Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

nngroup.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 538 posts

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#171

Post by superb_dev »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #16

All of this is true. The first thing I did was turn down transparency. But there's no way to tone down the new animations, which make the UI feel twitchy and distracting. And there are some stupidly obvious bugs - like the WEATHER header in the weather app is black on a dark background. And the way the buttons at the bottom of the page are tight up against the content instead of being centred in the space under it. I…

The amount of obvious visual flaws is crazy. On an iPhone, play a video in Picture-in-Picture then hide it off the edge of the screen. The corner radius of the arrow control and the video underneath it are different so you can see the video poking through

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#172

Post by lawgimenez »

AstroBen wrote: post #23

I might be the only one who actually really likes the Liquid Glass? Its made my 12 pro max noticeably laggier though, which I'm definitely not a fan of..

Been using Liquid Glass since the first developer beta release, as an Apple dev I like it.

OP seems to even deliberately choose a stupid message background just to prove his/her point. Of course, there's a lot of backgrounds to choose from.

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#173

Post by nozzlegear »

noname120 wrote: post #36
LeoPanthera wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Series 10 and I haven't experienced either of those problems. Other than the PIN entry screen being very "glassy", it's not actually that different. Perhaps you have some other issue.

From the home screen scroll down through the widgets with the digital crown and you’ll see what I mean.

I don't have a problem with this either, it's as smooth as it was before the Liquid Glass update.

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#174

Post by hamburglar »

binarynate wrote: post #13

I haven't upgraded to iOS 26 because of Liquid Glass, mostly because I've read that it causes performance degradation on older devices (I use an iPhone 13 Mini because I have zero interest in using a larger phone). So, it looks like I'll be using iOS 18 for the foreseeable future.

For what it’s worth, I upgraded to 26 on a 3rd gen SE and perf is totally fine. I do hate most of the UI changes though. I really hope they do a dot release that lets me turn off the “safari viewport is big but we draw crap on top of it” stuff. I keep cursing at the title bar and url bar obscuring important things.

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#175

Post by layer8 »

ano-ther wrote: post #32

Some 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...

> Luckily, Apple is ok at supporting older phones, so I just have to be careful to not accidentally upgrade my SE to iOS 26.

You won’t be receiving any updates for iOS 18 after December or so, if your device supports iOS 26. Only the iPhone XR and XS will be receiving further iOS 18 updates, because they don’t support iOS 26. That has been Apple’s policy for many years now. Only devices that dropped out of major iOS updates receive minor updates to older iOS versions. The same minor updates are not made available to iPhone models that support a newer major version.

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#176

Post by npunt »

binarynate wrote: post #13

I haven't upgraded to iOS 26 because of Liquid Glass, mostly because I've read that it causes performance degradation on older devices (I use an iPhone 13 Mini because I have zero interest in using a larger phone). So, it looks like I'll be using iOS 18 for the foreseeable future.

iOS .0 releases tend to be this way, even on brand new devices. I noticed some big perf improvements on the 26.0.1 release. If I were you I'd wait til 26.1 or 26.2 and reassess then. It still may not be optimal for a mini tho for non-perf reasons, as iOS26 assumes a larger average device size.

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#177

Post by jmull »

binarynate wrote: post #13

I haven't upgraded to iOS 26 because of Liquid Glass, mostly because I've read that it causes performance degradation on older devices (I use an iPhone 13 Mini because I have zero interest in using a larger phone). So, it looks like I'll be using iOS 18 for the foreseeable future.

I have a 12 mini and it works well.

IMO, this is 99% typical "not what I'm used to" internet rage. Upgrade and enjoy.

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#179

Post by mfro »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #53
mfro wrote: post #5

Literally every change made in iOS 26 feels like a downgrade to me. This is the first time I have ever considered downgrading iOS.

Agreed, it’s pretty bad. It causes my 16 pro max to lag in some apps, Siri is broken, etc. Very surprised this made it through QA to GA.

Re: performance, I disabled Apple Intelligence (it’s useless anyways) and noticed a big perf improvement on my 16 plus.

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#180

Post by scelerat »

porcoda wrote: post #31

This update is one of the rare cases where I really dislike the new version. I’m usually happy with Apple updates, even ones the commentators dislike. This time I’m sorta agreeing with them: I don’t like the new iOS. Same with the Mac and iPad: other than being glitchy, I just don’t like the changes. It feels like my screen real estate isn’t as efficiently used, UI elements feel jumbled and the transparency makes thi…

I suppose an upvote should be sufficient, but I am so unhappy with the new UI I am actually holding off switching to a new M4 MBP and sticking to my old M1 still on Sequoia 15.7.1. I also try to give these things time and I am usually ok with the changes eventually, but the new UI elements are so incredibly distracting it's actually affecting my ability to focus on what I'm actually doing.
Post reply on HN