Apple introduces Liquid Glass, a new design language for its ecosystem, based on VisionOS

Apple is officially rolling out a new design language called Liquid Glass across all major platforms, marking its most significant visual transformation since iOS 7 in 2013, more than a decade ago. Liquid Glass is heavily inspired by the visionOS interface and UX, bringing glass-like transparency, dynamic shine, and real-time movement-reactive effects to interface elements like buttons, sliders, switches, tab bars, and sidebars. Navigation buttons and toolbars have also been redesigned, using context-aware rounded corners and adaptive sizing to ensure content takes priority.

Liquid Glass supports both light and dark modes and appears throughout the operating systems, enhancing areas like the dock, lockscreen, and camera interface. Core Apple apps including Camera, Apple Photos, Safari, FaceTime, Apple Music, Apple News, Apple Podcasts and more, have all adopted the new style. On macOS these changes are present in the dock, sidebars, toolbars, and a fully transparent menu bar aimed at making displays feel more expansive. Apple CarPlay and CarPlay Ultra now feature a redesigned home screen, translucent elements, Live Activities widget support, and improved tapback responses for messages.

For developers, updated application programming interfaces are now available, enabling early Liquid Glass integration into third-party apps. The company also launched a new Icon Composer app to help create or adapt app icons for the new design language. Complementing the visual redesign, Apple has changed its update naming convention to align operating system versions with their release year, introducing iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26, watchOS 26, tvOS 26, and visionOS 26.