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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

#31

Post by etempleton »

fidotron wrote: post #24
montroser wrote: post #3

So, so, much money, time, and resources poured into this update that only made things worse; and now again to roll it back...

Apple product managers are falling into the trap Microsoft did in the run up to Windows 8: a belief that unifying across Mac, iOS, Apple TV and Vision Pro will make them all stickier. In truth it really does just make everything obnoxiously bad.

Unifying the look and feel to such a literal degree on desktop was a weird choice and I hate it a lot on my personal and work machine.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#32

Post by sehugg »

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.

There were/are some horrible bugs with Reduce Transparency mode in iOS 26, let's hope this new mode gets added to the fully-tested set of configurations.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#33

Post by busymom0 »

cardanome wrote: post #19

Give me proper theming support. Allow me to disable all animations, rounded corners, opacity, white space and whatever else I don't need. Imagine how snappy and productive it could be!

What I really need them to give me is a way to disable the border around the Home Screen icons. They look ugly whenever a black or dark background is applied. Probably because glass itself doesn't look good in darkness.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#34

Post by monster_truck »

dabinat wrote: post #28

It’s technically impressive that they’re simulating the way light travels through glass. But a lot of the time it’s so subtle that I wonder if they could have just used simple semi-opacity and it would have had 85% of the same effect at a fraction of the CPU cycles.

I feel like this is a big miss for them. Am I really supposed to believe that the company making its flagship phones burn at 14W to simulate the travel of light through glass for a UI actually cares about the planet?

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#35

Post by arghwhat »

dabinat wrote: post #28

It’s technically impressive that they’re simulating the way light travels through glass. But a lot of the time it’s so subtle that I wonder if they could have just used simple semi-opacity and it would have had 85% of the same effect at a fraction of the CPU cycles.

I seriously doubt they're doing anything more than a boring shader with some decent approximation.

We can stimulate light, but that's just a waste of ray tracing and introducing annoying complexities.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#36

Post by monster_truck »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #30
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.

I dont mean to impugn, but that sounds like how someone would describe a toddler being given an ipad. I turn off animations and use apps with an OLED theme.

The first thing I do every time I install a new version of iOS or get a new iPhone is disable all of the animations and enable reduce visual motion in accessibility. Not only is it faster in the countless cases where overambitious UI designers subject us to >0.2s animations, but it dramatically extends battery life

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#37

Post by BestHackerOnHN »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #30
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.

I dont mean to impugn, but that sounds like how someone would describe a toddler being given an ipad. I turn off animations and use apps with an OLED theme.

[dead]

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#38

Post by monster_truck »

zamadatix wrote: post #8
GenerocUsername wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see it said enough, but liquid glass slowed my M3 noticably. Odd I got the update 2 weeks before M5 launch. Software as a means to obsolete hardware. Trillion dollar company

The M3 can run modern 3D games at high frame rates, surely it was something else about the update than the glass effect in the UI causing slowness?? It's a more appreciable burden on older iPhones though.

It barely handles that, and even the M5 still cannot cope with 8khz mouse input coupled to a high refresh rate (>240) screen. I laugh every time they try and sell us on these things being able to play games

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#39

Post by pointlessone »

arghwhat wrote: post #35
dabinat wrote: post #28

It’s technically impressive that they’re simulating the way light travels through glass. But a lot of the time it’s so subtle that I wonder if they could have just used simple semi-opacity and it would have had 85% of the same effect at a fraction of the CPU cycles.

I seriously doubt they're doing anything more than a boring shader with some decent approximation. We can stimulate light, but that's just a waste of ray tracing and introducing annoying complexities.

They probably do because the effect can be pretty closely recreated with a displacement map in SVG.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#40

Post by lotsofpulp »

pupppet wrote: post #27
liuliu wrote: post #16

Is this just https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiglasseffec... ?

All of this baloney they added to their OS they now need to support for who knows how many years across who knows how many devices. What a waste.

Perhaps it was a move to ensure job security.

As a user, I would have looked forward to a few years of simply fixing bugs and making the OS more efficient.

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