In June 2025 throughout WWDC Apple revealed an enormous shift to the appear and feel of its consumer interface for its gadgets. As an alternative 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 solution to design Apps throughout your entire Apple ecosystem. Because the title suggests, this new design language encompasses concepts and ideas from the best way glass works, utilizing reflections and refractions to create layered functions.
With Liquid Glass now recurrently accessible on gadgets, most apps want to think about the right way to undertake this new design language for themselves. On this tutorial you’ll undergo a number of the eventualities chances are 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 must be intently entwined. They consider each machine ought to work as one, leading to a pleasant and intuitive expertise for the consumer.
The core a part of this can be 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 gentle 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 may also react to the customers context, enlarging and disappearing as wanted to make sure the consumer recieves well timed info as they navigate by means of the App.
Under is an instance of the Share Sheet in iOS 26. Be aware of the sunshine refracting by means of the sheet, and a number of the colours seeping by means of to assist in giving a way of depth.
Subsequent, lets take a look at the right way to undertake Liquid Glass in your Apps so you may start to grasp 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 might be setup with Xcode, be sure that 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 to see some variations to the UI. Under is an instance of what you could possibly see:
As you may see the tab bar is floating and rounded within the center. Should you had been to carry your finger over it it could start to shine and shimmer. Appearing like a bit of glass responding to the touch.
This is among the nice issues about the best way Apple has approached Liquid Glass. They’ve accomplished a lot of the laborious be just right for you by making certain their very own elements use Liquid Glass. Should you’re already utilizing SwiftUI elements to construct your UI you then’ll profit from these modifications with minimal work required.
The identical will be mentioned for UIKit as nicely. Should you’re utilizing UIKit primarily based elements then Apple has additionally accomplished the laborious work and your elements will routinely use Liquid Glass.
While it will work for almost all of circumstances, chances are you’ll discover that there are that modifications have an effect on your app in methods through which you didn’t intend. At this level it’s essential undergo your App Controls and determine what modifications to make. Within the subsequent part you’ll learn to try this.
Reviewing Your App Controls
As a part of adopting Liquid Glass you’ll find elements of your App that look misplaced. The controls is perhaps too restricted, or the glass is having an unintended impact. It’s at this level it’s essential undergo your App display screen by display screen and take 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 it’s essential 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 nicely 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?
Wanting on the App you noticed earlier, right here is an instance of a display screen the place the Toolbar is a little bit 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 difficulty and provides the management some area to breathe. Try the subsequent picture beneath:
With a easy enhance in padding the management nows alot extra naturally positioned and any customers have extra contact area to play with!
Enabling Compatability Mode for Liquid Glass
Now that you’ve a good suggestion how Liquid Glass works as a developer, you should still want to think about 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 mean time to assist in your app. Luckily Apple have offered a flag you should utilize to disable Liquid Glass inside your App plist.
To do that, open your `Information.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 machine. You need to discover all traces of Liquid Glass have disappeared!
This can be a fast and simple solution to push again occupied with Liquid Glass. Remember although that there could possibly be a time the place Apple decides to take away this function and you may be compelled to improve your App UI.
Conclusion
On this tutorial you had been launched to Liquid Glass. You realized about how Liquid Glass differs to the minimalist design Apple beforehand relied on and likewise how straightforward 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 modifications chances are 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.
