- Apple will tweak Liquid Glass in macOS 27, a new report claims
- The changes aim to fix the most pertinent criticisms leveled at the design
- But they will be limited in scope and won’t fundamentally alter Liquid Glass
It’s safe to say that Apple’s Liquid Glass redesign has proven to be controversial, and nowhere is that more the case than in macOS 26. But despite Apple apparently doubling down on its commitment to the glassy user interface, it seems that the company is willing to make some concessions to improve the fit and finish of its operating system.
That’s what’s been reported in Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman’s latest Power On newsletter. There, Gurman pointed out that in several aspects of macOS — particularly those featuring sidebars or dense concentrations of text — Liquid Glass textures “reduce text clarity or create interface confusion.” That’s something that Apple is allegedly setting out to address in macOS 27, which will be revealed at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 8.
This “slight redesign” will come with fixes for “shadows and transparency quirks,” Gurman claims. This could help to address some of the most pressing concerns surrounding Liquid Glass in macOS 26, where glassy surfaces and textures often make text blurry and difficult to read.
However, Gurman is adamant that “Liquid Glass itself isn’t going away,” and is instead merely being “refined.” “The goal is more of a cleanup and refinement effort aligned with the company’s wider push to polish its software this year,” he said, adding that similarly small-scale changes are coming to iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 at the same time.
A ‘not-completely-baked’ implementation
Interestingly, Gurman includes a sort of half-admission from his Apple sources that the company isn’t entirely happy with Liquid Glass. Speaking of the upcoming changes to the design, Gurman says they are “meant to make Liquid Glass look the way Apple’s design team intended it to from the start. Last year’s operating systems didn’t necessarily suffer from design problems, I’m told, but rather a not-completely-baked implementation from Apple’s software engineering team.”
It says a lot that even Apple’s internal staff are somewhat dissatisfied with Liquid Glass. The design overhaul has taken a battering online, with loud and frequent criticism being leveled at its aesthetic sensibilities and its effect on readability. But with no official word from Apple, we’ve been left to guess how the company feels about its creation.
Still, while Gurman indicates that Apple isn’t entirely pleased with Liquid Glass, the fact that the rumored changes are limited in scope suggests that Apple still believes it is heading in the right direction. The move fits in well with the overhaul objectives for Apple’s “27” software releases, which are rumored to focus much more on tweaks and refinements than wide-ranging changes and new features.
Aside from fixing Liquid Glass and improving overall performance, Apple is also expected to bring much-delayed Siri features to its Apple Intelligence artificial intelligence (AI) system. If it’s able to do that and make Liquid Glass a little easier on the eyes, it will have gone some way to addressing two of the most significant software problems to have befallen the company in the last few years.
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alexblake.techradar@gmail.com (Alex Blake)
