In June 2025 throughout WWDC Apple revealed a giant shift to the appear and feel of its person interface for its units. As a substitute of sticking with the minimalist design it had relied on since iOS 7, Apple revealed it had been engaged on a brand new design langauge referred to as Liquid Glass. A model new approach to design Apps throughout your complete Apple ecosystem. Because the title suggests, this new design language encompasses concepts and ideas from the way in which glass works, utilizing reflections and refractions to create layered purposes.
With Liquid Glass now often accessible on units, most apps want to contemplate learn how to undertake this new design language for themselves. On this tutorial you’ll undergo among the situations it’s possible you’ll encounter when upgrading an iOS App to make use of Liquid Glass.
What’s Liquid Glass?
Liquid Glass is Apple’s try to convey their perception that {Hardware} and Software program needs to be intently entwined. They consider each system ought to work as one, leading to a pleasant and intuitive expertise for the person.
The core a part of it is a new design materials Apple created, additionally referred to as Liquid Glass. It mimics glass in the actual world and supplies translucency between layers, that means mild and color will be refracted by means of layers. These layers assist construct up in Apps to create a way of depth and complexity. Liquid Glass also can react to the customers context, enlarging and disappearing as wanted to make sure the person recieves well timed info as they navigate by means of the App.
Under is an instance of the Share Sheet in iOS 26. Pay attention to the sunshine refracting by means of the sheet, and among the colours seeping by means of to assist in giving a way of depth.
Subsequent, lets have a look at learn how to undertake Liquid Glass in your Apps so you possibly can start to know the way it works your self.
Getting Began with Liquid Glass
Constructing an app for iOS 26 requires a minimal of Xcode 26 to make use of. You may obtain the newest model of Xcode from the macOS App Retailer or beta builds through the Apple Developer Portal. As soon as you’re setup with Xcode, ensure to additionally set up the iOS 26 simulator.
When the simulator is put in, construct and run your app utilizing it. As soon as the app opens you need to be capable of see some variations to the UI. Under is an instance of what you would see:
As you possibly can see the tab bar is floating and rounded within the center. For those who had been to carry your finger over it it might start to shine and shimmer. Appearing like a bit of glass responding to the touch.
This is among the nice issues about the way in which Apple has approached Liquid Glass. They’ve carried out a lot of the laborious be just right for you by making certain their very own elements use Liquid Glass. For those who’re already utilizing SwiftUI elements to construct your UI you then’ll profit from these adjustments with minimal work required.
The identical will be mentioned for UIKit as properly. For those who’re utilizing UIKit based mostly elements then Apple has additionally carried out the laborious work and your elements will mechanically use Liquid Glass.
While it will work for almost all of circumstances, it’s possible you’ll discover that there are that adjustments have an effect on your app in methods through which you didn’t intend. At this level you’ll want to undergo your App Controls and determine what adjustments to make. Within the subsequent part you’ll discover ways to do this.
Reviewing Your App Controls
As a part of adopting Liquid Glass you’ll find elements of your App that look misplaced. The controls could be too restricted, or the glass is having an unintended impact. It’s at this level you’ll want to undergo your App display screen by display screen and have a look at how Liquid Glass has affected it. Good issues to look out for are:
– Is the padding for a management too tight, do you’ll want to add extra?
– Is there a Glass impact that’s overlaying one other a part of the display screen? Does this affect the appear and feel of the display screen?
– What about your Apps model? Does it work properly with Liquid Glass or does it want some design enter to make it work as anticipated?
– What about Tab Bars and Toolbars? Are these working as they need to or do they want updating to work with the brand new design?
Trying on the App you noticed earlier, right here is an instance of a display screen the place the Toolbar is somewhat too restricted after adopting Liquid Glass:
Clearly your customers will discover this because it doesn’t look “polished”. It additionally impacts the contact floor of the Toolbar, the place a customers contact is restricted to the scale of the Toolbar.
On this case, including a easy `.padding(10)` modifier to the Toolbar is sufficient to repair the problem and provides the management some house to breathe. Take a look at the subsequent picture under:
With a easy enhance in padding the management nows alot extra naturally positioned and any customers have extra contact house to play with!
Enabling Compatability Mode for Liquid Glass
Now that you’ve got a good suggestion how Liquid Glass works as a developer, you should still want to contemplate the enterprise priorities of your job. It could possibly be you end up able the place Liquid Glass is just too time consuming in the intervening time to assist in your app. Luckily Apple have offered a flag you need to use to disable Liquid Glass inside your App plist.
To do that, open your `Data.plist` and add the next key `UIDesignRequiresCompatability`. Guarantee the sort is a `Boolean` and set to `YES`.
Construct and run the app utilizing an iOS 26 system. It’s best to discover all traces of Liquid Glass have disappeared!
It is a fast and straightforward approach to push again eager about Liquid Glass. Remember although that there could possibly be a time the place Apple decides to take away this characteristic and you can be compelled to improve your App UI.
Conclusion
On this tutorial you had been launched to Liquid Glass. You discovered about how Liquid Glass differs to the minimalist design Apple beforehand relied on and likewise how simple it’s to undertake Liquid Glass into your app.
You additionally learnt what to look out for when updating an present App to make use of Liquid Glass and what adjustments it’s possible you’ll want to make sure it really works easily.
To proceed studying about Liquid Glass, check out the Liquid Glass module within the What’s New in iOS 26 Program.
