How to turn liquid glass into a solid interface

https://tidbits.com/2025/10/09/how-to-turn-liquid-glass-into-a-solid-interface/

by tambourine_man • 9 months ago

223 161 9 months ago

tidbits.com

kleiba• 9 months ago

Cool!

(get it?)

montroser• 9 months 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• 9 months ago

I looked at those shots for macOS and I'm just baffled by how they thought this was a good idea.

clickety_clack• 9 months ago

The janky various-radius window borders on mac are crime against design.

SchemaLoad5• 9 months 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.

IlikeMadison• 9 months ago

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

andrepd2• 9 months 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• 9 months 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.

troupo• 9 months 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

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...

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-goo...

jesterson• 9 months ago

Well, at least they don't change it much

cyberax• 9 months ago

Android is _mostly_ OK. Their stupidest move (so far) was mandating edge-to-edge apps without a way for users and apps to opt out of them.

Otherwise, the UI stays mostly the same, just becoming a bit more bloated ("finger friendly") with every release.

The most annoying thing for me is the waste of screen space from the bubbles around notifications and menu options. Apparently, having stuff floating now gives a "perception of lightness and motion".

tomnipotent• 9 months ago

Now that I'm getting older I like to pull out my "curmudgeon card" and blame it on the younger generation. New graduates entering the work grew up spending more time on mobile phones than laptops/desktops, and I wonder if these changes are to cater to this market that's shifting from mostly-mobile screen time to mostly-desktop. I imagine it's not too long before this segment is the majority.

I feel like we saw similar changes with the previous shift where new graduates knew GSuite and MS Office was some the software their parents would complain about. It's my shibboleth for identify my generation of computer users.

anentropic• 9 months ago

The recent Android 12 changes really messed up the alarms UI in particular.

Used to be when your morning alarm goes off on the bedside table you can just reach over and swipe right... now there are two buttons at the bottom of the screen and you have to look at it and carefully press the correct one.

Also when setting an alarm it used to be set after you selected the day and time. But now they added an extra 'save' button. I am not the only person who thought they set a morning alarm and got a nasty late surprise.

Just changing things for no reason and making them worse.

ChrisMarshallNY5• 9 months ago

[EDIT] I removed an extremely sarcastic comment. It was quite puerile.

I am a bit skeptical that they are "reaching for the best."

Once you start to hire and promote folks with a certain "corporate culture," they start hiring and promoting folks that fit that culture (and driving out ones that don't). I suspect that the problems actually started years ago, and now, those managers are hiring less-than-stellar SWEs, managers, and designers.

The thing about the really good people at Apple, is that they don't need to be subjected to an ugly corporate culture. They'll take their toys and go home (or to other companies), which is pretty much exactly what the less-than-stellar people want. The dichotomy of hiring high-Quality talent, is that they don't need to work for you, so you have to figure out ways to keep them. Often, money isn't the biggest driver. The good ones don't do it [just] for the money, and they'll always be able to make plenty, so, as their manager, you need to figure out what they really want.

aylmao• 9 months ago

I unironically think staying in Cupertino is hurting them.

willis936• 9 months ago

I'd be willing to bet it's more likely entrenched leadership that needs to be replaced. All of the 10x engineers in the world can't fix a bad vision forced on them.

magnuspaaske2• 9 months 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!!"

xattt2• 9 months 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_borland2• 9 months 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.

itopaloglu832• 9 months ago

There are a lot of Apple employees here that are going to downvote this but I cannot turn a blind eye to this abomination.

I’ve been an early adapter since my first iPhone in 2009. But the new UI is plain ugly, lacking general accessibility, and full of bugs to the point that it’s just user hostile at this point.

They broke almost all of their design guidelines and make everything useless bubbles, I just cannot believe that Apple released this ugly thing to billions of devices.

busymom02• 9 months ago

A lot of these UI bugs are also of the kind where once I notice them, I can no longer un-notice them. The border around the Home Screen icons being one. When you swipe up from bottom to go back to Home Screen, the app icon doesn't initially have border while the animation is ongoing. Once the animation finishes, the border suddenly shows up. Once I noticed this, it's been annoying me everytime I swipe to go back.

I thought the latest dev beta of iOS would fix this but it's still here.

sys_647382• 9 months ago

It's trash and is what happens on a yearly release cadence when you need to have a driver for the release. Sometimes you need to do something. Anything. That's why they have this monstrosity of a UI. Total garbage.

rdtsc2• 9 months ago

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.

I observed that too. Polled a few people I know who upgraded and they all have the same impression that they'd rather turn it off. I shared the accessibility settings with some to help them out. I haven't upgraded my main phone might have to wait a while longer.

This has to be resume driven. I presume designers at Apple have to end the year with a review to justify their salaries. "So Bob, what would you say you do here?". The answer "Well not much, we designed things nicely already, and now we're just chilling, listening to podcasts and having 2 hour lunches" is not going to fly. They want to say something like "That flashy glass thing, we did that!". Except, in this case I wish they'd all just be chilling and having 2 hour long lunches, instead of messing with the interface since they apparently managed to make things worse.

lesuorac• 9 months ago

I assume it's technology driven. The effect is probably expensive to produce so phones with weaker performance can't do it.

cmckn• 9 months ago

My humble opinion is they took the opportunity to play “look over here!” after the Apple Intelligence (or lack thereof) fiasco.

IAmGraydon2• 9 months ago

It’s shareholder driven. They have to act like they’re still innovative even though they have no idea where to actually innovate at this point. So they chose to change something very visible that they could point to as a big innovative change to keep share prices moving in the right direction. Ever heard of end-stage capitalism? Well, this is it - when every principle is sacrificed in the name of revenue.

SchemaLoad5• 9 months ago

Isn't this the case for all UI redesigns? When youtube changed to their current design there were posts about browser extensions to restore the old interface. I remember hating it myself at the time yet now I don't have an issue with it and probably prefer it to the old design.

Some people are always upset with change.

IAmGraydon2• 9 months ago

No. This isn’t about preference for certain aesthetics. The new glass UI elements are objectively worse for readability.

Telaneo2• 9 months ago

Change for the sake of change is not a good thing.

I'm still mad at Youtube for their redesigns, to the point that I moved over to Freetube, since I found normal Youtube that hostile of an experience.

perryprog• 9 months ago

For what it’s worth, I’m definitely leaning “Apple fanboy” and have been amenable to their past UI redesigns. This is the first that I truly think is a regression, and I immediately turned on Reduce Transparency after updating.

irjustin• 9 months ago

Isn't this the case for all UI redesigns? When youtube changed to their current design there were posts about browser extensions to restore the old interface.

Yes but UI redesigns usually involve UX redesign as well. It's not just visual so you actually gain something from it (even if at first it feels like a regression).

But liquid glass helps me do what... see my background?....!?

stephen_g• 9 months ago

True, and it's the same with any big redesign that it should tend to be the worst it will ever be at the start and then be gradually refined. I expect it will end up quite good by the time they want to start over again in 10 or so years, and people will complain about losing it and how bad the new interface is! At least there are a few good years in the middle to end of each cycle!

the_other• 9 months ago

Isn't this the case for all UI redesigns?

This one is particularly bad because it's shit. It makes the device harder to use for most users. It introduces a load of utterly pointless, and/or confusing, patterns/motifs... like:

- why do some navigation buttons hover about 3 meters above the panel they control (the enormous drop shadow around back/next/close buttons)

- why is the settings sidebar floating above the settings panel content, such that only the image carousels but not the text slide under it?

- why are the rounded corners of panels and windows so round that about 40px of every window's height and width becomes unusable?

- why do I have to see my wallpaper, blurry, under every fucking control, icon, component, list and panel? It started with Lion where the wallpaper would bleed through the sidebars of windows, even when they had other windows beneath them

Someone at Apple decided the "desktop" paradigm that made their computers usable has become redundant, but they're taking it apart in tiny steps, drawn out over years and multiple releases. The desktop paradigm was really good: you could have multiple apps open side by side and drag & drop content between them, just like you could if you were assembling physical things on a physical desktop. With Liquid Glass, you wouldn't imagine that was possible, because parts of the apps hover 3m off the surface, making it visually unsettling to navigate your windows. And your windows are made of various grades of glass which is brittle, and smooth, and you can't stick anything to it. Glass isn't a work surface unless you're doing stained glass windows. To do work, you need the confidence the surface will hold up beneath your actions, and a little bit of friction so your materials and targets don't slide all over the place. Why on earth are Apple creating the illusion of an unworkable work surface?

I'm convinced they're trying to deprecate the menu bar entirely by making it less and less usable (thinner text, transparency), but they're not willing to move it to the tops of windows like on Windows. Are they hoping we'll all give up using (because they've made it shit) it so they can just let it go? (like iOS?).

globular-toast2• 9 months ago

Yes, but that doesn't contradict the comment about innovation at Apple. They are now at a similar stage to Osprey backpacks. They release a new look every year but with all the same features and functionality that we had a decade ago.

close04• 9 months ago

Some people are always upset with change

You defended "change" in general, not in this particular case. "Change could be good so this change must be good" is a weak argument that can be used to defend any change. This is a shallow dismissal of the complaints instead of a solid defense of the change.

The poor contrast of the UI strains the eyesight, all the transparency and glass effects are distracting and tiring, so are many of the animations which just introduce a delay for no reason, and so on. I unlock my phone and the top row of icons is "thrown" on the screen with a big delay and a very ample motion to the point it was disturbing.

These aren't useful changes, they cause a loss of practical value to many users even if they bring esthetic value to others. The changes most brought up in complaints are objectively worse that what we had before. It's form over function and tells the world the designers had no ideas how to practically improve the UI so they added visual bells and whistles, flashes and sparkles.

coffeefirst• 9 months ago

Sort of. The difference is this one has real, objective UX issues with hit areas, inconsistent icon use, making every website with position fixed elements broken, and constantly drawing attention to itself.

All of these are fixable without backing away from the big idea. But it’s pretty rough so far.

GuB-422• 9 months ago

Yes, people are upset with every UI redesign that is not an incremental change.

So stop redesigning your damn UIs!

I know why they do it. That's because if you don't change the UI, it is like you didn't change anything, and people don't feel the need to upgrade. It is important for marketing and therefore I don't expect it to change.

But if you really care about usability, don't change your UIs without a good reason. Also, keep in mind that not every user is a young tech addict, it is hard enough to explain to my grandparents how to use a computer/smartphone without them being thrown off by UI changes. Ok, it may not be where your money is, but that's part of accessibility.

marginalia_nu2• 9 months ago

I'm not an apple user, have used neither the old or new design, and if I had to choose, I'd pick the old one any day of the week. Liquid Glass very much feels like Apple's Boeing 737 MAX moment.

The Liquid Glass design has awful contrast, and seems really amateurish with how stuff on the screen overlaps. Looks like the stuff you'd see in KDE 10-15 years ago[1], back when compositing window managers were kinda hot and new.

[1] This is from 2012, and arguably deals with the transparency-induced readability issues better than Liquid Glass seems to: https://imgur.com/a/x1LmBAQ

postexitus2• 9 months ago

When Windows XP was first released, one of the most requested things were to turn the new skin/theme off and make it look like Windows 98. Similar with all later versions of Windows. I don't like Liquid that much, but I wonder how much of this is actually just getting used to the old stuff.

magnuspaaske2• 9 months ago

I think the difference with earlier UI redesigns is that the supposed benefit of liquid glass is the whole opacity thing, where several things are laid on top of each other while trying to show what's underneath. That just creates a much more messy interface, making it harder to see what's going on since they've dropped UI-classics like using contrast to make text readable. That's also why the setting to tune down liquid glass is found in accessibility and not, say, display preferences.

I'm a bit too old to have been privvy to any Win XP design backlash, but I think the more apt comparison is with Windows Vista, where transparency was also a major part of the design philosophy (usability be damned). We have pretty good ideas about what makes a good UI/UX and none of those ideas involve using transparency to make readability worse while also not really making what's under the half-transparent element visible or readable.

Onewildgamer• 9 months ago

This feels more like Windows Vista when everybody wanted to switch it off but ultimately switched back to Windows XP until Windows 7 was launched. The liquid glass confuses a lot of folks and it's good when done minimally and not all over the OS.

IshKebab• 9 months ago

Every little change to Facebook was met with huge protests back in the day too (before they learned to do them gradually and also before they trashed it).

array_key_first3• 9 months ago

IMO:

1. There's actual value in getting used to things. Part of the reason older people can't use computers well and get scammed is because trendy software companies constantly reshuffle the same stuff and they can't keep up.

2. A lot of UI progression is objectively worse, and I do mean objectively. Less legibility, more clicks to do the same actions, etc. We just get used to back software.

iOS 26 is bad software. We might get used to it being bad one day. It's still bad.

Similarly, Windows 8 was bad software. We actually undid that one.

steve1977• 9 months ago

With the difference that up to and including Windows 7, you could actually easily and officially make it look more or less like Windows 2000.

Lio• 9 months ago

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!!"

I'd actually be impressed if they were that responsive. Fixing a problem is the second best thing after not creating it in the first place.

Doubling down and not acknowledging a poor choice would be so much worse.

Daedren2• 9 months ago

Developers have 1 year to apply the new design change, they're forcing it afterwards. It's not really by choice.

3D30497420• 9 months ago

Can you share more about this?

I've only just started developing in SwiftUI, but I do know that some of these changes are automatic based on the components you use not necessarily a specific choice by the app developer. I started developing my app with the prior iOS version, but using standard components. After updating to iOS 26, the glass-effects were automatically added.

baq• 9 months ago

Not upgrading to Tahoe for as long as possible.

kybernetyk• 9 months 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.

johnjames872• 9 months ago

I don't mind the liquid glass

arresin• 9 months 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.

nozzlegear2• 9 months 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.

SchemaLoad5• 9 months 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• 9 months 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.

nozzlegear2• 9 months 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• 9 months 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.

johnjames872• 9 months ago

I'm sure the misalignment is there but I honestly havent noticed anything. Maybe I'm too busy getting things done.

Oreb• 9 months ago

Me too. I honestly don’t understand why it provokes so strong reactions. In fact, I find all of the changes fairly minor. I expected something much more radical when Apple announced a major design overhaul. Things look slightly different, but work pretty much the same.

ThouYS• 9 months ago

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

robin_reala• 9 months ago

I only wish I could get them on iOS as well as macOS.

spectre3d• 9 months ago

“Show Borders” is available in Accessibility-> Display & Text Size in iOS 26.1. (Along with Increase Contrast and Reduce Transparency)

tambourine_man• 9 months ago

That was available on previous versions as well. It gives the OS a System 7 vibe.

OGEnthusiast• 9 months 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• 9 months 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• 9 months 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.

ChrisMarshallNY5• 9 months 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/In...

strongpigeon• 9 months 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.

ChrisMarshallNY5• 9 months 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• 9 months ago

My understanding Apple will remove it sometime next year April.

ebbi• 9 months 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.

SchemaLoad5• 9 months 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• 9 months 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• 9 months 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• 9 months ago

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

christophilus• 9 months ago

I really liked Windows XP. Do you mean Vista?

ChrisMarshallNY5• 9 months 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.

oleganza• 9 months 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• 9 months 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/

andy_xor_andrew• 9 months 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.

busymom02• 9 months 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• 9 months ago

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

crazygringo• 9 months 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• 9 months ago

+1 for using bonkers

thehours• 9 months 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• 9 months 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.

replete• 9 months 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• 9 months 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• 9 months 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.

BugsJustFindMe2• 9 months 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.

SchemaLoad5• 9 months 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• 9 months 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.

BugsJustFindMe2• 9 months ago

Maybe you missed the part where I said this only started happening after the update. Battery health percent has not changed.

hoppp• 9 months ago

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

eviks• 9 months 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• 9 months 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• 9 months 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!

findthebug• 9 months 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• 9 months 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.

fodkodrasz3• 9 months 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-toast2• 9 months 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• 9 months 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• 9 months 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• 9 months ago

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

danman114• 9 months 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• 9 months ago

I love it

ninkendo• 9 months 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.

ricardobeat2• 9 months 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• 9 months 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• 9 months 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• 9 months 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• 9 months 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.

egorfine2• 9 months 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.

egorfine2• 9 months 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• 9 months ago

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

aquir• 9 months 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• 9 months 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• 9 months ago

Both of these are just absolutely atrocious:

https://tidbits.com/uploads/2025/10/iOS-Liquid-Glass-Reduce-...

gregoriol2• 9 months 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.

ricardobeat2• 9 months 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.

gregoriol2• 9 months 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• 9 months ago

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

ghusto• 9 months 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• 9 months 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• 9 months 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.

orefalo• 9 months ago

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

How to turn liquid glass into a solid interface

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