Apple’s translucent design replace for iOS 26, known as Liquid Glass, is now obtainable to builders, with a public beta scheduled for subsequent month. The refresh—Apple’s first main interface overhaul in 10 years—makes app icons, buttons, menus, and pop-ups seem like they’re manufactured from frosted glass, with blurred background colours peeking via.
The sweeping software program modifications will not be only for iPhones. This glassy look—impressed by the working system within the Vision Pro headset—will ultimately roll out to the complete suite of Apple units, from smartwatches to iPads.
Courtesy of Apple
After the WWDC 2025 keynote concluded on Monday, many design-focused builders WIRED spoke with had been impressed by the main replace however had lingering questions on how this translucent look might impression readability for customers.
“It is onerous to learn a few of it,” says Allan Yu, a product designer at present constructing the office messaging app Output. “Primarily as a result of I believe they made it too clear.” Yu suggests bumping up the blurring or adjusting the backgrounds to make onscreen designs extra readable.
“Much like the primary beta for iOS 7, what we’ve seen up to now is tough on the sides and probably veers into distracting or difficult to learn, particularly for customers with visible impairments,” says Josh Puckett, cofounder of Iteration, which helps startups with designs. Nonetheless, Puckett is optimistic, primarily based on Apple’s previous accessibility features, that readability will enhance over time.
Serhii Popov, a design-first software program engineer at MacPaw, the corporate behind the CleanMyMac app, is curious to see how the brand new working system will look on Macs in shiny gentle conditions, the place glare already impacts visibility. However general, Popov is enamored with this “actually recent” look from Apple. “I believe it’s going to make every thing look greater and let you learn or work together with the UI with extra consolation,” says Popov. For him, the brand new design and updates look particularly glossy on iPads.
Past readability issues, the primary impression from some designers is that this new look may very well be unnecessarily distracting for customers.
“From a technical perspective, it is a very spectacular impact. I applaud the effort and time it should have taken to imitate refraction and dispersion of sunshine to such a excessive diploma,” says Adam Whitcroft, a designer at Owner.com, which makes apps and web sites for eating places. “However, sadly I have not seen a single instance of the place it is pulled off in a approach that is complementary to the broader context it is introduced in.” Whitcroft factors to the dispersion and refraction of layers beneath the apps as visually distracting, particularly because the person interface is altering layouts. “Should you’ve designed a UI that pulls the eye of the attention away from the broader context, you’ve got gone down the incorrect path,” he says.
