Apple’s last major redesign of a platform was iOS 7, a bright and vibrant takeover of us, but one that was developed and ultimately released within another apple. It was 2013 and Apple simply didn’t have much of a coherent ecosystem or so many devices.
However, it is not 2013. It is 2025 and Apple has an expansive and extraordinarily integrated ecosystem – you can copy and paste between an iPhone and a Mac, with an iPad in between or vice versa. Universal Control allows you to use your Mac’s keyboard and pointing field on an iPad, and AirPod’s sync is quickly synchronized between them all.
So with a feature set and a mantra or ethos aimed at mixing hardware and software, Apple’s new Liquid Glass looks for all its platforms – iOS 26, iPados 26, MacOS 26, Watchos 26, TVOS 26 and Visionos 26 – begins to make a lot of sense.
There is also the fact that Apple has always loved glass; Case, I am writing this with Apple Park – a huge ring apparently made for most of the glass.
Liquid Glass is not a huge redesign in terms of moving buttons as it was introduced by Apple under the head and later changed by Apple’s VP for Human Interface Design, Alan Dye; It is designed to be instantly known.
Shortly after the approx. 90 minutes of special event wrapped, I was able to participate in a conversation with Alan Dye. It was short but comprehensive that focused primarily on the new material and Apple’s approach to design.
However, I do not think that we have to look very far to find out where liquid glass came from. When Apple revealed Vision Pro and Visionos back in 2023 at WWDC, it was announced as the future, and in my use it certainly feels like that. It overlays apps, messages, facetimes, movies and everything else that can be a visionos app on the real world around you.
So if Visionos is the future, it now arrives for everyone else – yes, now in a developer -beta, with a public beta in July, and this fall as a full release, all in liquid glass. It is a translucent and slimmer us than before. As you move your finger around the screen of an Apple Watch, iPhone or iPad, it all flows together.
I had to try to move along the new bottom beam in music as the highlighted part is transformed into a perfectly rounded oval that slides smoothly along. You can say the same for the cursor of Mac.
As for the origin of liquid glass shared Dye, “Much of the work you saw today was influenced by the many years we have worked on Visionos.”
And it was about taking glass thanks to its translucent nature and letting it placed these different elements in the real world around you. It gives plenty of sense to a spatial computer that goes over your head and eyes.
This effort eventually led to dye and his team thought about how they could “bring this language to the rest of our operating systems.” Of course, it is not a one-to-one-creation. “We had to treat glass very differently,” Dye explained.
@Techradar ♬ ok i like it – milky chance
And after trying liquid glass, it’s clear that it’s a screen with a proper back, and the interface is now flowing between applications, above and around overlapping windows and over a wallpaper. This digital material is far more malleable and transformable than actual glass.
It’s still the classic operating system, but Dye hopes it feels a little different after some time – “It feels far more expressive. It feels far more responsive. You can feel that you are pushing through the screen and the kind comes into contact with the floating glass itself.”
It is also clear that Apple took their time with this release and that what is similar to any other feature that the company is rolling out must hit the brand. Dye shared that “99% of the work we do in the study never come out into the world.” When asked why he shared the notion that design is hard, specifically designed for simplicity.
It’s kind of Apple’s secret sauce, and while floating glass screams, yes, glass and translucent, I think we find out that it has layers and that it just like any other OS release, it develops.
For the time being, I’m just excited to see that evolution hit iOS as well as macos, iPados, Watchos, Visionos, Tvos and whatever else has come.
