Liquid Glass UI was almost Apple’s Cybertruck moment. Almost. Some might even say Ferrari’s Luce moment.

When Liquid Glass UI was released, it was a divisive feature. People either liked it or disliked it.

A couple of small tweaks after, Apple has now finally provided a means to turn off the glass effect using a slider in the oncoming 2027 OSs. Users will now be able to set the glass effects on their devices to their taste.

Why Apple released Liquid Glass UI

Initially Apple stuck to their design guns, for obvious reasons as it were. Have you ever tried to defend or justify a bad design decision?

From what we’ve seen there were at least two reasons why Apple did Liquid Glass

1. Their devices were becoming ever more powerful (primarily in readiness for AI) and they felt the need to deliver something that felt like a refresh if not a step up of sorts, while they figured out their AI strategy
2. They had invested a ton into Vision Pro UI and extending the look and feel to other devices somehow became the a low hanging fruit, in response to point 1.

Liquid Glass UI was a visual gimmick

On the face of it, Liquid Glass UI looked good, not perfect. But once you started using it, you realised it had undone the small UI familiarities that users had become accustomed to, for years. For instance the volume slider on Mac lost percentage indicators.

That perhaps was not the bigger deal.

One of the main issues with Liquid Glass was with low contrast which made content hard or simply impossible to view and texts, unreadable. This, coming from what we know to be a design company was a shocker to many.

Liquid Glass did not really solve a UI or design problem per se. For sure it explored a look and feel that perhaps is more suited for AR and VR but did not really fit on the rest of the devices in Apple ecosystem.

Personally, I saw it as a visual gimmick, and I have felt that Apple, being a design leader, were going to walk back on it at some point.

Your thoughts

Apple’s Liquid Glass Design Prioritizes Content Over Tools; Tidbits.

Was Liquid Glass a solution in search of a problem?