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Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

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

#341

Post by CjHuber »

Naru41 wrote: post #324

This style of simulating faux-realistic materials (such as glass or aluminum) on the screen looks dated and cheesy now -- (Windows engineering team 2012) https://web.archive.org/web/20120614042824/http://blogs.msdn... -- "Cheesy and dated" -- it keeps hitting me through the years.

Oh wow, a statement like this coming from a blog entry about creating windows 8?? Maybe it has to do with that I‘m Gen Z but I absolutely love Frutiger Aero. It never looked cheesy, first it was modern then it was nostalgic. All meanwhile I still have trauma from the hideous Metro tiles.

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

#342

Post by lynndotpy »

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…

If it were implemented as intended, it would just be very ugly, slower, and a waste of battery life. But a lot of it is really just broken. In the past hour, I saw a number of funny glitches. The funny glitches are better than the glitches where things crash or hang.

On MacOS, it even requires running terminal commands at startup to fix performance regressions.

This is hitting people who aren't tech-savvy particularly hard, and it makes my position as a security advocate ("always update your devices!") hard to maintain. For most people, not updating their devices means they have more reliability and consistency in their devices, because of things like this.

The one good thing with iOS 26 is that Apple reverted their destructive redesign of the iOS 18 Photos app. Maybe they can be hurt enough to revert the destructive redesigns throughout iOS 26.

I hope to some day read a book describing what's been happening at Apple these past few years. It's safe to assume not a single person at Apple thought this was ready to release, and yet it did. This has to be the result of some serious dysfunction as-of-yet not known to the public.

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

#343

Post by t-writescode »

layer8 wrote: post #285
t-writescode wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a bug. Probably worth reporting it to get it fixed. Historically, Apple’s accessibility features have been best in class.

It’s not really a bug, it’s a side effect of the heavier blur resulting in more average colors for the backgrounds of UI controls, reducing contrast with the text and icons in the foreground. Instead of blurring whatever is behind the controls, they’d have to choose actual solid backgrounds for UI controls, but the whole Liquid Glass concept largely abandons that.

It's definitely a bug that high contrast no longer provides high contrast in the liquid glass setting. It doesn't matter if that is the logical outcome of a series of events and choices that were made to that point, it's a breaking change in behavior, therefore a bug.

Bugs aren't always NPEs. Business Logic bugs are still bugs.

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

#344

Post by rTX5CMRXIfFG »

torben-friis wrote: post #323
rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about bugs to mean broken functionality or design you dislike? I’m not sure I noticed broken functionality anywhere

Aesthetic glitches are everywhere, though it’s hard to tell when behavior is intended. Can you read the context of my texts? https://ibb.co/mVbVpYCD The most glaring non aesthetic ones are memory leaks affecting native macOS apps, missed alarms and a very frequent one for iOS where unlocking the phone leads to an empty screen. I also have one in safari where what seems like a misplaced dark fade covers the top third…

Oh I know that UI, it’s when you slide the notification center from the top. That’s a conscious action with an animation so yes the context of modality is understandable there.

Also the memory leak issue isn’t due to Liquid Glass and it’s not something you’ll find just by grabbing someone’s phone and running an app.

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

#345

Post by keyshapegeo99 »

andix wrote: post #277
keyshapegeo99 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The new windowing system is actually rather decent when used with a keyboard + all window tiling / maximising / app switching keyboard shortcuts memorised. Although the lack of Slide Over is still inexplicable and sucks.

The issue is that most people don't use iPads with keyboards. The windowing system in this case is then an absolute nightmare compared to what came before, as touch-based users were clearly a distant second thought when designing it.

For any HNers who don't have access to iPads running iPadOS 26 / 18, and aren't sure if this is just the "people on the internet hating new things" reflex (it really isn't), here's a side-by-side comparison that clearly illustrates andix's point[1]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/iPadOS/comments/1mq8sgd/old_split_v...

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

#346

Post by grounder »

bradgessler wrote: post #45

There's a picture floating around out there of the Apple design team putting actual physical pieces of glass over icons that they printed out. What's funny (not really) is how much more readable that paper would have been if they simply removed the glass.

There's a whole video of the Apple team doing it. Absolutely bonkers. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/06/apple-introduces-a-de...

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

#348

Post by dpark »

donmcronald wrote: post #111
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…

On my Mac I almost laugh at how massive the borders are to accommodate the freakishly large corner radius. The next version might have round windows at this pace.

Those corners are just weird. The 3rd party apps are all still doing the old radius which highlights how pointlessly large the new radius is.

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

#349

Post by bradgessler »

grounder wrote: post #346
bradgessler wrote: post #45

There's a picture floating around out there of the Apple design team putting actual physical pieces of glass over icons that they printed out. What's funny (not really) is how much more readable that paper would have been if they simply removed the glass.

There's a whole video of the Apple team doing it. Absolutely bonkers. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/06/apple-introduces-a-de...

Imagine the UI we’d have if somebody gave them jellybeans instead.

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

#350

Post by mvdtnz »

nkrisc wrote: post #238
bicx wrote: post #79

2025 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…

Almost nobody uses both an iPhone and Android for their day to day use. It doesn’t matter if your iOS and Android apps don’t look share the same design language, no one is going to see both of them. Integrate into each OS as much as you can.

It matters because engineering time can be better spent improving the app functionality itself.
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