GoKawiilIn asking one big question and highlighting 11 key features about iOS 27, I said that the Liquid Glass debate was over. Apple introduced a slider that enables everyone to choose their exact desired degree of transparency, including effectively switching off the effect altogether.
But in running the developer beta on my main iPhone with the Liquid Glass effect maxed out, I’d now argue that the company has done far more than this …
Liquid Glass was the most contentious UI change Apple has introduced in many years. While many of us really liked it, there was a sizable chunk of the Apple user base who absolutely hated it.
To be … clear, the first implementation was very bad. When text in a tab or button overlaid text in the content beneath it, both were rendered extremely hard to read. But some of us really liked the idea behind it and just wanted Apple to improve the legibility, while others simply wanted to switch it off.
The company initially responded with a toggle, while iOS 27 offers a more flexible solution in the form of a slider. At one end, the glass effect is very strong, and at the other, the glass is frosted to such a degree that it is essentially completely opaque. This is indistinguishable from switching off the effect completely.
I decided to experiment with it, starting with the effect maxed out. I was expecting to later adjust it, but instead found that Apple has made a number of changes to the Liquid Glass implementation which means that everything remains perfectly legible even with maximum transparency.
Let me show you the best illustrative example. This is from the Messages app, where I have scrolled up so that an older message is beneath the sender details. What we have is black text overlaid on top of black text – the most challenging usage scenario. Yet the way Apple blurs the underlying content means that the top layer remains perfectly readable.
In my view, this completely solves the problem the first implementation of Liquid Glass introduced. In the few days I’ve been using iOS 27, I haven’t discovered a single example where legibility is an issue.
Indeed, not only have I been using it with the effect maxed out, I would welcome an even clearer version. Now that it’s on a slider, I can see no reason at all Apple couldn’t allow this.
A friend suggested the company may be collecting anonymized data on the transparency settings people choose. If it finds that a significant number of us are maxing out the effect, then perhaps it will choose to extend the slider even further in that direction.
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