WWDC 2025: Liquid Glass Design

[Cmaier]

1) Treating design as its own major topic, right after the 5 minute A.I. discussion

2) Apple Silicon enabling new interfaces

3) Alan Dye presents interface

4) Universal design across platforms

5) Dynamic animation, responding to touch

 

[Cmaier]

 

[Cmaier]

Lock screen clock dynamically adjusts height.

 

[Cmaier]

Personal photos on lock screen given 3D effect.

 

[Cmaier]

Photos app has separate tabs for library and collections. (Yay!)

Also adds “3D effect”. Very cool

 

[Cmaier]

Safari web pages edge-to-edge.

FaceTime landing page adds animated cards.

 

[Joelist]

Kind of the return of skeuomorphism but in a less clunky style.

 

[Nycturne]

I think my concern from the screenshots so far is that getting this sort of translucency right and keeping things readable can be rather rough. There's a bunch of stuff here that gets a little too close to the Windows Vista Aero level of "What does this text say?" for me.

 

[Andropov]

The tab bar design was particularly bad at having enough contrast to be readable. But other than that, I think it looks pretty nice. And it's probably the kind of thing that looks even better in person.

 

[Cmaier]

The tab bar design was particularly bad at having enough contrast to be readable. But other than that, I think it looks pretty nice. And it's probably the kind of thing that looks even better in person.

Also wouldn’t be surprised if Apple adjusts things during the beta. They very commonly make those kinds of changes.

 

[Andropov]

Also wouldn’t be surprised if Apple adjusts things during the beta. They very commonly make those kinds of changes.

Oh I think they'll update some of them for sure. They toned quite a few things down during the iOS 7 beta as well.

The backgroundless macOS menu bar is also going to be an issue IMO. Though Craig Federighi specifically singled that out as an improvement, so I don't think they'll backtrack on that. But even with the default wallpaper (as shown in the Keynote) the icons were hard to read. IDK. There's a reason the current status bar has a blurred background. I don't see how that reason has changed.

 

[Nycturne]

Even just getting a blurred background right while keeping the text on top readable can be tough. There's a reason why toolbars up to this point have used one of the thickest background materials on iOS/macOS. I'm not sure why they want to push everything thinner and let more leak through the bottom layers, TBH. I say this as someone who spends way too much time iterating on translucency in SwiftUI to get things readable/pretty as it is.

They also seem hell-bent on killing titlebars at some point. The Music app screenshot on macOS looked like an iPad app rather than a Mac app.

 

[Andropov]

The Music app screenshot on macOS looked like an iPad app rather than a Mac app.

All apps with the new design look like iPad apps to me, due to the position of the window buttons (the semaphore). It looks as if tapping the red button would close the sidebar instead of the main window.

 

[Eric]

I think my concern from the screenshots so far is that getting this sort of translucency right and keeping things readable can be rather rough. There's a bunch of stuff here that gets a little too close to the Windows Vista Aero level of "What does this text say?" for me.

Yeah, not sure how I feel about this change yet but time will tell. I could see it where an alert highlights the icon or something like that though.

 

[Roller]

One thing I won't be using is the colorless transparent interface. Maybe it's just me, but I think those icons are harder to differentiate from the background and from each other, which means relying on the labels. To me, that reduces the utility of the icons.

 

[Cmaier]

One thing I won't be using is the colorless transparent interface. Maybe it's just me, but I think those icons are harder to differentiate from the background and from each other, which means relying on the labels. To me, that reduces the utility of the icons.

yeah, but you're not a high school sophomore. In my house, I predict that colorless transparent icon stuff will be used.

 

[Altaic]

Even just getting a blurred background right while keeping the text on top readable can be tough. There's a reason why toolbars up to this point have used one of the thickest background materials on iOS/macOS. I'm not sure why they want to push everything thinner and let more leak through the bottom layers, TBH. I say this as someone who spends way too much time iterating on translucency in SwiftUI to get things readable/pretty as it is.

They also seem hell-bent on killing titlebars at some point. The Music app screenshot on macOS looked like an iPad app rather than a Mac app.

Yeah, there was one screenshot with a mix of window corner radii, controls, and translucency/contrast that was pretty jarring. Hopefully they figure out a better way for those styles to coexist during the beta.

 

[Eric]

One thing I won't be using is the colorless transparent interface. Maybe it's just me, but I think those icons are harder to differentiate from the background and from each other, which means relying on the labels. To me, that reduces the utility of the icons.

Right, if you want to impress me make the actual phone transparent and the icons in high school sophomore popping colors, shit they can even glitterize them and that'd be just fine by me.

 

[Alli]

It all reminds me of my favorite jailbreak. Glad to see Apple finally catching up.

 

[leman]

So, I've had the new OS on the iPad for a couple of hours now, and the initial impression is... mixed. While I like the idea and I think the shaders are really neat, there is also an issue with legibility and visual noise. As some of you already mentioned, the content bleeding into the toolbar can be disorienting, at least for me. Another issue is that there is some visual inertia in how the controls respond to the surroundings, which is neat if you are scrolling a website, but can be a bit too much of you are switching tabs. For example, working with multiple tabs in safari results in rapid flashes. IMO they should remove the inertia when switching to the view. And maybe reduce the transparency on the toolbars a bit. Another minor gripe is that panels sometimes look like they have depth, and sometimes completely flat, depending on the background.

Generally, I find that the interface can work, but has to be tweaked. Translucent UI is particularly sensitive to layout asymmetries. I think it looks best if one minimizes the negative space. For example, camera app looks great. But in messages for example you have the label under the portrait, which projects negative space around it. I looks fine if the panel is a separate thing, but IMO it's a bit weird since the text seems to blend into nothingness. I'd arrange the portrait and the label horizontally to minimize this.