Thoughts on Liquid Glass

I’m seeing a ton of reactions to Apple’s new Liquid Glass UI design aesthetic online, because the Internet has opinions. So many opinions. Some are amateurish opinions, some are insightful and thought provoking ones, while others are snarky and surprisingly myopic.

It reminded me of an article I wrote when the pendulum of preference rocked from rich detailed UI to simple, flat shapes in popular computer UI design.

I’m seeing people pick apart screen shots of everything from the all-translucent icon option for the Home Screen…

Glassy icons are an option, but not a default

…to criticizing Apple designers for not meeting accessibility requirements. There is valid concern about the lack readability of text on “glass” over an unpredictable, user-selected background with variable contrast levels. WCAG 2.x standards aren’t even good enough anymore, as we’ve learned from the APCA contrast model, which can be used to improve upon WCAG 2.x standards across the web and other digital products.

But why would Apple do something that so clearly (hah pun!) has examples of obvious contrast issues that hurt accessibility and usability? In this era, where we know better than to dismiss a minority group like those with accessibility needs? Europe is already enacting laws to punish those who are so ignorant of those with disabilities.

Let’s consider a few things:

This is a developer beta

It’s not intended for Apple customer consumption (aside from devs who are also customers.)

Remember when “beta” meant “we’re trying this out with a select test group to learn and improve a product?”

Some companies prefer to offer a beta to the public directly in mass consumption public view. Products are experiments and they kill ones quickly that fail rapidly to collect data to get to a better product in an ad-supported or freemium business model.

When Apple says “developer beta,” they mean it! It’s for devs and it’s in beta testing. “Beta” is a label of humility to apologize in advance for issues the test participant will see. The user is told it’s not fully baked yet.

Apple release this to developers as their beta, not the public’s, and not for use at scale by the paying public. They’re through it and they’re happy to learn from all the snark and complaints. It’s why there’s a Feedback app in the public betas, something they started doing a few years ago to compete with their distinguished competition.

UX is not just UI

Any UX professional who forgets this as they quickly get snarky and critical of still images of a UI pattern library should know better than to be so myopic. Shame on you. You keep telling all your stakeholders that “UX is not just UI!” or that “we don’t just make things look pretty,” yet some of you forget it yourselves! If UX is not just decoration, maybe consider the context of what Apple is designing for.

These settings are user choices.

The all-translucent icon Home Screen? The user chooses that. It’s not a default. If they like it, cool. If not, there are plenty of other options.

Many are forgetting the context in which Apple teaches users about accessibility settings during the improved on-boarding workflow that users see when they get a new device or upgrade to the latest major OS release.

They introduce a11y features during the on-boarding of iOS to bring more awareness and visibility to those wonderful and helpful accessibility features to a diverse world population.

As the user starts up their fancy new iPhone (Air?) in Fall 2026, they’ll be taken through an updated series of choices we already make about the vision, hearing, and other sensory accessibility enhancements Apple has added to iOS over the decades to make sure we see them and make them more effective. It’s a hell of a lot better than just burying them in the Settings app and hoping users will find them or rely on an Apple Store employee to teach them, but they have those channels to learn from too.

The user can disable translucency for those who don’t like it with a series of side-by-side comparison screens and they’ve got months to tweak the contextual awareness and add more frosting and dynamic contrast before final release in the fall.

So why Liquid Glass?

Let’s ask ChatGPT:

ChatGPT agrees that UI aesthetics are a form of fashion

They’re doing this because it’s retro cool.

My son has been digging up old devices to jailbreak them for years, playing with old OS, and learning from YouTube (and me) about things before his time. He’s been fascinated by these richly-detailed relics of early iOS, early Mac OS, and yes, even Windows Vista. He’s so bored with the look of what we use every day and Apple’s own nostalgia is catching up to what the kids want.

However, Apple’s latest skeuomorphic design is more inspired by an homage to itself, they’re not stealing from Windows Vista, Microsoft’s attempt to one-up the Mac OS X with its Aero UI design pattern, a release that Steve Ballmer say was a failure project (and drove me away from Windows to become a Mac user ever since).

So let’s all chill out this summer, start getting accustomed to Liquid Glass, and celebrate the new retro vintage glassmorphic look and feel of Apple’s new product design. Everything old is new and fresh again.

At least Apple isn’t increasingly shoving ads anywhere they can find space on their desktop operating system. Some even want to shove ads on products right on your face! How meta. 🤮

I just wish they didn’t oversell what they could deliver last year on agent AI. That was really disappointing.

We also don’t know what future products Apple is exploring that would justify this unification of all their platforms UI. But we know of one product vision that still needs a lot more refinement to become a high value consumer product.