Liquid Glass is cracked, and usability suffers in iOS 26

With iOS 26, Apple seems to be leaning harder into visual design and decorative UI effects - but at what cost to usability? At first glance, the system looks fluid and modern. But try to use it, and soon those shimmering surfaces and animated controls start to get in the way. Let's strip back the frost and look at how these changes affect real use.

Raluca Budiu

I have not yet used Apple's new Liquid Glass" graphical user interface design, so here's the usual disclaimer that my opinions are, then, effectively meaningless. That being said, the amount of detailed articles about the problems with Liquid Glass - from bugs to structural design problems - are legion, and this article by Raluca Budiu is an excellent example.

There are so many readability problems, spacing issues, odd animations that don't actually convey anything meaningful, performance issues, and tons of bugs. It feels like it was made not by user interface specialists, but by marketeers, who were given too little time to boot. It feels incoherent and messy, and it's going to take Apple a long, long time to mold and shape it into something remotely workable.