What is Liquid Glass? Could it be the Future of iOS UI Design?

At the WWDC 2025 conference, Apple announced a UI redesign for all of their platforms, to be known worldwide as Liquid Glass. Instead of a pleasing redesign, it represents a reimagining of how users will interact with their Apple devices. It is available on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS. The purpose of this update is to create liveliness, translucency, and consistency across all Apple devices’ platforms. Additionally, it is the most significant visual UI update since the introduction of iOS 7. If you want to understand everything about Liquid Glass, including how it works, read on.

What is Liquid Glass?

Apple’s latest user interface update, called Liquid Glass, is a fluid, glass-like look on the screen. This is not physical but a digital interface element. However, the technical term is actually a neumorphic graphical user interface (GUI). Neumorphism is short for new skeuomorphism. It is a style of UI design that combines skeuomorphic (real-life textures) with flat (classic Apple) design. Additional features include:

• Liquid Glass imitates the optical features of real glass.
• It is translucent, reflects, and refracts the image around it.
• This glass provides a soft, minimal, and 3-D appearance.
• Colors and looks intelligently adjust for both light and dark modes.
• There is an interface redesign for buttons, sliders, sidebars, and panels.  

How Liquid Glass Works: The Science of it

Liquid Glass is Apple’s new user interface design and process for advancing UI with better technologies. It uses real-time rendering with motion sensor data collected from the user’s device. That enables the UI to behave naturally with user tilt or touch.

• Appears to look like real glass with a semi-transparent look and contained layered look.
• Transparency, texture, and color, all these adjust to what is behind the UI elements.
• Intelligent UI will change to system theming for light in light mode and dark and softer in dark mode.
• Built on Apple-designed chips and a Metal graphics engine with extremely high-performing capabilities.
• It is powered by Apple silicon, which provides realistic light reflections that reflect movement, interaction, and distance.
• Smooth and lively animations add to the sense of depth and responsiveness.

Liquid Glass Across Apple Platforms

Liquid Glass is a universal design language initiative used by Apple on all of its devices

• On iPhone and iPad, it has changed the Home Screen, Lock Screen, Control Center, and app UI.
• On Mac, it changed the toolbars, sidebars, and system controls.
• On Apple Watch and Apple TV, it adds that fluid glass experience across smaller displays and in your living room. 

Apple has coordinated the versioning of its operating systems (iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe, watchOS 26, tvOS 26), supporting the whole unified design.

Key Features and Technical Developments in Liquid Glass

As stated in Apple’s recent announcement at WWDC 2025, there were several key features and technical developments in Liquid Glass that have been described:

• Transparency and reflection: The Liquid Glass layers are semi-transparent. They show the content or wallpapers underneath the layer. It also reflects and refracts light just as glass does.
• Dynamic adaptation: The material adapts to dynamic context or situational variables, such as the orientation of the device (landscape vs. portrait mode), what content may be behind the layer, and/or the user’s preference.
• Real-time rendering: The graphics processing is advanced enough that it renders fast, continuously, and responsively, even on older devices.
•  Customization: Users can add color tints and translucency to app icons and widgets, so that they can engage in a more personalized experience. 
• Consistency: Liquid Glass is applied consistently to all elements of the iOS system interface, from buttons to sliders, and tab bars to sidebars. It is important to maintain the same applied visual look to all elements of the system interface. 

Effects of Liquid Glass on App Development

Apple has moved all its core apps and system screens to Liquid Glass. This creates integrated interactions that are aligned with the Apple hardware capabilities and aim towards a consistent immersive experience across the interface.

Highlights:

• Key Apple apps like Phone, Messages, Safari, Music, and Podcasts no longer have full-width bars and are designed with controls aligned to the rounded corners of Apple devices.
• Toolbars, tab bars, and sidebars are responsive and resized tremendously during scrolls. When scrolling, most content can be front and center while also maintaining a natural feeling while navigating.
• The clock on the Lock Screen design allows the wallpaper to wrap around the clock/image, to create a greater balance in a visual sense.
• Spatial wallpapers on the Lock Screen represent a small 3D effect by introducing dimensionality when the device is tilted.
• The Home Screen Dock and search bar area removed transparency; top-level gloss edges look very stylish.
   

Difference Between Liquid Glass and Previous UI Materials

Liquid Glass maintains Apple’s legacy of innovation in design. The design references Aqua design language from macOS, real-time Gaussian blurring from iOS 7, and glass assets from VisionOS. It has taken all these elements and challenged the user into a new context of fluidity and motion in a way that hasn’t been done before. 

UX Experience Improvements

Liquid Glass is not merely for looks. It is packaged to enhance users’ interactions with their devices. It establishes clarity, emphasis, and flexibility to the interface while thinking about accessibility and comfort.

• Creates a natural sense of depth and visual layering, which reflects and refracts background content.
• Highlights key controls as necessary, while letting other content fade away, to reduce clutter on the screen.
• Improved accessibility via options to refine transparency and contrast, helping users to interpret content more distinctly.

Developer Integration and APIs

Apple has made it easier for developers to support the new Liquid Glass design language by improving the developer tools. With new tools and frameworks, they are now set up to easily integrate Liquid Glass components that allow third-party apps to match Apple’s new, more refined look.

Key Developer Updates: 

• New APIs in SwiftUI, UIKit, and AppKit make it simple for developers to adopt Liquid Glass materials and controls.
• Can refresh their app designs and create experiences that will match Apple’s aesthetic.

Performance Considerations

Liquid Glass provides impressive visual effects along with device hardware. Apple’s latest chips are designed to handle the requirements of this UI effectively, although older devices may have some difficulty.

Performance Highlights:

• Requires an immense amount of processing power because of the need to real-time render translucent effects, dynamic UI changes, etc.
• Optimized for running smoothly on either Apple’s M-series or A-series chips.
• Older or less powerful devices might experience slower performance, or might result in increased battery usage if using heavy transparency effects.
• Developers should consider managing the effects to provide the option of visual quality and device efficiency.

Limitations

Initial feedback from beta testers has presented some challenges already. The semi-clear quality of Liquid Glass can make some components of the interface (for example, the Control Center) hard to see when using busy/distracting backgrounds. While Apple has adjusted this in later beta versions, there may be more changes made before the general public gets the final version. 

Furthermore, another difficulty will be to keep the experience consistent throughout all third-party apps. While Apple has completely renewed a suite of its apps, developers will need to embrace the new design language if the user experience is to feel consistent.

Is Liquid Glass the Future of iOS UI?

Liquid Glass seems to represent a meaningful change in Apple’s software design. More than a visual upgrade, this updated UI emphasizes a new foundation. In terms of interactive experiences, there is new energy, personalization, and connection between hardware and software. 

As noted earlier, Liquid Glass does not replace any of the principles of UI design. It enhances the toolsets and user experience for building more expressive and fun interfaces. Given Apple’s previous emphasis on universal design and cross-platform consistency, this UI will likely be the standard for the near future.

In sum, Liquid Glass is not simply a visual trend, but a technical and philosophical shift in Apple’s interface design. By embracing the ideas of translucency, dynamism, and cross-platform consistency, this user interface is positioned to have an impact on iOS and Apple software for a number of years to come. As developers and users begin to engage with this new material, we can expect even more enjoyable and innovative experiences across all Apple devices.