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iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

macrumors.com

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Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#171

Post by mroche »

debian3 wrote: post #150
mroche wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I migrated from a 13 Mini to a 17 Pro last week. Updated the Mini to 26 beforehand to mitigate any potential 18->26 issues with data transfers/backups. I'm still getting accustomed to the device size, the Mini was such a perfect device. If only app and web developers would actually preview their work on its dimensions, I probably would have just replaced the battery (76%). Reduced Transparency is a hard requirement f…

I just replaced the battery on my 13 mini (actually I got a brand new one since I still have Apple Care+ on mine and I did an express replacement). I’m good for an other 2 years.

Yeah, I'm keeping mine around and not trading it in. I might get the battery replaced at some point anyways and continue using it as a secondary device for some workloads.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#172

Post by BoredPositron »

jval43 wrote: post #133
fujigawa wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we follow the same pattern, iOS 27 and corresponding releases will be completely flat and look like Mac OS System 7. Chicago font wants to live another day. Windows 8 got some serious hate back in the day, it had some sound ideas that were implemented poorly, but no one could deny it was lightweight. It had the smallest memory footprint of all the modern Windowses IIRC.

Unironically Mac OS 7/8/9 felt the best IMHO. Even though there were some missteps (the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_Strip was awful) and 9.x got a bit overloaded towards the end. Mac OS X (and macOS still) never felt as good.

Tiger was fine :D

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#173

Post by microtonal »

thewebguyd wrote: post #81
Gigachad wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The glass UI renders on my Apple Watch 6 just fine and that thing has probably 0.5% the GPU power as the Macbooks.

There's visible lag & stutters opening the control center on my Series 10. Likewise, while it performs "fine," interacting with the UI still feels sluggish on Tahoe on my M4 Pro compared to Sequoia. I still have another M4 Pro with sequoia on it and it's a night and day difference, in favor of Sequoia. There may not be any real performance loss but there is definitely UI latency and it's very noticable.

Like others have said, check whether you have any Electron apps that weren’t updated with the latest Electron framework. Both my M1 Pro and my work M3 Pro don’t feel any slower (unless I open an offending Electron app). I was updating a Mac that uses Sequoia yesterday and it didn’t feel any faster.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#175

Post by bean469 »

mycodendral wrote: post #20

I switched from Android to iOS exclusively because of Liquid Glass. It's amazing. I'll just sit there and drag the glass back and forth over different things on my screen and stare in awe.

It's surprising how they managed to instantly spawn liquids inside of the screen. I love Liquid Ass.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#176

Post by microtonal »

mcswell wrote: post #163
kcplate wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you had themes, everyone would deactivate that liquid glass shite I’ve been using iOS 26, iPad 26, and MacOs 26 since the initial developer betas and it’s perfectly fine and perfectly usable for me . I like it well enough that I would prefer not going back at this point. I downloaded the 26.1 beta today, flipped off all the standard settings to minimize the Liquid Glass effects. It’s not exactly the iOS 18 exper…

> Then they complain a few years later when the UI they complained about and ultimately adopted gets changed again. 1) A few years later and you (or at least I) can't remember what the previous UI looked like. So if I don't complain about the change, it's only because I don't remember enough to recall what it used to be. 2) Exception: Windows 8. Nobody complained when Windows 9 came out, because they remembered what…

A few years later and you (or at least I) can't remember what the previous UI looked like. So if I don't complain about the change, it's only because I don't remember enough to recall what it used to be.

There was a similar amount of hate around the iOS 7 design. Apple toned it a bit down (like they are doing with Liquid Glass now), but you can compare the screenshots before and after and iOS 7 was certainly better in hindsight.

One day my dad dug up his old iPhone that was still running pre-7 and the UI was kind of meh.

All the non-techies in my family don’t seem to care about Liquid Glass? They went ‘oh it looks slightly different’ and went on with their lives.

By the way, I don’t think Windows 9 exists. They went 8 -> 8.1 -> 10.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#179

Post by whiteboardr »

aylmao wrote: post #50

IMO a big problem with Liquid Glass is that you're trying to recreate an effect that's highly reliant on the sense of depth we get from binocular vision in a 2D screen. When looking at glass in real life, your left eye and your right eye see slightly different refraction patterns since they're looking at the surface from slightly different angles. It might be minimal, but light refraction patterns can change a lot wh…

In addition to this, glass also reflects light from around you, thus there is not the slightest chance of realistically recreating a glass effect on any device without having some sort of ambient vision which is incorporated into a real time rendering.

This is wrong on so many levels and I sincerely hope there will be an option for not just choosing less transparency but an entire UI-skin that is mature, clean and above all: legible.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#180

Post by IneffablePigeon »

Someone1234 wrote: post #4

If you cannot wait, you can already substantially reduce the transparency effect via Settings -> Accessibility -> Display & Text Size -> Reduce Transparency. This new setting and the existing "Reduce Transparency" look a little different but same idea overall.

I’ve found “Increase Contrast” to be a better setting. Still a little bit of transparency but most elements now have borders and much more readable text. Not too many rough edges.
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