Wow, I'm NOT upgrading to iOS 26, this looks terrible. Moreover, I see people complaining about poor performance and worsening battery life.
Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
71–80 of 538 posts
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#72All these threads about iOS 26 reminded me about something long forgotten like... the release of iOS
I suggest to check the comments in this 12 years old thread [1], replace version number 7 with 26 there and realise that some things never change
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#73My least favorite animation is in Mobile Safari, when you tap the search bar and it expands and brings up the controls at the bottom. There's a sort of shiny sweep transition from top to bottom, but it's distracting and it's not obvious why it exists. I assume it's to highlight the bottom control bar, but that's just a guess.
I also notice that CarPlay has more contrast now, and not much Liquid Glass. Kinda telling.
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#74Seems like I'm against the trend here in HN, but I personally like it more the more I use it. (Admittedly I don't have any accessibility issues which may come up for others) Also, I appreciate the UX improvements (as opposed to the pretty glass effect), such as the much improved menu system and the generally (IMO) improved changes in layout in Calendar, Mail, Safari, etc. That said I do find it a bit more annoying to…
> (Admittedly I don't have any accessibility issues which may come up for others)
Yet.
This design is really punitive for older, tireder eyes and they really need to learn not to do this. Because their audience gets older all the time (as the population in all western countries does).
Their design team is evidently skewed young again, and needs to really learn about how ageing affects eyesight for absolutely everyone. It is insane to put everyone over about 50 into an accessibility category, but eyesight ageing is one of the things that can't be held back.
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#75Some of it (like hiding the Safari tab button in a menu) feels like Windows-11-stupid. Luckily, Apple is ok at supporting older phones, so I just have to be careful to not accidentally upgrade my SE to iOS 26. Makes me nostalgic for Apple's interface guidelines, which were very well thought through, based on evidence, and with clear principles. https://vintageapple.org/inside_r/pdf/Human_Interface_Guidel...
I initially balked at this change but realized they placed the 'all tabs' button right where the ellipsis menu is, so you can just double tap to get to your tabs. Takes the same amount of time.
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#76Some of the Safari screenshots are making me wonder if fake browser chrome attacks will become more prominent in iOS. The chrome/content boundary has slipped away to almost nothing, and it should be possible now to emulate the floating buttons on Safari.
Indeed. Not good.
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I made the mistake of upgrading (13 Mini) and it is very clear that the new UI was not tested at all on smaller screens. The rounded buttons take up so much extra margin that actual usable space is greatly diminished.
How's the battery on your 13 Mini? Mine is abhorrent compared to a few weeks ago.
I have the standard iPhone 13 (not mini) and the battery longevity is probably the best of any phone I've ever owned. At over 3.5 years old it still reports 89% battery health and lasts much longer than I need. Previous iPhones I owned were all pretty much on their last legs by that age.
I haven't upgraded it to iOS 26 / Liquid Glass, though, and given what I'm seeing/hearing, I don't plan to.
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#78Let’s not forget how Liquid Glass made my Apple Watch Series 10 laggy and battery-hungry due to the expensive fluid simulations. Reducing transparency in accessibility settings didn’t help unfortunately.
I doubt the bulk of battery life is lost in visual effects, especially if turning them off apparently does not help.
I’ve subjectively had battery life regressions for most iOS updates until the first minor version update or so, but that might also just have correlated with extensive re-indexing of Photos and things like that.
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#792025 feels like a cardinal year for top-down decisions we all just have to endure for the present. The best we can do is bitch loudly and often, and hope the people at the top still feel threatened by consumers/constituents.
This Liquid Glass decision is particularly challenging for my tiny startup. We have multiple platforms including iOS and Android. I was hoping to share much of our design language across iOS and Android, but now Apple has essentially decided that this Liquid Glass will be mandatory after a year of support for "compatibility mode" that disables it for your app.
We'll now have to spend expensive engineering time to cater to Apple's design whims rather than actually working on PMF and profitability.
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#80Liquid Glass looks and feels like early 2000’s WinAmp Skin Generator skins.
except it doesn't whip the llama's ass