Introduction: Apple's Bold Move at WWDC 2025

Apple has boldly stepped into the future of user interface design at WWDC 2025. Within the initial three days of the conference, vendors and Apple fans alike are abuzz with what can only be termed as the most revolutionary design refresh since iOS 7 with Apple's entirely new Liquid Glass UI.

This is more than a mere innocuous little adjustment to the look. Yes, it will affect what Apple consumers see on the screen, but it will change the way they will be interacting with their Apple products, such as depth, transparency, and motion to control the way an audience experiences an Apple device in a more fluid, human-centered experience.

What is Liquid Glass UI?

Liquid Glass UI is Apple's newest design system with glass imagery as its top priority. With smoothly moving reflections, flexible and transparent layers, and context-aware visuals, not much was said about it at the WWDC 2025 keynote. Apple VP of Human Interface Design Alan Dye called it "a universal design across platforms" in his post-keynote comments.

No mistake, this is a once-in-a-lifetime change, as Apple has never made any major changes to its UI design since it debuted the flat aesthetic a decade ago in iOS 7. And although Apple has long taken pride in its realistic icons and detailed interface, Liquid Glass UI takes that pillar even further to explore the true physics of glass in the real world.

What is Liquid Glass UI's Uniqueness?

It's okay to create a UI that looks really nice, but Liquid Glass is built on concepts that marry appearance and functionality.

As Apple's senior designer Andrew Cunningham puts it, "Liquid Glass acts like real glass — it flows, it reacts to light, and it is layered."

The 4 Design Principles of Liquid Glass:

**Transparency: **Distinguishes with background and foreground, so that the user can better focus.

Responsiveness: The user interface is responsive to variations in user input and lighting levels.

Flexibility: It works and looks great on all platforms and devices.

Awareness: The UI reacts to the content underneath it, like actual glass.

How Liquid Glass UI Will Revolutionize the Apple User Experience?

The appearance is fluid, drawing from Apple's visionOS — its mixed reality operating system. With motion response and real-time rendering, you'll see that icons, menus, and overlays will have a living feel to them. No more button clusters, but instead float and change with your scrolling and switching.

Apple has assured that Liquid Glass UI will be used on all the platforms — iOS, macOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS. That should provide a consistent look and brand throughout the Apple world.

What Can Be Expected of New Graphics:

Icons and Windows
Apple will no longer offer a frosted-glass look and will offer refractive icons and interface elements in clear. Get ready to have the menu bar for macOS 26 (Tahoe) completely transparent, as well.

Human-Computer Interaction
Popups, alerts, and dropdowns will also shimmer and change based on the background, providing a pleasant soft 3D-like effect.

Lock and Home Screens
Photos will actually "pop" to the front and notifications will simply fade back in and get blurry. Users will also be given a choice of coloring the icons to match their wallpaper colors.

Control Center
Basic controls will hover around as transparent floating windows.

Apple Core Apps
All Apple flagship applications, Safari, FaceTime, Messages, Music - all of them will get the Liquid Glass UI.

iPadOS Menus
Menus and sidebars will float with soft drop shadows that will improve the user's ability to multitask.

Developer Tools for the New UI
Apple will also release developer tools as an updated Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) and new Icon Composer so that developers will learn about them quicker prior to their release. Developers will have immediate access to beta versions so that they can easily make apps with focus on the Liquid Glass design language.

Liquid Glass UI and Apple Intelligence

Besides, Liquid Glass UI is also expected to be in sync with Apple's AI platform, which goes by the name Apple Intelligence. Both were designed to complement each other with the AI features embedded into the new UI.

Features That Liquid Glass UI Offers:

Clear Bubbles for calls, messages, and FaceTime that translate or provide live captions

Hold Assist, so you have your call information in front of you with a light glass panel

Genmoji, allows you to make customized emojis in a floating window

Smart Shortcuts stay in narrow, floating menus

The reason for these sessions is to give you that body sensation, rather than the software.

Design or Usability? Not Everyone Loves It

Whether you enjoy the Liquid Glass UI or not is your call. Although it was highly acclaimed for the look and feel, it is not for everyone.

Some of the Designer and User Problems on X (ex-Twitter):

Issues with Legibility: Transparency makes readability more difficult.

Eye Strain: Users reported having headaches if they looked at too much glass effect.

Jobs Departure -Eras Simplicity: The majority of long-time fans feel that there is a departure from Steve Jobs' core design philosophies of simplicity and clarity.

Sample Responses:

"They've made this (Liquid Glass Design) worse-looking than anything Apple has ever done."

• Vitek Havlis

"They put interns in a room with crayons."

• Ash

"The glitzy glob look is actually painful to my eyes."

• Tipster

However, this range of opinion would suggest that Apple did cross the line in design vs. accessibility. But there are solutions for that, such as: blur adjusted settings, improved contrast settings, and developer APIs for readable overlays.

What Comes Next?

As said earlier, Liquid Glass design has been officially announced to be launched in 2026 on all platforms:

iOS 26

iPadOS 26

macOS 26 (Tahoe)

watchOS 26

tvOS 26

The “26” is just the release year of the version that takes its name from the series -- which will be used to alert users to updates.

Conclusion: Is Liquid Glass the Future?

Whatever you feel about it — whether you love it, or you think it can't be a thing — Liquid Glass UI is their (Apple's) most progressive action towards transforming how we interact with technology.

Liquid Glass is not just a new look - it's much deeper — it is now drawing a new direction towards immersive, fluid, responsive, and unified experiences.

If Apple is able to considerately balance beauty and accessibility in this interface, then they will have once again revolutionized the idea of the interface design model in the same manner that they revolutionized it with Aqua in the early part of the 21st century.

Looking to the future of possibilities, speculations on the Glasswing—presumably an iPhone 2027 redesign—portend the start of a design era.