It’s official, Apple’s large software redesign here, and all of your devices will look a lot different. At WWDC 2025 Apple announced “Liquid Glass,” which is its own Apple way: “Your iPhone becomes more bubbled.” A large visual overhaul will change the look of the UI inside Apple devices, including your iPhone, MacBook, Apple Watch, and even your Apple TV 4K streaming box.
While the full range of Apple products is affected by the visual atmosphere, iOS may get the most attention, and for good reason. One, many a lot of People who use iPhones in the United States will have a large impact on people even the slightest adjustment to the UI. Second, from what I can see, iOS seems to be the most affected iOS by the new design. I mean, check it out carefully:
Today, we announce the most beautiful software design changes with Liquid Glass. This is the first time to come to iOS 26, iPados 26, Macos 26, WatchOS 26 and TVOS 26! pic.twitter.com/p8pr8o1em
— Gregjoz (@gregjoz) June 9, 2025
Although Apple doesn’t specify it explicitly, the redesign seems to be influenced by what some designers call “Glassmorphism”, a visual style in the UI that contains many opaque menus and unlike Apple’s current “Neumorphic” design, it adds some shapes to the previously 2D Icons. See (ironically) other operating systems (*cough, cough* Microsoft) if you want another example of a glassy form that might be exhibiting. A person more familiar than me, I might be a nerd with a new look of thousands of words, but I am not the one who designs it. When I look at the liquid glass, I see simpler light. I see one thing most of the time: risk.
On the one hand, this risk is exciting. I think Apple’s UI should be updated. According to Apple’s own estimates, the last visual overhaul was back in iOS 7 in iOS 7, when the iPhone still had a physical home button, and “Obamacare” was still a topic of political discussion. Not only that, Apple has been accused of many in recent years of trying to push boundaries under Steve Jobs and Jony Ive for good reason. A great way to show people that you are not afraid to try new things is to try something new. That’s exactly what Apple does; the risk of redesign changes some pretty core elements of the iPhone UI – ICON, menus, which you name.
But, like any bold new effort, there will be some trade-offs. In this case, one of these tradeoffs might be accessibility. As many of you have already pointed out, Apple’s glass plastic era has some visual quirks and can be threatened.
Say goodbye to accessibility #wwdc25 pic.twitter.com/ckciwv2sns
– Ilya·イリア (@ilyamiskov) June 9, 2025
While I actually like the aesthetic look of Apple’s new liquid glass overhaul, I think there will be some haters and I can’t blame them entirely. Having clear windows may look forward, but when this design comes across, I don’t know, things can get a little messy when the text on the page. Sometimes, what you get is a visually chaotic menu that conflicts with other elements on the page. I haven’t reached any conclusion yet, because I haven’t really seen my own redesign or how it interacts with web pages or apps, but objectively speaking, it doesn’t seem as sharp as Apple’s previous appearance. One thing I’ve definitely noticed so far is that there are subtle differences in where menus land in apps or web pages that can have a huge impact. For example, view this image.
Apple has just introduced the “liquid glass” design in iOS.
It is beautiful, the future…completely unreadable.
What are we doing here? 😵💫 pic.twitter.com/ybw8sixtqh
– Kalash (@amikalash) June 9, 2025
I don’t know you, but what I see is a blurry visual disaster. However, if you view the video, you remove the screenshot from it and it will be different in just one second. This is the same visual demonstration, but the menu is slightly offset on the text below.
I think there is a big difference in popularity here. Anyway, it’s not perfect, and I certainly wouldn’t call it access, but it looks much better. That’s what I think there will be subtle differences to determine whether you see something clear, pleasant and visually different, or whether you’re looking for garbled glass-shaped mess. As far as I know, there will also be different liquid glass styles to choose from, which may affect the accessibility of the menu. There is also the fact that this redesign wasn’t officially launched until the fall, so anything could change.
Your opinion on liquid glass is obviously controversial, but one thing is clear (pun intended), and that’s what Apple does in iOS redesign and the action of liquid glass is definitely more risky than the past overhaul. Risk of accessibility or transparency on platforms as big as iOS, both for better and for worse. Let’s hope that for iPhone, the vision is not as blurry or irrecognizable as some of these early appearances.
