The board should have stepped in and fire whoever signed off on it, the designers who have advocated this (because they have no taste thus not fit). I feel like Apple is running on the momentum of Steve Jobs.(The hardware is good though). I cannot realistically expect them to go McMaster Carr but at least rollback these distracting light pollution
Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
271–280 of 538 posts
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
honestly I'd wait for a while - betas are changing the design each time, which is its own issue. app devs don't have a fixed target to go for.
Aren't betas over? This is the full release version ios26 which we will be living with for at least one year
Not really, the point versions have betas as well. I'm on 26.1 beta 2 on iOS.
You should not expect any change in design at that stage normally I guess, but I'm still seeing aesthetic differences, for example the shine around icons is reduced.
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#273My honest take, there are only two problems with iOS 26:
1. Footers in safari routinely render in the middle of the screen.
2. iPad mini simply is not the right platform for the new "windowable" functionality, but you can opt out, so there's no harm aside from maybe eating up some storage space.
Aside from that, I don't see the usability problems people are frustrated about. Maybe I'm still young enough to "get it." I think Liquid Glass is great. It feels like a return to Aqua (early Mac OS X), which was always my favorite. I for one welcome a "UI you want to lick" after years of this ridiculous spartan minimalism that started with iOS 7 and ate everything Apple.
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#274I like Liquid Glass on the whole (I will state upfront I have no accessibility issues so I know I'm speaking from my little corner).
Putting aside the fact that, yes, there are a few issues with the way Liquid Glass is implemented currently (nothing that can't be iterated on over the next few releases), I will say that some of the critics use really silly examples to prove their point. The messages screenshot would have looked a proper mess on iOS 18! Some of the text on text blur screenshots is showing text where it's not even in the zone of focus. It's merely showing blurred text where previously it would have been obscured by the UI. To me it shows that there is more to scroll for content as opposed to trying to read from that part of the screen.
And on X I've seen many critics use screenshots where the animation is halfway complete to criticise the legibility (often seen screenshots of the Notification Centre being screenshotted when halfway down where the background isn't fully blurred).
I think there's a lot to criticise on Liquid Glass. Some of these examples just doesn't feel like a fair critique of it.
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#275Literally every change made in iOS 26 feels like a downgrade to me. This is the first time I have ever considered downgrading iOS.
I think there are a few nice changes in 26, but they’re small things. They are certainly overwhelmed by the problems caused by the terrible visual design, which does not accomplish its stated goals and usually is a very large setback compared to what we had previously.
Yeah it grew on me over the beta phase, now when I hold an iPhone not updated it feels old and I really don’t like previous versions.
Regardless of places where it’s not ideal implementations yet, I can’t see myself coming back to the previous style. Liquid Glass will get better and I really like it. I got wow moments sometimes when it shines on some occasions
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#276I don't have accessibility issues, but even so I've been a fan of these settings for a few iOS versions now: Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Reduce Transparency Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Increase Contrast Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Differentiate Without Colour Settings > Accessibility > Motion > Reduce Motion Settings > Accessibility > Motion > Prefer Cros…
I’ve recently been trying out the automations feature in the iOS shortcuts app to turn color filters off/on when opening/closing camera/photos/facetime so I can remove the triple click shortcut. It works well enough. Its disappointing but not surprising that in 2025 on an iPhone 15 pro this isn’t instant and takes a good half second for the color filters to turn off/on.
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#277iOS/macos 26 have me feeling isolated in a way I’ve never experienced in tech. Aesthetics aside (which I personally don’t like, but I can accept as subjective) I see extreme issues and regressions literally everywhere, from not being able to read the notifications in a half pulled curtain to memory leaks in half the native apps. Yet no one is raising their voice in the tech world. No bloggers, no YouTubers, nothing t…
If you head over to digital artistry-related subreddits / other forums, they are almost uniformly very strongly against this due to the major UX regressions in iPadOS for their typical use cases (i.e. touch-based multitasking having been ruined) But yes agreed, it is mind-boggling to me how broadly well-received this has been
It's crazy that they removed split view and slide over from the iPad. The new window management is still extremely fiddly. It takes now 7 steps to open another app next to the current one, and a few more steps to get them all full screen again.
I used split view quite often, but I never use the new window management. I just store away my iPad more often now and use my PC instead.
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#278In general it's not as bad as people say. I like the playful aspect of it and sometimes I just scroll around to see the beautiful glass effects. The two things I don't like about it and hope are improved:
- the padding is kind of ridiculous and wastes a lot of space
- it gets in the way of my content a lot, which is the opposite of the proclaimed intention
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You should make your applications good native citizens It's time to retire this dead meme. The most successful SAASes in the world are just websites that people pay for hand-over-fist regardless of what OS they use. Netflix doesn't use Liquid Glass, Spotify doesn't bother. Google Docs isn't going to inherit it and probably neither will Office 365. Websites online by-and-large won't adopt this design either. The ide…
> taking the time to make a sexy native UI It takes much more time to make your own custom UI, and then fix it every major update that breaks it somehow. You can get a nice looking UI by just using stock components with minimal configuration and then you basically get platform UI refreshes for free.
If you're starting from the perspective of a native app developer, you're absolutely correct. However, most startups are going to be websites/Electron/CEF apps. It's much easier and cheaper to write-once-ship-everywhere with an ugly React UI than it is to jump through the hoops of writing special-snowflake versions for every OS under the sun.
It's basically negligent to insist on native apps, if profitability is your goal. I love native interfaces too, but the staunch belief in businesses being a "good native citizen" is a dead meme. It's cart-before-horse logic, we don't ever see anyone commit to the idea and reap real rewards. Native platforms punish you for playing by the rules.
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my opinion Liquid Glass is still an alpha release. Nothing is really finished, it's conceptually unfinished, the changes are not well thought through, and it's really buggy. I think they failed with Apple Intelligence (also a mess, without being useful) and needed something big. So they planned this big design change. When they realized they failed miserably, it was too late to undo it.
Liquid Glass was clearly rushed to cover for the total failure of Apple Intelligence. Even the design being criticized distracts from fraudulently selling phones based on features never shipped.
The recently presented ChatGPT apps are what Apple Intelligence (and Siri) should've been. Some chat/voice interface, that can access data from installed apps and trigger actions.
It should've been a home run for Apple. ChatGPT starts with zero existing apps, Apple has one of the biggest app ecosystem, and with (Siri) Shortcuts they already have most of the necessary interfaces available for years.