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 known as Liquid Glass. A model new method to design Apps throughout the complete Apple ecosystem. Because the identify 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 usually out there on units, most apps want to contemplate how one can undertake this new design language for themselves. On this tutorial you’ll undergo a few of the situations you might encounter when upgrading an iOS App to make use of Liquid Glass.
What’s Liquid Glass?
Liquid Glass is Apple’s try and convey their perception that {Hardware} and Software program must be carefully entwined. They consider each machine 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 known as Liquid Glass. It mimics glass in the actual world and gives translucency between layers, which means mild and color might be refracted by means of layers. These layers assist construct up in Apps to create a way of depth and complexity. Liquid Glass may 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. Be aware of the sunshine refracting by means of the sheet, and a few of the colours seeping by means of to assist in giving a way of depth.
Subsequent, lets take a look at how one can undertake Liquid Glass in your Apps so you possibly can 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’ll be able to obtain the most recent 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 certain 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 it’s best to have the ability to see some variations to the UI. Under is an instance of what you could possibly see:
As you possibly can see the tab bar is floating and rounded within the center. In the event you have been to carry your finger over it it might start to shine and shimmer. Appearing like a chunk of glass responding to the touch.
This is among the nice issues about the way in which Apple has approached Liquid Glass. They’ve performed a lot of the exhausting be just right for you by guaranteeing their very own parts use Liquid Glass. In the event you’re already utilizing SwiftUI parts to construct your UI then you definitely’ll profit from these adjustments with minimal work required.
The identical might be stated for UIKit as nicely. In the event you’re utilizing UIKit primarily based parts then Apple has additionally performed the exhausting work and your parts will robotically use Liquid Glass.
While this may work for almost all of instances, you might discover that there are that adjustments have an effect on your app in methods through which you didn’t intend. At this level that you must 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 will see that components 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 that you must undergo your App display by display 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 that you must add extra?
– Is there a Glass impact that’s overlaying one other a part of the display? Does this impression the appear and feel of the display?
– 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 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 dimensions 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 house to breathe. Take a look at the following picture beneath:
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 ready the place Liquid Glass is just too time consuming in the meanwhile to assist in your app. Happily Apple have supplied 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 must discover all traces of Liquid Glass have disappeared!
It is a fast and simple method to push again occupied with Liquid Glass. Remember although that there could possibly be a time the place Apple decides to take away this characteristic and you can be pressured to improve your App UI.
Conclusion
On this tutorial you have been launched to Liquid Glass. You realized about how Liquid Glass differs to the minimalist design Apple beforehand relied on and in addition 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 adjustments you might 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.
