[HN Gopher] Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iO...
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Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
Author : uxjw
Score : 233 points
Date : 2025-10-10 21:35 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nngroup.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nngroup.com)
| colechristensen wrote:
| In short: Dear Apple, please tone it down a few notches.
| martini333 wrote:
| Liquid ass.
| swader999 wrote:
| That's a different product:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Ass
| sergiomattei wrote:
| To clarify, this isn't based on user research or survey results,
| as other Nielsen Group writeups are.
|
| It's a senior editor's _opinion_ on the UI of iOS 26.
| mfro wrote:
| Literally every change made in iOS 26 feels like a downgrade to
| me. This is the first time I have ever considered downgrading
| iOS.
| noname120 wrote:
| Is it even possible?
| MBCook wrote:
| Only for a very limited time after the release. And you can't
| strictly "downgrade" it, you have to restore it from factory
| with the older OS and then reload your back up.
| flykespice wrote:
| Then you would be forced to upgrade after factory reset
| (basically digital sisyphus)?
| whycome wrote:
| Apple is pretty good in not forcing upgrades as far as I
| remember. You can stay on an older OS until you
| personally run into app compatibility issues
| apazzolini wrote:
| It was, but Apple is no longer signing the old releases.
| (https://ipsw.me/iPhone14,4).
|
| I downgraded about 10 minutes after trying iOS 26. Sorry to
| all who missed the window.
| MBCook wrote:
| I think there are a few nice changes in 26, but they're small
| things.
|
| They are certainly overwhelmed by the problems caused by the
| terrible visual design, which does not accomplish its stated
| goals and usually is a very large setback compared to what we
| had previously.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Agreed, it's pretty bad. It causes my 16 pro max to lag in some
| apps, Siri is broken, etc. Very surprised this made it through
| QA to GA.
| 98codes wrote:
| Settings -> Accessibility -> Display & Text Size -> enable
| Reduce Transparency
|
| That made a world of difference for me.
| donmcronald wrote:
| I did this on all my Apple devices about 60 seconds after the
| update. I don't know how people can use things like iMessage
| with the defaults.
| curiousguy wrote:
| I tried that, but this completely removes the transparency,
| and some apps look even worse and harder to visualise as it's
| not designed to not have the transparency on iOS 26.
|
| This could be significant improvement if Apple let us choose
| the transparency percentage.
| geuis wrote:
| I certainly won't be upgrading to this version. I already don't
| really like the current version and see no reason to inflict a
| Windows Vista-like experience on myself.
| noname120 wrote:
| Let's not forget how Liquid Glass made my Apple Watch Series 10
| laggy and battery-hungry due to the expensive fluid simulations.
| Reducing transparency in accessibility settings didn't help
| unfortunately.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I have a Series 10 and I haven't experienced either of those
| problems. Other than the PIN entry screen being very "glassy",
| it's not actually that different. Perhaps you have some other
| issue.
| noname120 wrote:
| From the home screen scroll down through the widgets with the
| digital crown and you'll see what I mean.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| No, I don't see a problem. Scrolls smoothly, no loading
| delays. Perhaps it is a specific widget you have?
| nozzlegear wrote:
| I don't have a problem with this either, it's as smooth as
| it was before the Liquid Glass update.
| donmcronald wrote:
| I don't like how everything seems to require extra clicks or
| has extra animation now. For example, the workout selection has
| a weird feeling like it's fluid and everything just kind of
| scrolls along. Then when you stop on something long enough, the
| rest of the UI elements like the start / play button show up.
|
| Why do I need to watch a mini video to have UI controls appear?
| It's incredibly annoying.
|
| My Linux install feels so much faster than Windows or OSX and
| the main reason is that it's not filled with a bunch of
| useless, slow animation.
| frizlab wrote:
| Interestingly the animation when an app is opened has
| actually been sped up in iOS 26!
|
| On macOS you can speed up/disable the animations using some
| hidden defaults (you can easily find that on the internet).
|
| Personally I like the animations; I find them well-done on
| macOS. They serve a purpose but are not "too much" either
| IMHO.
| lxgr wrote:
| I doubt the bulk of battery life is lost in visual effects,
| especially if turning them off apparently does not help.
|
| I've subjectively had battery life regressions for most iOS
| updates until the first minor version update or so, but that
| might also just have correlated with extensive re-indexing of
| Photos and things like that.
| frenchie4111 wrote:
| My (certainly biased, long term apple user) opinion is that
| Liquid Glass is delightful. I upgraded as soon as I could, and
| it's honestly a joy to use
| evanjrowley wrote:
| If it makes Apple users feel better about Liquid Glass, the
| Material 3 Expressive in Android 16 is an overall worse experence
| than what came before. Yes it looks better, but apps are much
| laggier, at least on my Pixel 7 anyway. The venreble 120 Hz
| refresh rate on Android doesn't help when scrolling HN is enough
| for an FPS drop.
| zt64 wrote:
| Interesting, it seems just as smooth on my OnePlus 13. As an
| app developer I don't see how the Material 3 Expressive UI
| would cause reduced performance. My only guess is poor usage of
| the API by developers.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| FWIW on my phone I don't have a problem with it at all,
| probably because it doesn't run into the same performance
| limitations.
|
| I've always found Google's decision to include mid-tier SoCs
| into their flagship phones risky as it makes performance
| hitches for future updates much more obvious. If/when Google
| copies Liquid Glass into the next version of Material Design,
| I'm sure my phone will suffer from a performance hit too.
|
| That said, scrolling HN still works fine on hardware from a
| decade ago, so there's got to be more to this. I've personally
| had custom ROMs experience random lags and slowdowns after
| major upgrades (which is probably why many ROMs claim it
| doesn't work and don't support it) and I wouldn't be surprised
| if the Android upgrade hit a similar issue on your phone. As a
| last resort before buying a new phone, doing a factory reset
| may make the new OS more usable on your device. Not the right
| solution (fixes from Google's side to prevent such issues would
| be right solution), but it might work and it's cheaper than a
| new phone.
| cluckindan wrote:
| Liquid Glass looks and feels like early 2000's WinAmp Skin
| Generator skins.
| thousand_nights wrote:
| except it doesn't whip the llama's ass
| mcphage wrote:
| What does, these days?
| crooked-v wrote:
| https://webamp.org
| binarynate wrote:
| I haven't upgraded to iOS 26 because of Liquid Glass, mostly
| because I've read that it causes performance degradation on older
| devices (I use an iPhone 13 Mini because I have zero interest in
| using a larger phone). So, it looks like I'll be using iOS 18 for
| the foreseeable future.
| Gigachad wrote:
| It was running well on my 13 pro as in there was no lag on
| anything, but I can't speak for battery life. It was bad before
| and it was still bad after, but maybe it got worse?
| captn3m0 wrote:
| I made the mistake of upgrading (13 Mini) and it is very clear
| that the new UI was not tested at all on smaller screens. The
| rounded buttons take up so much extra margin that actual usable
| space is greatly diminished.
| thedougd wrote:
| Replied at the same time as you. I agree. In Safari there's
| ton of space on each side of the URL bubble yet I only get
| about 7 chara visible.
| rfmc wrote:
| How's the battery on your 13 Mini? Mine is abhorrent compared
| to a few weeks ago.
| Reason077 wrote:
| I have the standard iPhone 13 (not mini) and the battery
| longevity is probably the best of any phone I've ever
| owned. At over 3.5 years old it still reports 89% battery
| health and lasts much longer than I need. Previous iPhones
| I owned were all pretty much on their last legs by that
| age.
|
| I haven't upgraded it to iOS 26 / Liquid Glass, though, and
| given what I'm seeing/hearing, I don't plan to.
| MYEUHD wrote:
| The question was how much the update to iOS 26 affected
| battery life
| tom_ wrote:
| On the iPhone 13 Mini
| jdsnape wrote:
| I have a 12 mini and have also found that 26 has killed my
| battery life.
|
| I also agree that they didn't test it on smaller screens,
| there are lots of cases where things don't quite fit right.
|
| I've been wanting a better camera for a little while, I
| guess it's time to adjust to something bigger :\
| jijijijij wrote:
| On the mini, some UI elements got half pushed into Narnia.
| Apple, like, WTF?!
| Zaheer wrote:
| Same. Terrible mistake. My mini overheats like crazy now.
| thedougd wrote:
| I have an iPhone 13 and haven't noticed. Don't love it though.
|
| The safari changes are the worst part.
| rfmc wrote:
| I regret upgrading my 13 Mini so much. Performance is terrible
| and it's chugging power.
|
| Yesterday, for the first time since I bought the phone, it died
| on me before 18:00 with regular usage. I used to charge
| everyday when I go to bed with around 15-25% left, now I can't
| even finish the work day.
| dangus wrote:
| It has horrible battery life, even on a relatively new device.
| Don't upgrade.
| epistasis wrote:
| This is the worst part of it.
|
| I actually feel a warm computer now, something that I have
| never experienced in five years of having this M1 MacBook.
|
| This takes amazing hardware and degrades it to Windows laptop
| slop.
|
| In the Jobs days, at least one VP head would roll for this,
| and Apple would be far better off for it. I don't think Tim
| Cook is strong enough for that though.
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Upgraded my 12 mini. Performance is fine. Battery life is as it
| always was
| hamburglar wrote:
| For what it's worth, I upgraded to 26 on a 3rd gen SE and perf
| is totally fine. I do hate most of the UI changes though. I
| really hope they do a dot release that lets me turn off the
| "safari viewport is big but we draw crap on top of it" stuff. I
| keep cursing at the title bar and url bar obscuring important
| things.
| npunt wrote:
| iOS .0 releases tend to be this way, even on brand new devices.
| I noticed some big perf improvements on the 26.0.1 release. If
| I were you I'd wait til 26.1 or 26.2 and reassess then. It
| still may not be optimal for a mini tho for non-perf reasons,
| as iOS26 assumes a larger average device size.
| jmull wrote:
| I have a 12 mini and it works well.
|
| IMO, this is 99% typical "not what I'm used to" internet rage.
| Upgrade and enjoy.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Made my phone immediately much laggier (iPhone 13 Pro) which is
| probably the intention
| rfmc wrote:
| 13 Mini here, and yesterday for the first time since I bought,
| the battery died on me in the middle of the day, in the office,
| with my regular usage (which is very low).
| noname120 wrote:
| It also made my iPhone 16 Pro Max a bit laggier, but the worst
| offender is my Apple Watch Series 10 which has a big frame rate
| drop every time there is a Liquid Glass animation. It feels
| very sluggish now and the battery seems worse than before.
| Everyone is impacted to different extents, I don't think it's
| deliberately made to cripple older iPhones.
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Every update slows your phone down temporarily, because there's
| background processing that goes on for a while after. That's
| always been the case
| symlinkk wrote:
| I've had it for days and it's still slow
| Computer0 wrote:
| Sometimes it looks really cool and I find myself playing with the
| UI just to see what happens, sometimes it looks so ugly and
| terribly antithetical to the idea of a cohesive design that I
| miss the previous design language significantly. The phone is a
| tool I use.
| al_borland wrote:
| Remember that iOS 18 was over a decade of evolution on the
| design changes in iOS 7, which also had a significant amount of
| hate when it was released for being ugly, confusing, and hard
| to read.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| All of this is true. The first thing I did was turn down
| transparency. But there's no way to tone down the new animations,
| which make the UI feel twitchy and distracting.
|
| And there are some stupidly obvious bugs - like the WEATHER
| header in the weather app is black on a dark background.
|
| And the way the buttons at the bottom of the page are tight up
| against the content instead of being centred in the space under
| it.
|
| It reeks of design-for-resume-padding instead of design-for-user-
| delight.
| superb_dev wrote:
| The amount of obvious visual flaws is crazy. On an iPhone, play
| a video in Picture-in-Picture then hide it off the edge of the
| screen. The corner radius of the arrow control and the video
| underneath it are different so you can see the video poking
| through
| JanSt wrote:
| They also managed to introduce regressions into WebKit so that
| the visual and touch positions of fixed input elements diverge.
| Really makes you question what's going on at Apple.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| As someone who pretty strictly adheres to Apple Human Interface
| Guidelines, it's really off-putting to see them slip so badly
| backwards on their own published work.
|
| There are now portions of iOS that use either iOS 18's UIKit, or
| iOS 26's Liquid Glass UI in apps.
|
| It feels like Apple is having a Windows moment with their
| operating systems for the jarring combination of old and new UI
| designs sitting next to each other and it's gross. I hate it.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| Yeah it's so un-Apple like it's really jarring.
|
| It feels like they pulled this out of their ass last minute
| after the AI siri failures, they had to have something to put
| out for 2025.
|
| I actually don't mind it on iPhone outside of the bugs and
| inconsitencies, but it's attrocious on macOS and the new iPad
| windowing was obviously made with zero consideration for touch-
| first users and was only made to cater to the whiners about
| iPad needing to become more mac-like.
|
| Just poorly though out all around.
| medhir wrote:
| Avoiding iOS 26 like the plague for exactly this reason. It feels
| like Apple decided they need to leverage their GPU silicon for a
| fancy GUI update without any concern for usability downgrades.
| AstroBen wrote:
| I might be the only one who actually really likes the Liquid
| Glass?
|
| Its made my 12 pro max noticeably laggier though, which I'm
| definitely not a fan of..
| Gigachad wrote:
| I quite like it and I think iOS 26 largely works really well.
| But MacOS 26 has been quite buggy for me, it seems to have
| gotten better with the latest patch but I'm still seeing semi
| regular issues.
| lawgimenez wrote:
| Been using Liquid Glass since the first developer beta release,
| as an Apple dev I like it.
|
| OP seems to even deliberately choose a stupid message
| background just to prove his/her point. Of course, there's a
| lot of backgrounds to choose from.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Am I the only one who feels like this doesn't even look good,
| even if it was a better user experience?
| ge96 wrote:
| Cracked as in good or bad
| jychang wrote:
| Yeah, that's the funny thing about this article title.
|
| Apparently the author (and most commenters here!) do not
| realize "cracked" is VERY popular gen z slang for being very
| good at something.
|
| https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cracked
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| Bad, like really bad. Example: "Liquid design is really bad
| ass"
| ge96 wrote:
| That sounds good
| roncesvalles wrote:
| I already switched it off a few days ago.
|
| Turning on "Reduce Transparency" and "Increase Contrast" under
| Accessibility > Display makes the phone a pleasure to use.
| skopje wrote:
| I did the same on Tahoe and now the formerly glass buttons are
| grey with a weird blue shadow in the upper left. One example:
| the sound slider on the menu bar. With all the GFX turned on,
| it is a transparent blob, with the reduced settings, it's just
| a weird gray with a nonsensical shadow.
|
| I'd really, really love to read internal presentations leading
| up to this downgrade of a once proud UI (let's hear it for
| System 7) to what is now effectively a collection childish
| digital baubles.
| dewey wrote:
| I've read so much criticism and listened to so many Apple podcast
| that I expected the worst. Then updated on day one and...it's
| fine? I know that people just hate any change but this was
| massively blown out of proportion.
| Gigachad wrote:
| It looks worse in screenshots than it does to use. I saw a few
| images on reddit that looked quite bad, but then when I
| actually used it I saw those screenshots were taken in the
| middle of animations or transitions that last only a handful of
| frames.
| dewey wrote:
| Indeed, it's telling that the first screenshot they are using
| to illustrate the problem is a iMessage screenshot, with a
| high contrast background image, only one message and images
| in a similar color theme as the background image.
|
| If you want high contrast in your messages app...don't use a
| high contrast background image?
| closetohome wrote:
| That picture just feels like a case study in why Apple drug
| their feet on features like that for so long. If you let
| people set a background and change the font, you're going
| to have unreadable purple comic sans over kittens within
| minutes.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| I agree. I don't like change and I'm usually the first to
| criticise, but it's fine. Some of the animations feel nice, but
| I'm yet to see anything that wows or upsets me.
| porcoda wrote:
| This update is one of the rare cases where I really dislike the
| new version. I'm usually happy with Apple updates, even ones the
| commentators dislike. This time I'm sorta agreeing with them: I
| don't like the new iOS. Same with the Mac and iPad: other than
| being glitchy, I just don't like the changes. It feels like my
| screen real estate isn't as efficiently used, UI elements feel
| jumbled and the transparency makes things harder to read. I'm
| sure I'll get used to it over time but I'm not enjoying it so
| far, even after going into the settings to try to adjust things I
| don't care for. Not my favorite update cycle from Apple, and I'm
| usually one of the overly positive folks on whatever Apple ships.
| whycome wrote:
| It's terrible from a UX standpoint. By definition, translucent
| elements present more potential information to a user. It makes
| it harder to parse certain screens. It's a nightmare if you
| have subtle vision issues (where it's not bad enough you'd need
| to enable accessibility options). You're not going to "get used
| to it" -- you're really just adapting to a crippled interface.
|
| I think it all stems from trying to unify the UX/UI across
| devices, and to also pull the Vision VR device into that
| iphone-iPad-MacBook-watch grouping. Handoff and other cross-
| device interactions suffer when you have significantly
| different UI elements or interactions.
| jijijijij wrote:
| Not even form over function, it's fucking ugly. How did this
| get past the draft board?
| Reason077 wrote:
| The problem is designs and elements that were carefully
| considered and crafted for Vision OS don't always translate
| well when grated into iOS and macOS. What looks elegant and
| modern in AR can look garish, distracting, and old-fashioned
| on a more traditional interface.
| nicce wrote:
| You can finally see senders' and receivers' email address
| properly in the mail app. Something positive!
| donmcronald wrote:
| On my Mac I almost laugh at how massive the borders are to
| accommodate the freakishly large corner radius. The next
| version might have round windows at this pace.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Same. I'm just not someone with strong feelings about UX
| consistency or appearance, and tend to focus on functionality.
|
| But this...this feels like a symptom of something fundamental
| inside Apple going wrong.
| walkabout wrote:
| The _only_ time before this I 've felt like Apple took a huge
| UX or appearance dive on an OS upgrade was iOS6 -> iOS7.
| People complain about almost every macOS upgrade, but the
| closest they've come to bothering me is that I hated the new
| tab styles in desktop Safari they introduced a while ago, but
| that was configurable so I just set it back to normal and
| that was that. I've disliked other things (the Touch Bar was
| never anything but a way for me to accidentally open Music--I
| basically had to disable it to make any of those MacBooks
| usable) but never really been bothered by an OSX/macOS
| update's appearance.
|
| So, I didn't expect to mind this at all, despite lots of
| people apparently hating it.
|
| Then I upgraded. And yeah, it's remarkably shitty looking,
| first time I've agreed with the "haters" for a macOS release.
| It looks like an above-average GTK theme, which is to say,
| awful. Plus they found a new and different way to make
| Safari's tabs look like crap (and I'd swear tab manipulation
| is super laggy now, where it wasn't before) and this time I
| can't fix it with a settings toggle. Like, that element
| specifically looks and feels like it's from a _below_ average
| GTK theme.
| llbbdd wrote:
| I'd be ambivalent about it if it didn't ship broken. My Mac
| updated the other day and I don't think I've seen the glass top
| bar work correctly once. In fullscreen in particular it doesn't
| work at all, the background that it's meant to be blurring gets
| stuck and never changes, so it just looks like shit and is
| nearly unreadable. I'm not on any beta track or anything so
| this is what normal people get. I have no idea how they felt
| good shipping it.
| archagon wrote:
| It looks pretty (sometimes) but I have not found a single
| usability improvement stemming from the new paradigm.
| operator-name wrote:
| From reading this thread I'm glad I'm not alone. It seems their
| "compact" mode has a bunch of invisible gestures that you're
| just supposed to know about.
|
| Luckily I've also discovered that you can revert back to
| "bottom" tab mode in the settings, which brings back something
| similar to the old UI.
| ano-ther wrote:
| Some of it (like hiding the Safari tab button in a menu) feels
| like Windows-11-stupid.
|
| Luckily, Apple is ok at supporting older phones, so I just have
| to be careful to not accidentally upgrade my SE to iOS 26.
|
| Makes me nostalgic for Apple's interface guidelines, which were
| very well thought through, based on evidence, and with clear
| principles.
| https://vintageapple.org/inside_r/pdf/Human_Interface_Guidel...
| argsnd wrote:
| You can just set it to show the tab button
| dangus wrote:
| Why isn't the better option the default?
| kevinsundar wrote:
| You can actually swipe up from the search field at the bottom
| and that will show all tabs. (If anyone is reading this from
| apple, that animation should be sped up).
|
| However, this doesn't work if you've scrolled down already and
| the bar is minimized. It literally flashes as if to acknowledge
| your swipe and does nothing.
|
| Also if you miss by moving your thumb just slightly lower,
| you'll close the app haha.
|
| They thought about it a bit, but definitely not enough.
| nomel wrote:
| You can also swipe left and right to switch tabs, in any
| state.
|
| But, as you suggest, you have to tap the url to "bring it up"
| so it can be safely dragged upward, which is annoying. If
| they polish this a bit, I think it will be very nice.
| jjfoooo4 wrote:
| Just because it took me a second to figure out: swiping
| left or right works when done _on the search bar_ , not
| anywhere on the screen
| hamburglar wrote:
| Swiping left or right on the screen is the special
| "please misinterpret my attempt to scroll as a 'forward'
| or 'back' command, eliciting a curse" gesture. I have
| searched for a way to disable this many times.
| heywoods wrote:
| So many changes over the years and some of them might
| actually be decent but I wouldn't have known about this had
| I not read this comment or accidentally triggered it in the
| future. Has Apple experimented with "micro" tutorials that
| can pop up if they detect the user is performing an action
| in an inefficient/deprecated pattern? I.e. if in Safari I
| navigate to all tabs by tapping at the bottom --> hamburger
| icon --> all tabs a one time modal pops up showing the ux
| pattern they recommend
| Taek wrote:
| I hate micro tutorials so much, I really don't like when
| things have an invisible language that you have to just
| know to be able to use them.
|
| If you have to have an invisible language, put it in a
| man page somewhere or something. I really don't like
| having my train of thought interrupted by "HEY, learn
| something new RIGHT NOW"
| archagon wrote:
| That swipe sucks because it's almost identical to the "swipe
| up from bottom" home screen swipe. You have to be precise,
| and the initial UI feedback looks very similar between the
| two.
| sorahn wrote:
| I gave up on the swipe for the same reason, but if you
| double tap the triple dot menu it hits the 'all tabs'
| thing.
| operator-name wrote:
| As a long time Android user, I find these magical gestures
| frustrating difficult to discover. How on earth is someone
| supposed to guess such a gesture exists, and how am I
| supposed to guess the rules for when certain gestures work
| and certain gestures don't?
|
| Even long time friends who are iOS fanatics, and who have
| used iOS since the beginning are often surprised when I show
| them a new gesture I've learnt. Am I missing something? I'm
| really grateful to learn this now but I can't imagine the
| "Apple way" is to stumble upon these by forum comments?
| npunt wrote:
| I initially balked at this change but realized they placed the
| 'all tabs' button right where the ellipsis menu is, so you can
| just double tap to get to your tabs. Takes the same amount of
| time.
| navindra wrote:
| Pinch gesture works as well.
| canpan wrote:
| Safari and the lock screen clock were my biggest issues.
|
| The lock screen clock went from "can read in a split second" to
| "wait what number is this?".
|
| Luckily there was a setting for that one.
| random3 wrote:
| Oh, so it's hidden? I gave up several times without realizing.
| That _is_ incredibly stupid
| infecto wrote:
| I was thinking of changing my iOS browser because of the safari
| tab change.
| JALTU wrote:
| Regrettably, humans come along and need to prove _themselves_ ,
| so here we are. Being human: it's a feature, not a bug.
| (shrugs)
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| >Fortunately, the software capability to handle different text
| sizes can make it easier to support people with a vision
| disability. You can design your software with a "zoom" feature
| that increases the size of characters or graphics on the
| screen.
|
| If only the iPhone "menu bar" designers took that to heart. It
| is insane that I have to put on glasses to read the time when
| there is plenty of room to increase the damn font, but no
| option to do so.
|
| I am gonna be LMAO when all these youngster UI designers age up
| to the point where they have to wear readers to use their crap
| UI.
| layer8 wrote:
| > Luckily, Apple is ok at supporting older phones, so I just
| have to be careful to not accidentally upgrade my SE to iOS 26.
|
| You won't be receiving any updates for iOS 18 after December or
| so, if your device supports iOS 26. Only the iPhone XR and XS
| will be receiving further iOS 18 updates because they don't
| support iOS 26. That has been Apple's policy for many years
| now. Only devices that dropped out of major iOS updates receive
| minor updates to older iOS versions.
| nielsbot wrote:
| Seems like I'm against the trend here in HN, but I personally
| like it more the more I use it. (Admittedly I don't have any
| accessibility issues which may come up for others)
|
| Also, I appreciate the UX improvements (as opposed to the pretty
| glass effect), such as the much improved menu system and the
| generally (IMO) improved changes in layout in Calendar, Mail,
| Safari, etc.
|
| That said I do find it a bit more annoying to access different
| tabs in Safari but maybe that's why I get for using Safari.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Turning on reduce transparency makes it perfectly usable,
| generally.
|
| Even with transparency on its gotten much better than the early
| betas, which is good, since that is the happy code path and
| gets more testing coverage.
| themadturk wrote:
| Came her to say this. There are things I still don't like
| about it, but reducing transparency has helped a lot. The
| rest I'm willing to live with (as if I had any choice...)
| argsnd wrote:
| If you head into Safari's settings you can reinstate the old
| bottom bar (or the even older top and bottom bars)
| operator-name wrote:
| There's also a hell of a lot of gestures that I've just
| learned of: https://www.cnet.com/tech/i-finally-got-used-to-
| the-new-ios-...
| exasperaited wrote:
| > (Admittedly I don't have any accessibility issues which may
| come up for others)
|
| Yet.
|
| This design is really punitive for older, tireder eyes and they
| really need to learn not to do this. Because their audience
| gets older all the time (as the population in all western
| countries does).
|
| Their design team is evidently skewed young again, and needs to
| really learn about how ageing affects eyesight for absolutely
| everyone. It is insane to put everyone over about 50 into an
| accessibility category, but eyesight ageing is one of the
| things that can't be held back.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I like it too. However, I have noticed several screens that
| clearly were never tested by any Apple testers. Not just the
| liquid glass part, either; I've found entirely borked screens
| inside of the iOS settings app.
|
| When I tried to get Aero Glass into Linux themes, I found
| plenty of existing transparency-oriented themes, but all of
| them made Microsoft's decision to use frosted glass more
| obvious. There's a balance between the shininess and opacity
| that needs to be dialed down for the look to both look good and
| be clear.
|
| I think Apple went too far with making their theme look shiny.
| I assume (hope) a 26.1 update coming out in a few months to
| tweak the UI and fix a lot of the usability issues.
|
| As for the weird design choices around Safari: I've always
| found Safari's UI to be one of the most confusing parts of iOS.
| It was never quite obvious to me what menu I would need to hit
| to get to what feature. I think removing the tab button is a
| step backwards for sure, but with my normal struggle to use it,
| I've barely noticed it to be honest. I find the button as easy
| to find as I do most Safari buttons, and that includes previous
| versions.
|
| macOS seems particularly bad for built-in software, though. It
| seems like Apple changed the look of standard list
| boxes/navigation panels/whatever they call the menu on the
| left, and a lot of built-in macOS applications look terrible
| when multiple of these panes are placed near each other.
| quirino wrote:
| I'm a fan of the eye-candy. Truly feels like a glimpse of the
| future is terms of aesthetics. I just wish they hadn't thrown
| UX principles away.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| I disagree I love the glass.
|
| The human eye was not designed to look at text or to look at text
| on top of solid color static backgrounds which don't exist in
| nature.
|
| Our eye was designed to look at noise and filter moving noise. It
| is better to have a background that distinguishes itself based
| off of texture and movement rather than a sudden contrast of
| divergent flat colors.
|
| Yes flat design is logically more efficient I understand this but
| human evolution has evolved our bodies to be narrow and efficient
| within a niche. If we move outside of that niche things become
| inefficient even detrimental.
|
| Take for instance: eating. You're not designed to eat the most
| calorie dense fatty foods even though high energy reserves seems
| like a good thing. Your body ended up evolving towards a niche: a
| narrow band of caloric intake.
|
| It's the same thing with visual design. You go too extreme and
| too efficient with flat colors and flat design you are creating
| patterns your eye was not optimized for. Your eye was optimized
| for noise inefficiency and to find patterns and glass emulates
| this quite well.
|
| To be honest I just made up all the shit I said above. I somewhat
| believe it could be true but the ultimate reality is that it
| doesn't matter that much. Your eye can handle flat design or
| Liquid Glass without any extra stress. It's not really a big
| difference. Your eye can handle it and if you can't you probably
| shouldn't be driving and you should see an eye doctor. People are
| complaining about this because it's different from what they are
| used to not because there's an actual problem.
| kace91 wrote:
| iOS/macos 26 have me feeling isolated in a way I've never
| experienced in tech.
|
| Aesthetics aside (which I personally don't like, but I can accept
| as subjective) I see extreme issues and regressions literally
| everywhere, from not being able to read the notifications in a
| half pulled curtain to memory leaks in half the native apps.
|
| Yet no one is raising their voice in the tech world. No bloggers,
| no YouTubers, nothing that feels proportionate to the screwup I'm
| seeing. People was far more vocal about the lack of the new Siri.
| infermore wrote:
| whoever made opening a new tab in safari take three taps, the
| last of which is in the bottom left of the screen instead of the
| bottom right, has some explaining to do
| sangeeth96 wrote:
| In the default "compact" layout, I can open a new tab in two
| taps by tapping the 3 dots, tap "New tab" from the menu.
|
| One tap by holding the 3 dots and dragging finger to the "new
| tab" item.
|
| But I didn't like "compact" so switched to "bottom" layout for
| Tabs from Settings > Apps > Safari.
| bradgessler wrote:
| There's a picture floating around out there of the Apple design
| team putting actual physical pieces of glass over icons that they
| printed out. What's funny (not really) is how much more readable
| that paper would have been if they simply removed the glass.
| doawoo wrote:
| I've gotten used to it on iOS 26 at least, but, I have been using
| the official macOS release on my work macbook and it's _horrid_.
| I'm holding onto macOS 15 as long as I possibly can on my
| personal machine.
| dangus wrote:
| It's also introduced a bunch of UI-related bugs, like how guided
| access has become completely botched and destroyed to the point
| of almost being non-functional.
| prody wrote:
| In summary, Apple messed up, they had nothing to present this
| year, so they came up with a bad design and passed it off as
| "revolutionary". This is the kind of thing a failing company
| does. I'm sad, I'm an Apple fan, but they are pulling scams for
| years instead of actual developments.
| lxgr wrote:
| This seems like a minority perspective, but while (or maybe
| because) I was really prepared to hate Liquid Glass, I actually
| quite like it, all in all.
|
| I can't speak for people with visual impairments, but for me,
| many of the effects actually work, and I appreciate the on
| average larger hit targets.
|
| Some things, like the little icons inline of some macOS menu
| bar items, actually make it easier to quickly spot a given
| option in a long list to me.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| What gets me about it is that it is just a lot of random
| vandalism of the UI without really looking like anything. The
| clock on my phone looks like it had anti-anti aliasing applied to
| it. Most of the contrast got drained out of the settings button
| but only the settings button. It doesn't look like they had a
| vision for what it should look like but instead they just let
| some random check some random stuff into their source control.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| I imagine it's a lot easier to show you're developing code by
| redesigning things than it is to do the work to figure out
| fixes to harder bugs with unclear tradeoffs or work to create
| new directions for the company. New UI is just exciting enough
| to fool some people into thinking it's still fresh.
| pupppet wrote:
| You can almost hear the meeting that spawned this. "We want the
| interface to get out of the user's way!" macOS 26 is even worse.
| Suddenly not feeling so smug when I see the Windows complaints.
| patrickk wrote:
| More like "how do we shovel the UX of a very niche, overpriced
| product that barely anyone will use (Vision Pro) on _everyone_
| that uses a recent-ish Apple product?"
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| "in the Music app, the current song title ticks along like a
| stock-market ticker"
|
| This is how it worked on OG iTunes. (Did it also scroll on the
| iPod?)
| captn3m0 wrote:
| Some of the Safari screenshots are making me wonder if fake
| browser chrome attacks will become more prominent in iOS. The
| chrome/content boundary has slipped away to almost nothing, and
| it should be possible now to emulate the floating buttons on
| Safari.
| exasperaited wrote:
| Indeed. Not good.
| ForceBru wrote:
| Wow, I'm NOT upgrading to iOS 26, this looks terrible. Moreover,
| I see people complaining about poor performance and worsening
| battery life.
| themadturk wrote:
| Certainly neither is true for everyone. I don't notice any
| difference in my iPhone's life or performance.
| id00 wrote:
| All these threads about iOS 26 reminded me about something long
| forgotten like... the release of iOS
|
| I suggest to check the comments in this 12 years old thread [1],
| replace version number 7 with 26 there and realise that some
| things never change
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5856398
| roxolotl wrote:
| Yea I'm tempted to upgrade because I assume that people just
| don't like change. But then seeing nn group doesn't like it
| isn't a great sign. Definitively going to wait and see what
| people say in a few months.
| WorldPeas wrote:
| Just because something happened once before doesn't mean that
| it's good.
| rurp wrote:
| I'm not surprised since I think most UI overhauls replace one
| system with another that is roughly equally good, except that
| nobody is familiar with the new system so everyone burns a
| bunch of time and attention learning the new one just to get
| back to par. The new UI often isn't worse in any objective
| sense, it's just not better and the whole exercise is a giant
| waste of everyone's time.
|
| Some subset of users like re-learning how to do the same basic
| things in a new way, such as switching browser tabs, but most
| people want to spend ~0 time on that stuff and get justified
| annoyed when it's pushed on them.
|
| Of course over time people will get used to the new design, but
| even if the new one is materially worse what are people going
| to do? It's not like Apple cares that much about random user
| opinion and the joy of a monopoly or duopoly is that the
| companies controlling one don't have all that much incentive to
| keep people happy.
| sehugg wrote:
| My least favorite animation is in Mobile Safari, when you tap the
| search bar and it expands and brings up the controls at the
| bottom. There's a sort of shiny sweep transition from top to
| bottom, but it's distracting and it's not obvious why it exists.
| I assume it's to highlight the bottom control bar, but that's
| just a guess.
|
| I also notice that CarPlay has _more_ contrast now, and not much
| Liquid Glass. Kinda telling.
| bicx wrote:
| 2025 feels like a cardinal year for top-down decisions we all
| just have to endure for the present. The best we can do is bitch
| loudly and often, and hope the people at the top still feel
| threatened by consumers/constituents.
|
| This Liquid Glass decision is particularly challenging for my
| tiny startup. We have multiple platforms including iOS and
| Android. I was hoping to share much of our design language across
| iOS and Android, but now Apple has essentially decided that this
| Liquid Glass will be mandatory after a year of support for
| "compatibility mode" that disables it for your app.
|
| We'll now have to spend expensive engineering time to cater to
| Apple's design whims rather than actually working on PMF and
| profitability.
| windows_hater_7 wrote:
| I think there were some nice improvements like changing the
| cursor in iPadOS to be an arrow instead of a circle. I'm really
| just shocked at the number of serious bugs in the updates. My
| Apple Watch is sometimes 7 minutes faster than the actual time.
| MacOS is the worst though. I don't remember the last time I
| experienced a kernel panic, but today my Mac crashed because of a
| DMA translation fault.
| frizlab wrote:
| Fun, I actually preferred the circle. I loved the shape
| changing into the element it was hovering; I miss that a lot.
| zobzu wrote:
| liquid glass is dumb. i've no idea what's going on at apple, but
| it makes zero sense.
| lsch1033 wrote:
| Sounds like it's the first time you know AAPL. You won't get
| disappointed if lower your expectations of products from such a
| company. I am using iPhone SE as a digital wallet / dumb phone,
| the new UI doesn't make it worse because it's already buggy and
| nonresponsive. Newer devices on your hands will perform as bad
| after three years.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| I've been using it since the public beta dropped. I don't get
| what all the fuss is about, it's fine. Some improvements, some
| annoyances, but overall fine. I like the newer windowing stuff on
| iPad.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| Honestly, this article is overblown. It works just fine for me
| and I don't have any major issues.
| dawnerd wrote:
| There's some parts where I'm like that looks nice, but good grief
| theirs so many bugs. I know they'll be fixed, but how was this
| ever approved?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Low contrast text over busy backgrounds, from the same asshole
| coke head designers who brought you the mouse you can't use while
| it's charging, because their whimsically creative design
| portfolios are more important than your time and usability.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| I see like 3-5 UI bugs a day in iOS 26. Liquid ass, indeed. Some
| apple product VP really wanted to be the next Steve Jobs, took 4
| steps backwards instead.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| > Now, in iOS 26, search has migrated to the bottom of the screen
| and is always visible.
|
| Holy shit, why?!
|
| Clicking the too of the screen always would bring you back to the
| top and then search was right there! This is what we get when
| people cater to the lowest denominator and try holding the hands
| of people I don't want to be lumped in with.
| Animats wrote:
| Remember Aero, in Windows 7? Same translucency concept. Somewhat
| similar animation. But without the small-screen reuse of space,
| with text on top of buttons, buttons on top of text and text on
| top of text.
|
| This seems to be a spinoff of the tendency to put controls on top
| of vertical video. Amusingly, just as design is focusing on
| vertical layout, folding phones are coming in.
| SomeHacker44 wrote:
| I have reduced transparency turned on in iPadOS accessibility
| forever. However there is so much gratuitous transparency now I
| can barely use half the features. Why do I need to see behind
| quick settings to adjust brightness? Or do anything? This new
| update has made me miserable. It never even asked me if I wanted
| to upgrade. Which I would never want anyway. I only use one,
| exactly one app... Foreflight.
| jansan wrote:
| My wife, wo is just an average user, likes liquid glass a lot.
| She said it just looks nice and she did not have any usability
| issues. It seems us tech people are more critical towards the new
| UI changes
| paulbjensen wrote:
| If they had just increased the blur and made it contrast more.
|
| Also I now have this instinctive feeling that every time I
| upgrade iOS on my devices, the battery is going to get hammered a
| bit more.
|
| I would love it if they did for iOS what they did for Mac OS Snow
| Leopard - no new features, just performance improvements on the
| existing software.
|
| Of course it might cannibalise iOS device sales, but maybe (just
| maybe), it would result in improved customer loyalty and
| commitment to Apple - not just for their hardware but also their
| software. A case of long-term gains over short-term targets.
| frereubu wrote:
| I don't have accessibility issues, but even so I've been a fan of
| these settings for a few iOS versions now:
| Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Reduce
| Transparency Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size
| > Increase Contrast Settings > Accessibility > Display &
| Text Size > Differentiate Without Colour Settings >
| Accessibility > Motion > Reduce Motion Settings >
| Accessibility > Motion > Prefer Cross-Fade Transitions
|
| To try and make my phone less interesting so I spend less time on
| it, I also use Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size >
| Colour Filters > Greyscale with Intensity turned up to max so
| it's black and white. If you set Settings > Accessibility >
| Accessibility Shortcut to Colour Filters you can toggle this with
| a triple slick of the side button, in case you want to show
| someone a photo or something.
| layer8 wrote:
| The trouble with Reduce Transparency on iOS 26 is that it also
| reduces contrast (irrespective of Increase Contrast).
| zakki wrote:
| Hopefully Apple will change its decision on Liquid Glass not too
| long like that butterfly keyboard.
| drob518 wrote:
| The article is pretty accurate. I've been using IOS 26 for a
| couple weeks and there is very little to recommend it. Yea,
| sometimes it looks cool, but many times it doesn't, and as the
| article highlights, the usability seems to have gone backwards.
| gpm wrote:
| One thing I've never understood is why phone companies push these
| UI updates to existing devices.
|
| It seems like it
|
| a) Annoys users when their devices change out from under them.
|
| b) Reduces the incentive to buy the new thing with the new
| fashionable update.
|
| Anyone have any idea why the business case works out the way it
| does?
| wycy wrote:
| Unpopular opinion apparently: I love it. I've been using it since
| beta 1 and it's grown on me enormously. iOS 18 on my work iPhone
| felt incredibly dated and I was relieved when we could finally
| upgrade enterprise devices.
| rayiner wrote:
| I thought people were overreacting. But this is rancid. I have an
| OCD reaction to rubber-banding in the UI (e.g. when a browser
| content area can't keep up when resizing a simple page like HN).
| This has been a smooth operation since OS X 10.3? Tahoe can't do
| it on my Mac Mini M1!
| glimshe wrote:
| I disabled transparency because I find it objectively harder to
| see the icons. This is a no brainer. What used to be a clear icon
| is now mixed with pixels from the background, which are also
| potentially changing due to animations. I really don't get it.
| comrade1234 wrote:
| So far the most I've seen is that it's a bit annoying and not set
| up for working with fingers.
|
| For example, I'm in safari and push the bookmark button and it
| and the neighboring buttons light up. But my finger is blocking
| the button I'm pressing so I don't know it's the brightest
| button. Instead I see the neighboring buttons light up and my
| brain thinks I'm pressing that.
|
| It's been a few weeks now and you'd think I'd be over it by now
| but I'm not. I press the screen, a button I don't want lights up,
| oh no wrong button, oh wait never mind.
| merelysounds wrote:
| How much of this can be turned off or otherwise reduced?
|
| And a follow up question: did anyone test whether reducing liquid
| glass effects improves battery life?
| operator-name wrote:
| The article makes an interesting point about the search focus. I
| wonder if there were plans for AI assisted search? That is a
| direction that could explain why search became so prominent.
| kwar13 wrote:
| Feels like liquid glass is some weird preamble to augmented
| reality so that you get used to the interface.
|
| Thankfully most of the "liquid glassy" things can be undone in
| the accessibility options on iOS.
| npunt wrote:
| TLDR not all perspectives have optimal legibility, but if it's
| easy to change perspective to achieve optimal legibility, then it
| might be a good tradeoff if you get other value in return. And
| phones have gotten bigger, and this is a reset of default device
| expectation.
|
| --
|
| As an app developer I (generally) like liquid glass, it injects
| some much needed fun and freshness into our devices. It's still
| rough around the edges and some of these points are very valid,
| especially around not overdoing it to show off and some text-on-
| text issues.
|
| However I do think some of the issues raised are based on a
| different goals around legibility.
|
| I think NNgroup wants all interfaces to be optimally legible at
| any given moment. I think Apple wants all interfaces to _have
| access to legibility_ at any given moment, typically by moving
| the screen a bit.
|
| These are legitimate differences of opinion. A physical metaphor
| might be that you have a paper with a glass paperweight atop it.
| If one were to judge a photo of your perspective looking at it as
| though it were a UI, they might comment that the paper is hard to
| read in places because of the paperweight.
|
| But in reality, it takes half a second to move that paperweight
| aside to read the paper, and the paperweight serves another
| valuable purpose keeping the paper from moving. This is akin to
| other purposes UI elements serve. It's a balance and a tradeoff.
|
| Just like Steve Jobs pointed out to Round Rects Are Everywhere!
| [0], the physical world is _full_ of content that obscures other
| content. What do we do? We turn our head a bit, or move a thing
| aside. We don 't expect the physical world to have optimal
| legibility at all possible perspectives. While we can (and
| should) do better in the digital realm, there is a spectrum and
| the optimal point may not be where NNgroup wants it, especially
| as the capability of mobile devices reaches and exceeds that of
| the physical realm.
|
| To address another point this article makes about touch targets:
|
| Prior iOS versions made decisions about spacing between icons
| that were based on smaller devices (4.7-5.5", or 9.5-13 sq in).
| iPhones are larger these days (6.1-6.9", or 14-18 sq in), so the
| physical area of a touch target isn't actually that different, if
| at all. A big UI refresh is the time to update these kinds of
| assumptions.
|
| [0] https://www.folklore.org/Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.html
| nisten wrote:
| Looks like MacOS is finally having it's Windows Vista moment
|
| Meanwhile linux people are removing buttons, window borders
| entirely, sometimes removing colors too, it's glorious.
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