We may earn compensation from reviewed products. Learn about our editorial policies.
Need To Knows
- New translucent look to the user interface elements like Control Centre and Safari toolbar
- Slight blur to distinguish the foreground and background
- Colours behind the user interface elements dynamically show through
When Apple announced its major iOS redesign, the company introduced a term you might not have encountered before: Liquid Glass. It’s not a new screen material or something you have to buy separately. Instead, it’s a new design language, Apple’s way of describing how the software looks and feels across the system.
Essentially, it is a new coat of paint for iOS that alters how it looks and, in theory, feels to the user. Liqui Glass is built around the idea of translucency and light refraction to give a frosted glass-like illusion for certain parts of the user interface.
Here’s what you need to know.
The Basics
Liquid Glass is Apple’s new visual approach to transparency, layering, and depth throughout iOS. It is also available across all of Apple’s devices from watchOS to iPadOS with the intention of giving a unified look and feel.
Rather than using flat backgrounds and static colours, the system surfaces, like your Lock Screen, Control Centre, app widgets and menu bars now have a semi-translucent, glassy appearance. The idea is to create the impression of light interacting with smooth glass, with subtle reflections and blur effects that respond dynamically to your wallpaper, content, and ambient lighting.
Apple says this look is inspired by real glass surfaces, but rendered in real time by the system so it feels both fluid and natural.
How It Works
- Live Blur: The background behind translucent elements updates continuously as you scroll or switch apps, giving the appearance of depth.
- Glass Refraction: Elements have soft highlights and reflections, similar to how light bends through frosted glass.
- Adaptive Tinting: Colours shift depending on what’s underneath. Things behind parts of the UI partially shine through with blurred colours. Scroll passed something red and the UI will be red underneath.
For example, when you open Control Centre, it no longer sits on a plain dark grey background. Instead, it looks like a thin sheet of bubbly glass floating over your wallpaper. The effect also applies to widgets and notifications, which have a frosted appearance that adapts to what’s behind them.
Why Apple Introduced It
Apple’s designers say the goal of Liquid Glass is to make iOS feel more modern and tactile while staying familiar. And, in truth, Liquid Glass isn’t a massive shift in philosophy. The company has used transparency for years, especially in things like Notification Centre and the Dock on macOS, and blur is common already across all operating systems. But this is the most consistent, system-wide use of glass-like qualities so far.
Liquid Glass was also born out of the success of visionOS, which utilised translucency and blur extensively to blend the real and virtual worlds.
Liquid Glass also ties into Apple’s broader strategy of making interfaces more contextual. Rather than fixed borders and hard lines, these translucent layers are supposed to create a sense of hierarchy and focus by gently separating foreground content from the background.
In practice, it means you should be able to see more of your wallpaper and your apps at the same time, rather than feeling like you’re flipping between opaque panels. In practice, during early Beta releases, though, this has run into some stumbling blocks. The first beta was criticised for being too transparent to the point that text became illegible and the layout became confusing.
In the second developer beta, Apple significantly toned down the amount of transparency to the point that it didn’t look hugely different from its original iOS configuration.
Does It Affect Performance?
Because Liquid Glass relies on real-time blurring and compositing, there were early questions about whether it would slow down older devices.
Apple has optimised the rendering engine so that these effects run on the GPU (graphics processor) rather than the CPU. In Apple’s developer documentation, the company says Liquid Glass is designed to be efficient even on iPhones from the last few years, though you may see reduced frame rates on the oldest supported models. It’s unlikely that you’d notice it, though.
Where You’ll See It Most
Liquid Glass isn’t applied everywhere, but it’s prominent in:
- Lock Screen: Notifications and widgets float over your wallpaper with translucency.
- Control Centre: Redesigned to look like layered glass panels rather than opaque tiles.
- Widgets: On Home Screen and Today View, they pick up a frosted effect.
- Quick Actions and Menus: Pop-up panels and contextual menus now have a softer, semi-transparent backdrop.
Conclusion
Liquid Glass is essentially Apple’s way of modernising the look of iOS without completely throwing out the familiar structure. If you’ve used an iPhone or iPad over the past decade, you’ll still recognise where everything is, but Apple is hoping Liquid Glass will feel brighter, lighter, and more responsive to what’s on your screen.
In short: it’s a new coat of see-through paint. If you’re curious to see it in action, the redesign will arrive later this year as part of the new iOS release, and it’s already available in beta for developers and public testers.
