the sidebar-over-content style is kinda neat). I'm currently in the process of adding support for the new UI to my macOS app. The biggest problem is to make it look good on the previous macOS version and on the new one. I still have more than 50% users on pre-glass.
johnjames87 1y ago
I don't mind the liquid glass
- arresin 1y ago
  On desktop? Doesn’t it make it harder to see? I used a phone with it recently and I wanted to turn it off immediately.
  - nozzlegear 1y ago
    I installed Tahoe on my desktop and laptop the day it came out. I really stopped noticing it after the first day or two, there aren't a lot of places that have overwhelming, liquid glassy-blur/transparency on macOS that you run into often. I think the only time I'm reminded that Liquid Glass is "a thing" is in the Apple Music app where they went ham with it.
  - SchemaLoad 1y ago
    I have Tahoe on my personal laptop and the previous release on my work one and tbh I hardly notice any of the differences. It's more noticeable on the iphone where the system UI takes up more of the screen but on the mac it's 99% just the same full screen apps you always had.
- larusso 1y ago
  I also don’t get the hate. I personally prefer the older one but I also don’t see the big issue. I have more a problem with the menu structure then the glass effect.
  - nozzlegear 1y ago
    Same here. I don't mind it at all. If I had to choose I'd go for the previous design language, but I don't personally get the hate.
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  I don't mind the liquid glass itself, but a lot of iOS and macOS seems badly designed when liquid glass is applied. Bright white default backgrounds with transparent panels on top featuring white titels. Misaligned screens for some reason. Unresponsive controls while they're animating. Safari introducing weird viewport bugs because it tries to be fancy with the address bar. On iOS it feels unfinished, on macOS it feels unpolished. This has the potential to be pretty, or at least usable if you don't like the glass look, but someone needs to finish the process of porting to liquid glass.
ThouYS 1y ago
The borders from "increase contrast" look great! I think I'll keep em
- robin_reala 1y ago
  I only wish I could get them on iOS as well as macOS.
  - spectre3d 1y ago
    “Show Borders” is available in Accessibility-> Display & Text Size in iOS 26.1. (Along with Increase Contrast and Reduce Transparency)
- tambourine_man 1y ago
  That was available on previous versions as well. It gives the OS a System 7 vibe.
OGEnthusiast 1y ago
I personally wouldn't rely on the `defaults write -g com.apple.SwiftUI.DisableSolarium -bool YES` preference working for more than another OS release or two. Seems like a temporary stopgap to give third-party developers time to upgrade their apps, not a permanent way to disable Liquid Glass.
- grishka 1y ago
  Yeah there was a similar one that undid the stupid new alert window layout in Big Sur and Monterey, and it stopped working in Ventura.
flohofwoe 1y ago
Heh funny, I was wondering why after the Tahoe update I wasn't noticing much of a difference and wondered why everybody was complaining about the glass effects - turns out I had checked the 'Accessibility => Display => Reduce Transparency' checkbox already in some earlier update for reasons I forgot.
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
If you develop apps, you can add this into your Info.plist file[0]. It turns off LG. Apple says that it's "temporary," but I think they'd be insane to start ignoring it. [0] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/BundleResources/Information-Property-List/UIDesignRequiresCompatibility https://developer.apple.com/documentation/BundleResources/In...
- strongpigeon 1y ago
  My understanding is that this will be removed in iOS 27. Given how Apple has behaved in the past, I wouldn't be surprised if they really did it.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    Yeah, that would suck. The designer I'm working with, is already projectile-vomiting over LG. I think he'd quit, if I insisted that he help me to transition to it (we're a volunteer team).
  - lawgimenez 1y ago
    My understanding Apple will remove it sometime next year April.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
      I'm hoping that some of the senior management will realize what a clusterf**k this is, and let it stay (they still support ObjC apps, and I will bet that lots of AAA apps can't be easily converted to LG). The thing that we have to keep in mind, is that some very "strong-willed" folks have staked their egos on LG, and will choose it as their hill to die on. We've seen that happen in many other instances (not just at Apple).
ebbi 1y ago
Is looking at notifications from the notification centre on iPhone while it's halfway down a common use case? I see many critics of Liquid Glass (for iPhone, anyway) use the notification centre half down as an example of how bad Liquid Glass is, but it's way more legible when it's completely down and the background tints significantly.
- SchemaLoad 1y ago
  Yeah a lot of these discussions revolve around half way states or animations in progress which run very quickly. Feels like pausing a movie on a frame that's blurry and declaring the movie unwatchable.
- hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
  Yes. Yes it is. I’m more likely to drag Notification Center down halfway, see what notification I just missed and send it back away in the same motion than I am to drag it all the way down, and then drag it all the way up.
IlikeKitties 1y ago
> How to Turn Liquid Glass into a Solid Interface > Looks Inside > Long Article about how to turn of liquid glass Well done Apple
t1234s 1y ago
Liquid Glass on mac is sort of like Apple's windows XP
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  I feel as if Vista is the best comparison. XP is sort of like Fisher-Price for Windows, but is usable. Vista ... was something else.
- christophilus 1y ago
  I really liked Windows XP. Do you mean Vista?
- oleganza 1y ago
  exactly my thought. I never made it to Vista. In 2007 I changed WinXP (always used it with the classic grey theme) for OS X Tiger on a MacBook and never went back to Windows since then. I wonder where a decent alternative will be lurking in the next few years? Apple is losing some grip, but all others are still worse overall.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
  Liquid Glass on Mac is sort of like a terrible remix of OS X Aqua. And frosted glass elements on iOS have been around since iOS 7. But note how the blurred/frosted background is a background and doesn't conflict with the icons on top of it. Note how the designers of Liquid Glass failed to learn from this. https://www.cnet.com/reviews/apple-ios-7-review/ https://www.cnet.com/reviews/apple-ios-7-review/
andy_xor_andrew 1y ago
I truly, genuinely wanted to like Liquid Glass. I think the default reaction to ANY change in UX, even changes that are generally improvements, is: "I don't like this, it's different!" I thought that'd be the case for ios 26. But after installing it... yeesh. I can barely see anything. It's just awful.
- busymom0 1y ago
  Overall I don't mind Liquid Glass. I really just want to turn off the borders around the Home Screen app icons. They look okay for white background but very ugly with black or dark background. It looks too chaotic.
jspash 1y ago
What really annoys me is the variance in corner radius now. Because some apps have released an upgrade and others haven't.
- crazygringo 1y ago
  It's worse than that. The Apple apps have all the variance too. It's not about old apps. It's literally by design. It depends on things like whether they have a toolbar. It's bonkers.
  - tobinfekkes 1y ago
    +1 for using bonkers
thehours 1y ago
I have an iPhone SE 2nd Generation. After a recent repair I was forced to upgrade to iOS 26. My biggest gripe is the buggy keyboard. It shrinks a bit horizontally every time I open it. When using a mobile browser (I tested on a few), website footers and similar elements will get stuck above where the top of the keyboard would normally be, as if there was an invisible keyboard. These tweaks to minimize the glass effect go a long way, such that I'm not as put off by the overall design as I was in its stock configuration.
kridsdale3 1y ago
FYI: The iOS 26.1 beta has an improved Accessibility setting: It replaces Button Shapes with Add Borders, which gives everything a really nice Classic Mac OS look with black lines around grey containers. Helps a lot.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
replete 1y ago
Ventura got a security update last month. Sequoia will get updates for at least another 3 years. These glaring issues will get resolved eventually, even if it is the 'Frosted Glass' update.
cassianoleal 1y ago
I disabled liquid glass and most of my menubar icons just didn't appear. I reenabled it and they're back. There's no winning with this release.
wilg 1y ago
I recommend leaving it on the default settings. It's fine after a while, and I like a lot of the simplification. But I would rather they function on making their software actually work or be good, even if I like playing with the refraction.
BugsJustFindMe 1y ago
Liquid glass is one thing, but I want my 13 mini to go back to not being janky and glitchy and not suddenly dropping dead when the battery hits 5% again. These are new problems since the update.
- SchemaLoad 1y ago
  That's probably a hardware issue. Old batteries start to drop voltage under high load or on low charge %. This causes the phone to glitch or just hard reboot if the voltage drops below spec. Likely just have to get a battery replacement.
  - red369 1y ago
    I think it is probably only a hardware issue in the sense that the iPhone 13 mini is probably too old/slow to run iOS 26 as quickly as the old version. I updated my old/spare phone - an iPhone SE3, which I think has a similar processor and memory (A15 and 4GB). It became a lot more sluggish. I learned my lesson not to upgrade my main phone, also an iPhone 13 mini. I also noticed a disappointing slow down on a 9th gen iPad, which has even older internals. Actually, perhaps I should be quickly looking into downgrading that if it's possible.
    - exitb 1y ago
      I updated a 13 mini and it stared off really, really slow for about a day, when background processing happens I assume. But then it got to similar speed as before, however jankier, as usual with iOS 26. That being said, it’s a unit with over 80% battery health. Otherwise the CPU gets throttled.
    - yborg 1y ago
      iPad Pro 3rd gen definitely got much more sluggish with 26. Wish I hadn't updated it now, but wanted to try the new windowing paradigm (not really worth it on a 12" screen).
  - BugsJustFindMe 1y ago
    Maybe you missed the part where I said this only started happening after the update. Battery health percent has not changed.
eviks 1y ago
If only users had any power and could simply ignore all that unreadable garbage by simply continuing to use that system-wide theme they installed from less obnoxious designers a few years ago...
novalumina84 1y ago
Sometimes the best innovations come from fixing what's broken rather than adding new shiny things. I hope Apple learns from this feedback.
nelsonfigueroa 1y ago
What I dislike the most isn't even the liquid glass itself, it's how much more rounded a lot of UI elements are. And as others have mentioned, the border radius can vary from app to app. If someone can figure out how to modify the border radius of apps and UI elements across the board (at least on macOS) please let me know!
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
findthebug 1y ago
The Glass UI distracts me a lot, especially on Mac. Too many buttons, too much roundness... When I switch back to the old UI later, it feels so much better and more structured. I hope Apple has taken all this criticism on board. I submitted at least 4 Feature requests...
overgard 1y ago
I remember in the early 2000's when compositing window managers first came about people went wild with the effects in the most tacky way possible (me too -- it was fun at the time!) Everything transparent, rotating cubes for different desktops, weird animations on everything. Once it became common place though, actual designers started to show some restraint... Anyway, whatever Apple is doing right now reminds me a lot of that.
- fodkodrasz 1y ago
  The main difference: installing Compiz was a decision and effort from the user, an opt-in feature. I also did tried it, and ditched it after a week. With this I have less freedom. This is more like gnome 3, which caused my ditch Gnome and linux desktop completely, and switch to windows (which has its downsides and quirks).
- globular-toast 1y ago
  Yeah, don't forget wobbly windows! I think a lot of people dreamed of actually having a UI like Minority Report or something, but people quickly realised the difference between fiction and the reality of actually getting things done. These days I use a minimal tiling window manager and no animations whatsoever. As I'm of a certain age I still get a kick out of the fact I can make a floating window translucent and see the video playing underneath. But that's only because I know it was a technical feat to get there. It's hard to imagine why gen Z or younger would get a kick out of this stuff, though.
- Izkata 1y ago
  Compiz is the name everyone remembers, but the Beryl fork was what had all the excessive effects. When the projects merged back together into Compiz Fusion they dropped like 60-70% of the functionality, and then dropped even more when it was later renamed back to Compiz. I had a highly customized setup I really liked (I was even using the advanced features to target dropdowns and popups to give them their own effects, or disable effects for specific programs for speed), the only reason I moved away from it was all the customization disappearing. Some of that dropped functionality included keyboard controls for new ways to navigate or arrange windows, losing those indirectly led me to tiling window managers.
colonial 1y ago
Honestly, as someone who just purchased his first MacBook, Liquid Glass is... fine? The control center could use a little more opacity, but besides that, my opinion tends to range from "whatever" to "hey, that looks pretty nifty!"
classified 1y ago
The non-tweaked optics are so ludicrously bad. How Apple could release something that shitty is beyond me.
danman114 1y ago
Actually, I don't mind it - I like it - I feel like Mac OS - and especially iOS - got _very_ boring and felt really "conservative" / stocky to me. Everything the same as it always was... So I am happy for a fresh breeze. I don't mind it. I actually enjoy having some movement in my computers' appeareance, and I feel it's really cool and tastefully done... for my use. Just to mix it up a bit. I'm happy about it. Be a bit whimsical from time to time. Is gudd!
- phyalow 1y ago
  I love it
- ninkendo 1y ago
  When it came out, my first thought was that if was a theme on gnome-look.org or something back in the day, I would’ve totally installed it on my Linux desktop, and would’ve thought it looked really kewl. It’s nice in that “gee whiz” kinda way, like back when compiz was in vogue and there were wobbly windows that would burst into flame when you closed them. Liquid Glass would’ve felt right at home. But stuff like that feels dated quickly, and nowadays I can understand the drive to have less distracting UI elements. I still don’t hate it but I understand those who do.
- ricardobeat 1y ago
  When using these computers for work all day, the last thing you want is to 'just mix it up a bit'. Some parts do look nice, but the idea of having transparency, blur and distortion everywhere really is a design nightmare.
Y444 1y ago
Of course it's on me, but judging by the title, I've expected some sort of UX deep dive showing how to use liquid glass but make it actually good. Instead it's just a list of accessibility options to turn on.
- wltr 1y ago
  I thought there’s some sort of ‘adding this and that to the interface would make it actually pretty solid’ kind of thing. As I myself see this as promising, if it would be worked through. As the current implementation is just student (at best) level of work. Absolute incompetence.
gloosx 1y ago
Oh my god. This is the first time I actually saw screenshots of how this liquid glass thing looks on MacOS. Hopefully I can ride out the storm on Sequoia until they release something which doesn't look that awful.
whiteboardr 1y ago
All clarity and precision thrown out the window for effects nobody asked for. Calling it a “meta material” in my eyes is the same ballpark as “You’re holding it wrong”. So sad that this is opening up the floodgates for bad UI which won’t be restricted to just their platforms and will take years to clean up.
egorfine 1y ago
I'm in the industry for well over 30 years. I have always been skeptical about these mandatory "I hate the new look" feedbacks for every update of every piece software on the planet. But I think the Liquid Glass is the first UI update in my career that I truly hate.
egorfine 1y ago
FYI: In macOS 26.1 the hidden setting to disable Liquid Glass doesn't work anymore. We're now stuck with this abomination.
ktosobcy 1y ago
And yet it still looks awful. Not to mention those absurdly round corners and wasted space…
aquir 1y ago
What is the oldest MacOS version that is safe and usable in 2025? Something that can ran modern software like VSCode, Parallels, Chrome etc? Ventura?
- boobsbr 1y ago
  I have El Capitan running on a 2015 Air. The main problem is getting new certificates, because the ones bundled in the OS have expired. It took a lot of searching to find something that worked and I'm not sure if it was one "solution", or the result of multiple "solutions" being tried out. The secondary problem is new software won't run properly, like corporate/commercial VPN clients. It took a lot of fiddling to get Tunnelblick to work with a commercial VPN, and I couldn't get some corporate client to work, even using an old version.
djoldman 1y ago
Both of these are just absolutely atrocious: https://tidbits.com/uploads/2025/10/iOS-Liquid-Glass-Reduce-Transparency-scaled.jpg https://tidbits.com/uploads/2025/10/iOS-Liquid-Glass-Reduce-...
gregoriol 1y ago
"Prefer Cross-Fade Transitions" disables navigation animations: for example in the Settings app, if you tap the back button, it will cross-fade to the previous screen instead of the classic view panning out to the right.
ricardobeat 1y ago
I am inclined to use `defaults write -g com.apple.SwiftUI.DisableSolarium -bool YES` full time despite all the horrible flaws (e.g. tabs in Safari completely lose their active state, the dropdown in the address bar has no background at all; I can use Zen browser in the meantime). What a huge relief to just have normal sidebars in Finder etc, and window border radiuses that make sense and match the physical screen rounded corners. It's also incomprehensible that Apple, once focused entirely on user experience, would not test all their accessibility features for a release centered around a UI redesign.
gregoriol 1y ago
Some of those settings create a lot of visual annoyances sadly: for example "Reduce Transparency+Reduce Motion" on iOS make Safari behave strangely when you switch tabs, the bottom bar has a broken effect when it appears after you tap the bottom of the screen, ...
gausswho 1y ago
For contextual levity, give a listen to Regurgitator - I Like Your Old Stuff Better Than Your New Stuff
ghusto 1y ago
> Here’s how to control its effects and make your interface more usable This epitomises what's happened to Apple in one sad sentence. We've gone from tightly coupling usability and appearance to "yeah, Apple pushed out some more glitter glue. Here's how to make your Mac usable again".
hombre_fatal 1y ago
I kinda like the look of liquid glass. Though I'm also reminded of the whole Windows Vista debacle and the comparison seems apt. And iOS already had really bad contrast, like how you can't tell if the Wifi/Bluetooth are enabled/disabled depending on the background. My issue is that the iOS 26 update degraded the performance and probably battery life of my iPhone 13 mini. Just switching between home screen pages went from 60fps to 10fps even with liquid disabled. There are also weird changes like how the Safari url bar displays even less of the URL. On HN I only see "news.ycomb[[inator.com]]/item?id=1234", jeez. Only slightly better on a normal iPhone. I had no business trying out iOS 26 on a four year old phone. Should have just stayed with iOS 18(?) security updates until EOL.
moribvndvs 1y ago
Modern sci-fi shows and movies are absolutely obsessed with floating, holographic displays. I always laughed at how incredibly stupid that idea generally is, as you’re fighting to read over whatever passes by/through your display and the lighting environment. Welp, Apple went ahead and essentially (and needlessly) forced a similar problem onto my normal screen. Maybe looks cool for a second on Apple marketing materials, but actual usage makes me want to pile drive everyone at Apple responsible for this crap.
hamonrye 1y ago
[dead]
orefalo 1y ago
We should open a public petition - https://www.openpetition.org/ https://www.openpetition.org/

That liquid glass really looks like ass. I don't know who thought it was a good idea

These settings are only half interesting. In iOS it's not bad, but on desktop there's really no actually usable set of configuration parameters that result in a sane experience across the board. It is amazing how much time and effort must have gone into developing this liquid glass and rolling it out across products and platforms, all for a worse outcome in the end.

CharlieDigital 1y ago
I looked at those shots for macOS and I'm just baffled by how they thought this was a good idea.
clickety_clack 1y ago
The janky various-radius window borders on mac are crime against design.
- SchemaLoad 1y ago
  From what I've seen the Apple apps all have the same radius but 3rd party apps are largely yet to update. Same thing happened when they changed the stoplight window buttons and some 3rd party apps still had the glossy ones years later.
  - leshenka 1y ago
    there is a difference between apps that have toolbar of any kind and the ones that don't and then there's inspector window (the one that shows file properties), again, different close button size and different radius. Three types, just in the OS alone compare: Safari, Finder settings, "Get Info" in finder

kleiba 1y ago

Cool! (get it?)

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

IlikeMadison 1y ago

What a nightmare Apple UI/UX design has become. Are they hiring real bad people now?

andrepd 1y ago
Android design is similarly terrible. I'm not sure what's the explanation for UI design being so fucked up across the board for about 10 years now.
- veb 1y ago
  I'm assuming it's because nobody can just leave something alone. It's always gotta change, it's always gotta be made "better". And it probably generates a lot of marketing, good or bad.
  - pmontra 1y ago
    If they leave it alone on what else would they be working on? Not on something in somebody's else department so it's either being layed off or convince the board that each year's iteration on the same things is the next groundbreaking invention.
  - hagbard_c 1y ago
    You're describing the classical dichotomy between progressives and conservatives, a dichotomy which extends far beyond the political sphere to which is usually is applied. Whether it is in the arts, in architecture, in engineering, in design or in software development. UI design in particular seems to attract the type of person who is among the first to pull down Chesterton's fence [1] with no though given about what might be lost by this action. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/w/chesterton-s-fence https://www.lesswrong.com/w/chesterton-s-fence
- troupo 1y ago
  A lot of design in the early era of UIs (until sometime mid-~90s~ Edit:: mid-2000s) was based on a lot of research. From academic research to ergonomics to plain old user research. They wouldn't always get it right, but they were learning. Original Apple guidelines started with things like "Simplified Jungian Perception" on page 18 https://archive.org/details/apple-hig https://archive.org/details/apple-hig Microsoft collected and analyzed hundreds of thousands of data points about their software. See "No Distaste for Paste" https://web.archive.org/web/20080316101025/http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/tags/Why+the+New+UI_3F00_/default.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20080316101025/http://blogs.msdn... Now? Modern designers wouldn't understand what a book is if one hit them in the face. And their "research" is all vibes: "Quantified factors" are "32% increase in subculture perception", "a 34% boost in modernity" and "a 30% jump in rebelliousness" https://design.google/library/expressive-material-design-google-research https://design.google/library/expressive-material-design-goo...

magnuspaaske 1y ago

There was also an article in Wired about this and I'll just say this: the fact the most discussed thing about the new iOS version is how to make their terrible new UI (that no one asked for) off is telling something about the state of innovation at Apple. It's annoying to see apps adapt to the new design, making a lot of the navigation in the top and the bottom worse (and great to see a couple of holdouts like Bluesky). A design philosophy where the full width of the screen is used is pretty good, not sure we needed Apple to prove it with a counter example. Can't wait for them to release iOS 27 and announce they've made a useable UI again. "Hey friends, those accessibility settings you've used for a year? You don't need them anymore. Apple is where innovation happens!!"

xattt 1y ago
“We’ve heard a lot of feedback about the incredible design changes we made in iOS 27. In order to meet the challenges set out by our users, we invented a new type of glass that is both transparent and opaque… at the same time! Physically impossible, you say? Not at Apple.”
- al_borland 1y ago
  There is switchable glass that can change between transparent and opaque. It’s used for some car sunroofs and various other applications. While it’s not “at the same time”, as a theme idea for the OS that has analogs in the physical world, it could be done.
  - brewdad 1y ago
    I've seen this used for the restroom doors at trendy bars. The glass is clear until you lock the door. It then turns opaque while you do your business. Apparently, solid doors made of steel or wood are too last century.
    - msephton 1y ago
      Hotel showers too. When they are transparent they make the room feel bigger.

baq 1y ago

Not upgrading to Tahoe for as long as possible.

kybernetyk 1y ago
Tbh. after the initial shock I got used to the macOS 26 UI. Seeing Finder in the new UI for the first time is a really interesting experience. But you get used to it. (And the sidebar-over-content style is kinda neat). I'm currently in the process of adding support for the new UI to my macOS app. The biggest problem is to make it look good on the previous macOS version and on the new one. I still have more than 50% users on pre-glass.

johnjames87 1y ago

I don't mind the liquid glass

arresin 1y ago
On desktop? Doesn’t it make it harder to see? I used a phone with it recently and I wanted to turn it off immediately.
- nozzlegear 1y ago
  I installed Tahoe on my desktop and laptop the day it came out. I really stopped noticing it after the first day or two, there aren't a lot of places that have overwhelming, liquid glassy-blur/transparency on macOS that you run into often. I think the only time I'm reminded that Liquid Glass is "a thing" is in the Apple Music app where they went ham with it.
- SchemaLoad 1y ago
  I have Tahoe on my personal laptop and the previous release on my work one and tbh I hardly notice any of the differences. It's more noticeable on the iphone where the system UI takes up more of the screen but on the mac it's 99% just the same full screen apps you always had.
larusso 1y ago
I also don’t get the hate. I personally prefer the older one but I also don’t see the big issue. I have more a problem with the menu structure then the glass effect.
- nozzlegear 1y ago
  Same here. I don't mind it at all. If I had to choose I'd go for the previous design language, but I don't personally get the hate.
jeroenhd 1y ago
I don't mind the liquid glass itself, but a lot of iOS and macOS seems badly designed when liquid glass is applied. Bright white default backgrounds with transparent panels on top featuring white titels. Misaligned screens for some reason. Unresponsive controls while they're animating. Safari introducing weird viewport bugs because it tries to be fancy with the address bar. On iOS it feels unfinished, on macOS it feels unpolished. This has the potential to be pretty, or at least usable if you don't like the glass look, but someone needs to finish the process of porting to liquid glass.

ThouYS 1y ago

The borders from "increase contrast" look great! I think I'll keep em

robin_reala 1y ago
I only wish I could get them on iOS as well as macOS.
- spectre3d 1y ago
  “Show Borders” is available in Accessibility-> Display & Text Size in iOS 26.1. (Along with Increase Contrast and Reduce Transparency)
tambourine_man 1y ago
That was available on previous versions as well. It gives the OS a System 7 vibe.

OGEnthusiast 1y ago

I personally wouldn't rely on the `defaults write -g com.apple.SwiftUI.DisableSolarium -bool YES` preference working for more than another OS release or two. Seems like a temporary stopgap to give third-party developers time to upgrade their apps, not a permanent way to disable Liquid Glass.

grishka 1y ago
Yeah there was a similar one that undid the stupid new alert window layout in Big Sur and Monterey, and it stopped working in Ventura.

flohofwoe 1y ago

Heh funny, I was wondering why after the Tahoe update I wasn't noticing much of a difference and wondered why everybody was complaining about the glass effects - turns out I had checked the 'Accessibility => Display => Reduce Transparency' checkbox already in some earlier update for reasons I forgot.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

If you develop apps, you can add this into your Info.plist file[0]. It turns off LG. Apple says that it's "temporary," but I think they'd be insane to start ignoring it. [0] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/BundleResources/Information-Property-List/UIDesignRequiresCompatibility https://developer.apple.com/documentation/BundleResources/In...

strongpigeon 1y ago
My understanding is that this will be removed in iOS 27. Given how Apple has behaved in the past, I wouldn't be surprised if they really did it.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  Yeah, that would suck. The designer I'm working with, is already projectile-vomiting over LG. I think he'd quit, if I insisted that he help me to transition to it (we're a volunteer team).
- lawgimenez 1y ago
  My understanding Apple will remove it sometime next year April.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    I'm hoping that some of the senior management will realize what a clusterf**k this is, and let it stay (they still support ObjC apps, and I will bet that lots of AAA apps can't be easily converted to LG). The thing that we have to keep in mind, is that some very "strong-willed" folks have staked their egos on LG, and will choose it as their hill to die on. We've seen that happen in many other instances (not just at Apple).

ebbi 1y ago

Is looking at notifications from the notification centre on iPhone while it's halfway down a common use case? I see many critics of Liquid Glass (for iPhone, anyway) use the notification centre half down as an example of how bad Liquid Glass is, but it's way more legible when it's completely down and the background tints significantly.

SchemaLoad 1y ago
Yeah a lot of these discussions revolve around half way states or animations in progress which run very quickly. Feels like pausing a movie on a frame that's blurry and declaring the movie unwatchable.
hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
Yes. Yes it is. I’m more likely to drag Notification Center down halfway, see what notification I just missed and send it back away in the same motion than I am to drag it all the way down, and then drag it all the way up.

IlikeKitties 1y ago

> How to Turn Liquid Glass into a Solid Interface > Looks Inside > Long Article about how to turn of liquid glass Well done Apple

t1234s 1y ago

Liquid Glass on mac is sort of like Apple's windows XP

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
I feel as if Vista is the best comparison. XP is sort of like Fisher-Price for Windows, but is usable. Vista ... was something else.
christophilus 1y ago
I really liked Windows XP. Do you mean Vista?
oleganza 1y ago
exactly my thought. I never made it to Vista. In 2007 I changed WinXP (always used it with the classic grey theme) for OS X Tiger on a MacBook and never went back to Windows since then. I wonder where a decent alternative will be lurking in the next few years? Apple is losing some grip, but all others are still worse overall.
TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
Liquid Glass on Mac is sort of like a terrible remix of OS X Aqua. And frosted glass elements on iOS have been around since iOS 7. But note how the blurred/frosted background is a background and doesn't conflict with the icons on top of it. Note how the designers of Liquid Glass failed to learn from this. https://www.cnet.com/reviews/apple-ios-7-review/ https://www.cnet.com/reviews/apple-ios-7-review/

andy_xor_andrew 1y ago

I truly, genuinely wanted to like Liquid Glass. I think the default reaction to ANY change in UX, even changes that are generally improvements, is: "I don't like this, it's different!" I thought that'd be the case for ios 26. But after installing it... yeesh. I can barely see anything. It's just awful.

busymom0 1y ago
Overall I don't mind Liquid Glass. I really just want to turn off the borders around the Home Screen app icons. They look okay for white background but very ugly with black or dark background. It looks too chaotic.

jspash 1y ago

What really annoys me is the variance in corner radius now. Because some apps have released an upgrade and others haven't.

crazygringo 1y ago
It's worse than that. The Apple apps have all the variance too. It's not about old apps. It's literally by design. It depends on things like whether they have a toolbar. It's bonkers.
- tobinfekkes 1y ago
  +1 for using bonkers

thehours 1y ago

I have an iPhone SE 2nd Generation. After a recent repair I was forced to upgrade to iOS 26. My biggest gripe is the buggy keyboard. It shrinks a bit horizontally every time I open it. When using a mobile browser (I tested on a few), website footers and similar elements will get stuck above where the top of the keyboard would normally be, as if there was an invisible keyboard. These tweaks to minimize the glass effect go a long way, such that I'm not as put off by the overall design as I was in its stock configuration.

kridsdale3 1y ago

FYI: The iOS 26.1 beta has an improved Accessibility setting: It replaces Button Shapes with Add Borders, which gives everything a really nice Classic Mac OS look with black lines around grey containers. Helps a lot.

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replete 1y ago

Ventura got a security update last month. Sequoia will get updates for at least another 3 years. These glaring issues will get resolved eventually, even if it is the 'Frosted Glass' update.

cassianoleal 1y ago

I disabled liquid glass and most of my menubar icons just didn't appear. I reenabled it and they're back. There's no winning with this release.

wilg 1y ago

I recommend leaving it on the default settings. It's fine after a while, and I like a lot of the simplification. But I would rather they function on making their software actually work or be good, even if I like playing with the refraction.

BugsJustFindMe 1y ago

Liquid glass is one thing, but I want my 13 mini to go back to not being janky and glitchy and not suddenly dropping dead when the battery hits 5% again. These are new problems since the update.

SchemaLoad 1y ago
That's probably a hardware issue. Old batteries start to drop voltage under high load or on low charge %. This causes the phone to glitch or just hard reboot if the voltage drops below spec. Likely just have to get a battery replacement.
- red369 1y ago
  I think it is probably only a hardware issue in the sense that the iPhone 13 mini is probably too old/slow to run iOS 26 as quickly as the old version. I updated my old/spare phone - an iPhone SE3, which I think has a similar processor and memory (A15 and 4GB). It became a lot more sluggish. I learned my lesson not to upgrade my main phone, also an iPhone 13 mini. I also noticed a disappointing slow down on a 9th gen iPad, which has even older internals. Actually, perhaps I should be quickly looking into downgrading that if it's possible.
  - exitb 1y ago
    I updated a 13 mini and it stared off really, really slow for about a day, when background processing happens I assume. But then it got to similar speed as before, however jankier, as usual with iOS 26. That being said, it’s a unit with over 80% battery health. Otherwise the CPU gets throttled.
  - yborg 1y ago
    iPad Pro 3rd gen definitely got much more sluggish with 26. Wish I hadn't updated it now, but wanted to try the new windowing paradigm (not really worth it on a 12" screen).
- BugsJustFindMe 1y ago
  Maybe you missed the part where I said this only started happening after the update. Battery health percent has not changed.

eviks 1y ago

If only users had any power and could simply ignore all that unreadable garbage by simply continuing to use that system-wide theme they installed from less obnoxious designers a few years ago...

novalumina84 1y ago

Sometimes the best innovations come from fixing what's broken rather than adding new shiny things. I hope Apple learns from this feedback.

nelsonfigueroa 1y ago

What I dislike the most isn't even the liquid glass itself, it's how much more rounded a lot of UI elements are. And as others have mentioned, the border radius can vary from app to app. If someone can figure out how to modify the border radius of apps and UI elements across the board (at least on macOS) please let me know!

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findthebug 1y ago

The Glass UI distracts me a lot, especially on Mac. Too many buttons, too much roundness... When I switch back to the old UI later, it feels so much better and more structured. I hope Apple has taken all this criticism on board. I submitted at least 4 Feature requests...

overgard 1y ago

I remember in the early 2000's when compositing window managers first came about people went wild with the effects in the most tacky way possible (me too -- it was fun at the time!) Everything transparent, rotating cubes for different desktops, weird animations on everything. Once it became common place though, actual designers started to show some restraint... Anyway, whatever Apple is doing right now reminds me a lot of that.

fodkodrasz 1y ago
The main difference: installing Compiz was a decision and effort from the user, an opt-in feature. I also did tried it, and ditched it after a week. With this I have less freedom. This is more like gnome 3, which caused my ditch Gnome and linux desktop completely, and switch to windows (which has its downsides and quirks).
globular-toast 1y ago
Yeah, don't forget wobbly windows! I think a lot of people dreamed of actually having a UI like Minority Report or something, but people quickly realised the difference between fiction and the reality of actually getting things done. These days I use a minimal tiling window manager and no animations whatsoever. As I'm of a certain age I still get a kick out of the fact I can make a floating window translucent and see the video playing underneath. But that's only because I know it was a technical feat to get there. It's hard to imagine why gen Z or younger would get a kick out of this stuff, though.
Izkata 1y ago
Compiz is the name everyone remembers, but the Beryl fork was what had all the excessive effects. When the projects merged back together into Compiz Fusion they dropped like 60-70% of the functionality, and then dropped even more when it was later renamed back to Compiz. I had a highly customized setup I really liked (I was even using the advanced features to target dropdowns and popups to give them their own effects, or disable effects for specific programs for speed), the only reason I moved away from it was all the customization disappearing. Some of that dropped functionality included keyboard controls for new ways to navigate or arrange windows, losing those indirectly led me to tiling window managers.

colonial 1y ago

Honestly, as someone who just purchased his first MacBook, Liquid Glass is... fine? The control center could use a little more opacity, but besides that, my opinion tends to range from "whatever" to "hey, that looks pretty nifty!"

classified 1y ago

The non-tweaked optics are so ludicrously bad. How Apple could release something that shitty is beyond me.

danman114 1y ago

Actually, I don't mind it - I like it - I feel like Mac OS - and especially iOS - got _very_ boring and felt really "conservative" / stocky to me. Everything the same as it always was... So I am happy for a fresh breeze. I don't mind it. I actually enjoy having some movement in my computers' appeareance, and I feel it's really cool and tastefully done... for my use. Just to mix it up a bit. I'm happy about it. Be a bit whimsical from time to time. Is gudd!

phyalow 1y ago
I love it
ninkendo 1y ago
When it came out, my first thought was that if was a theme on gnome-look.org or something back in the day, I would’ve totally installed it on my Linux desktop, and would’ve thought it looked really kewl. It’s nice in that “gee whiz” kinda way, like back when compiz was in vogue and there were wobbly windows that would burst into flame when you closed them. Liquid Glass would’ve felt right at home. But stuff like that feels dated quickly, and nowadays I can understand the drive to have less distracting UI elements. I still don’t hate it but I understand those who do.
ricardobeat 1y ago
When using these computers for work all day, the last thing you want is to 'just mix it up a bit'. Some parts do look nice, but the idea of having transparency, blur and distortion everywhere really is a design nightmare.

Y444 1y ago

Of course it's on me, but judging by the title, I've expected some sort of UX deep dive showing how to use liquid glass but make it actually good. Instead it's just a list of accessibility options to turn on.

wltr 1y ago
I thought there’s some sort of ‘adding this and that to the interface would make it actually pretty solid’ kind of thing. As I myself see this as promising, if it would be worked through. As the current implementation is just student (at best) level of work. Absolute incompetence.

gloosx 1y ago

Oh my god. This is the first time I actually saw screenshots of how this liquid glass thing looks on MacOS. Hopefully I can ride out the storm on Sequoia until they release something which doesn't look that awful.

whiteboardr 1y ago

All clarity and precision thrown out the window for effects nobody asked for. Calling it a “meta material” in my eyes is the same ballpark as “You’re holding it wrong”. So sad that this is opening up the floodgates for bad UI which won’t be restricted to just their platforms and will take years to clean up.

egorfine 1y ago

I'm in the industry for well over 30 years. I have always been skeptical about these mandatory "I hate the new look" feedbacks for every update of every piece software on the planet. But I think the Liquid Glass is the first UI update in my career that I truly hate.

egorfine 1y ago

FYI: In macOS 26.1 the hidden setting to disable Liquid Glass doesn't work anymore. We're now stuck with this abomination.

ktosobcy 1y ago

And yet it still looks awful. Not to mention those absurdly round corners and wasted space…

aquir 1y ago

What is the oldest MacOS version that is safe and usable in 2025? Something that can ran modern software like VSCode, Parallels, Chrome etc? Ventura?

boobsbr 1y ago
I have El Capitan running on a 2015 Air. The main problem is getting new certificates, because the ones bundled in the OS have expired. It took a lot of searching to find something that worked and I'm not sure if it was one "solution", or the result of multiple "solutions" being tried out. The secondary problem is new software won't run properly, like corporate/commercial VPN clients. It took a lot of fiddling to get Tunnelblick to work with a commercial VPN, and I couldn't get some corporate client to work, even using an old version.

djoldman 1y ago

Both of these are just absolutely atrocious: https://tidbits.com/uploads/2025/10/iOS-Liquid-Glass-Reduce-Transparency-scaled.jpg https://tidbits.com/uploads/2025/10/iOS-Liquid-Glass-Reduce-...

gregoriol 1y ago

"Prefer Cross-Fade Transitions" disables navigation animations: for example in the Settings app, if you tap the back button, it will cross-fade to the previous screen instead of the classic view panning out to the right.

ricardobeat 1y ago

I am inclined to use `defaults write -g com.apple.SwiftUI.DisableSolarium -bool YES` full time despite all the horrible flaws (e.g. tabs in Safari completely lose their active state, the dropdown in the address bar has no background at all; I can use Zen browser in the meantime). What a huge relief to just have normal sidebars in Finder etc, and window border radiuses that make sense and match the physical screen rounded corners. It's also incomprehensible that Apple, once focused entirely on user experience, would not test all their accessibility features for a release centered around a UI redesign.

gregoriol 1y ago

Some of those settings create a lot of visual annoyances sadly: for example "Reduce Transparency+Reduce Motion" on iOS make Safari behave strangely when you switch tabs, the bottom bar has a broken effect when it appears after you tap the bottom of the screen, ...

gausswho 1y ago

For contextual levity, give a listen to Regurgitator - I Like Your Old Stuff Better Than Your New Stuff

ghusto 1y ago

> Here’s how to control its effects and make your interface more usable This epitomises what's happened to Apple in one sad sentence. We've gone from tightly coupling usability and appearance to "yeah, Apple pushed out some more glitter glue. Here's how to make your Mac usable again".

hombre_fatal 1y ago

I kinda like the look of liquid glass. Though I'm also reminded of the whole Windows Vista debacle and the comparison seems apt. And iOS already had really bad contrast, like how you can't tell if the Wifi/Bluetooth are enabled/disabled depending on the background. My issue is that the iOS 26 update degraded the performance and probably battery life of my iPhone 13 mini. Just switching between home screen pages went from 60fps to 10fps even with liquid disabled. There are also weird changes like how the Safari url bar displays even less of the URL. On HN I only see "news.ycomb[[inator.com]]/item?id=1234", jeez. Only slightly better on a normal iPhone. I had no business trying out iOS 26 on a four year old phone. Should have just stayed with iOS 18(?) security updates until EOL.

moribvndvs 1y ago

Modern sci-fi shows and movies are absolutely obsessed with floating, holographic displays. I always laughed at how incredibly stupid that idea generally is, as you’re fighting to read over whatever passes by/through your display and the lighting environment. Welp, Apple went ahead and essentially (and needlessly) forced a similar problem onto my normal screen. Maybe looks cool for a second on Apple marketing materials, but actual usage makes me want to pile drive everyone at Apple responsible for this crap.

hamonrye 1y ago

[dead]

orefalo 1y ago

We should open a public petition - https://www.openpetition.org/ https://www.openpetition.org/