Apple’s last major overhaul of a platform was iOS 7, a brilliant and vibrant vision of the operating system, but which was developed and finally released in a different apple. It was in 2013, and Apple simply didn’t have as many cohesive ecosystem or as many devices.
It is not 2013, however. It is 2025 and Apple has an expansive and extraordinarily integrated ecosystem – you can copy and stick between an iPhone and a Mac, with an iPad between the two or vice versa. Universal Control allows you to use the keyboard and trackpad of your Mac on an iPad, and Airpods quickly synchronizes between them all.
So, with a set of features and a mantra or an ethics that aims to mix hardware and software, the new Apple liquid glass is looking for all its platforms – iOS 26, iPados 26, MacOS 26, Watchos 26, TVOS 26 and Visionos 26 – is starting to make a lot of sense.
There is also the fact that Apple has always loved glass; For example, I write this with Apple Park in sight – a giant ring apparently manufactured mainly in glass.
Liquid glass is not a giant overhaul in terms of moving buttons, because it was introduced by Apple during the connection and later released by the vice-president of the Apple human interface design, Alan Dye; It is designed to be instantly familiar.
Shortly after the special event of around 90 minutes wrapped, I was able to participate in a conversation with Alan Dye. It was brief but complete, mainly focusing on the new material and Apple’s approach in design.
I don’t think we have to look for very far, however, to find out where the liquid glass comes from. When Apple unveiled the Pro and Visionos vision in 2023 at WWDC, it was announced as the future, and in my use, it certainly feels that. It covers applications, messages, faces, films and everything that can be a visionos application on the real world around you.
So, if Visionos is the future, it happens now for everyone – well, now in a beta developer, with a public beta version in July, and this fall as a complete version, all in liquid glass. It is a translucent operating system and more elegant than before. When you move your finger around the screen on an Apple watch, the iPhone or the iPad, everything is fine.
I had to try to move along the new lower bar in music, while the part highlighted turns into a perfectly rounded oval which slides gently. You can say the same for the cursor on the Mac.
Regarding the origins of liquid glass, Dye shared: “A large part of the work you have seen today was influenced by the many years on which we have worked on Visionos.”
And it was a question of having glass, thanks to its translucent nature, and allowing it to superimpose these different elements of the real world which surrounds you. It makes sense for a space computer that passes over your head and your eyes.
This effort finally led Dye and his team by reflecting on how they “could bring this language to the rest of our operating systems”. Of course, however, it is not a recreation to one for one. “We had to treat the glass very differently,” said the dye.
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And after trying the liquid glass, it is clear that it is a screen with an appropriate back and that the interface now circulates between the applications, on and around the overlapping windows and on a wallpaper. This digital material is much more malleable and transformable than real glass.
It is always the classic operating system, but Dye hopes that it feels a little different after a certain time – “It is much more expressive. It seems much more reactive. You may feel like you are pushing through the screen and coming into contact with the liquid glass itself. ”
It is also clear that Apple has taken its time with this version, and that, similar to any other feature that the company deploys, it must reach the brand. Dye shared that “99% of the work we do in the studio never comes out in the world”. When asked why he shared the idea that design is difficult, specifically designed for simplicity.
It is in a way the secret sauce of Apple, and although screams of liquid glass, finally, in glass and translucent, I think that we will see that it has layers, and that like any other version of the operating system, it will evolve.
For the moment, I am just excited to see that the evolution has struck iOS as well as macOS, iPados, Watchos, Visionos, Tvos and all that is not yet to come.
