Design, to cite a wildly overused Steve Jobs-ism, is the way it works. And if that’s the case, Apple’s new design language, which the corporate is asking “Liquid Glass” and simply introduced at WWDC 2025, is absolutely nothing new in any respect.
The Liquid Glass look comes largely from VisionOS, which shipped with a specific constraint: it needed to layer digital data over your bodily world, with out occluding that bodily world. That’s why every thing in VisionOS is translucent and glassy, so you’ll be able to each see it and see by means of it. Every part is layered and three-dimensional, an effort to make digital experiences really feel extra like objects in house than objects on a display screen.
The impetus for turning the VisionOS look into the Liquid Glass system, Apple software program boss Craig Federighi stated at first of this yr’s developer convention keynote, was that Apple’s units are extra intently linked than ever. That’s actually true: Apple’s ecosystem stays tight, and there are many good causes to purchase an iPad when you’ve got an iPhone or an Apple TV when you’ve got a Mac. (Name it synergy, name it unlawful monopoly upkeep, you decide.) Most of Apple’s units have loads of options in widespread, and it is smart to convey all of them extra intently collectively. Placing parts in acquainted locations, ensuring issues work the identical in every single place — these are all good issues!
Leaving apart the considerably wild determination to pivot your total UI system round a prohibitively costly headset hardly anybody has ever even tried, the factor about most of Apple’s units is that they aren’t overlaying digital data on the bodily world. They’re simply screens! So the little glass loupe that slides over textual content as you spotlight on a webpage gained’t really feel such as you’re transferring one thing round; it’ll really feel such as you’re poking at a pretend water droplet on the display screen. The playback controls that appear to drift barely above your content material, refracting its gentle and colours, look to my eyes just a little like a hokey 3D impact. The navigation buttons that ripple as you scroll a webpage don’t appear like bodily objects — they only look busy and laborious to learn. Apple executives ceaselessly made a degree of noting that Liquid Glass is minimalist and “retains your content material in focus,” however the always morphing interface feels to me prefer it is likely to be much more noticeable.
There’s one factor about Liquid Glass I actually like. Now, while you faucet on an alert or a menu merchandise, the remainder of the content material seems from inside, as if it have been contained by the factor you simply tapped. That’s a intelligent solution to preserve individuals anchored in place. You gained’t faucet one thing, solely to be taken to a different display screen, with no apparent means again to the place you have been. The menu simply radiates out over high of no matter you have been doing, after which folds again in on itself while you’re executed. It’s far too straightforward to get misplaced in your cellphone, and it is a good contact.
You actually can’t have a look at Liquid Glass with out considering of Home windows Aero, the equally glassy and translucent design language that shipped with… Home windows Vista. (Robust comparability, that.) With Aero, Microsoft made an effort to make it straightforward to know the place you have been in your laptop, and to search out every thing you wanted. You could possibly see by means of home windows to different home windows; app borders would change to match the content material inside; you might use widgets and dwell thumbnails to get fast entry to data. Aero didn’t final, partly as a result of it was an enormous useful resource suck to render one thing so graphically intense. Now, Microsoft’s design is far more colourful, and much more aggressively bodily — there are drop shadows in every single place.
The concepts behind each Liquid Glass and Home windows Aero are good ones! They stand for personalization, customization, for serving to individuals work out the place they’re and what they’re doing on their gadget. Apple has lengthy been unmatched in executing this type of stuff, too, and the demos we noticed at WWDC immediately counsel that this layered, three-dimensional impact will work easily throughout all of Apple’s units. However for all of the epic language of the disclosing, I don’t see a lot in Liquid Glass that can matter. Perhaps we’ll get extra within the months to return, and possibly builders will work out how one can make one of the best of the layers. However for each place this type of layered translucency is smart, there will probably be numerous locations it simply seems to be like a large number. It gained’t change a lot about how you utilize your units or the way in which you understand them, and at the very least to my eyes, it doesn’t even make them better-looking. It’s simply … barely totally different.
Watching Apple’s announcement, it’s laborious to not learn the entire thing as borne of effectivity quite than of inspiration. Alan Dye, Apple’s vice chairman of design, began his portion of the keynote by harkening again to iOS 7, and its easy, layer-based look. “Now, with the highly effective advances in our {hardware}, silicon, and graphics applied sciences,” he stated, “we’ve the chance to put the inspiration for the subsequent chapter of our software program.” He known as Liquid Glass “our broadest design replace ever.” Not greatest. Not finest. Simply broadest.
In that broadest sense, it’s logical that that is the place Apple landed. It clearly wouldn’t, and doubtless couldn’t, essentially change the feel and appear of each gadget it makes for billions of customers around the globe. Nobody needs that. So Apple simply took all its parts and made them extra common: every thing’s just a little extra spherical, just a little extra contained, rather less designed for a selected display screen dimension. A floating menu of black and white icons works just about wherever, you understand? By turning menus into lists that come out of buttons, Apple prevents itself from having to optimize each menu for each gadget and display screen orientation. Liquid Glass is the bottom widespread denominator, executed about in addition to you might.
However I’m not impressed, and I’m not optimistic. Apple is at its finest when it has robust opinions about how issues ought to work; even the try to get out of the way in which and let your content material dictate every thing feels just like the incorrect tack. Plus, I’ve spent the previous yr tinkering with Apple’s new tinted and color-matching iPhone homescreens, which largely serve to make your gadget uglier. I don’t see a cause that Liquid Glass would make my units higher, easier, or extra private. I simply see buttons which might be more durable to learn.