At the recent WWDC 2025 conference, Apple unveiled a major overhaul of its user interface. The new look, dubbed “Liquid Glass,” features frosted glass-like app icons, buttons, menus, and pop-ups with blurred background colors peeking through.
The update is not limited to iPhones; Apple plans to roll out the glassy look to its entire suite of devices after a public beta release next month.
Concerns About Readability
Some design-focused developers are concerned about the impact on readability:
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Allan Yu, a product designer at Output, states, “It’s hard to read some [of it], mainly because I think they made it too transparent.” He suggests adjusting backgrounds or increasing blurring to enhance on-screen readability.
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Josh Puckett, co-founder of Iteration, agrees that the new look may be challenging for users with visual impairments. However, he remains optimistic about Apple’s past accessibility features improving readability over time.
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Serhii Popov, a design-first software engineer at MacPaw, has been testing Liquid Glass and notes potential issues with reading text against certain backgrounds, particularly dark ones. He believes these issues should be fixable once developers start working with the new design.
Performance Under Different Conditions
Popov also questions whether Liquid Glass will perform well under bright lighting conditions, where glare can affect visibility.
Adam Whitcroft, a designer at Owner.com, points out that the visual clutter created by dispersion refraction layers beneath apps could distract users, making interaction more challenging. He warns that this shift away from flatness could lead designers astray if they focus solely on individual components rather than the whole picture.
Mixed Reactions
Not everyone shares these concerns. Puckett believes the shift away from flatness is the right move and hopes it ignites a larger design trend towards more expressive, experiential software.
As Yu works on building Apple apps, he appreciates the beautiful aesthetic but feels anxious about how well it fits with their small team’s designs. He states, “Apple is doing a great job trying to pull us forward somewhere. It’s very brave to do this, but I don’t know if the direction is the right place. If anyone can do it, Apple’s got the talent. I’m just scrambling to make our designs work.”
Conclusion
For now, many are holding off judgment until they see how Liquid Glass performs in real-world use cases. As Puckett puts it: “I’m excited about what this means for future development, but we’ll have to wait and see how much control we get over those blur effects.”
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