Liquid Glass

Apple introduced Liquid Glass at WWDC in June 2025 and shipped it across iOS 26, iPadOS, macOS Tahoe, watchOS, and tvOS that autumn. The pitch is a single material for every floating control: tab bars, toolbars, sidebars, sheets, and notifications all become one translucent layer that sits above the content rather than being drawn into it. It is the biggest visual reset on the platform since iOS 7 went flat in 2013.

Technically it is more than a blur. Glassmorphism samples what is behind a panel and blurs it; Liquid Glass models a lens, so the layer bends and displaces what passes underneath, catches a specular highlight along its curved edge, and picks up colour from below. It is also meant to be liquid: controls stretch, merge, and settle as they move, a selected item’s highlight flows to its new position instead of cutting there, and the material lightens or darkens itself against whatever scrolls under it. Concave edges plus refraction are what separate it from a frosted panel at a glance.

The trouble is the same trouble every translucent system has, which is contrast that depends on content the designer does not control. Early betas drew criticism for unreadable navigation over busy backgrounds, and Apple spent the beta cycle adding opacity back, eventually shipping a control that lets people pick a tinted, less transparent variant. The web has no real equivalent yet: backdrop-filter gives the blur and the tint, and displacement has to be faked with SVG filters or edge gradients, at a cost in compositing that a page full of glass will show.