Liquid Glass Finally Makes Sense on the iPhone Duo

Apple rarely admits a mistake. But when it unveiled new versions of its operating systems this summer, it came close.

“With all major design updates, there’s a natural process where we take a bold leap forward, and then we continue to iterate,” said Apple's human interface designer, Shubham Kedia, during a predictably sleek keynote video. “Our team really appreciates your feedback, and we considered it deeply as we refined the new design.”

Not quite “Sorry, everyone, we messed up,” but for Apple, practically an apology tour. The subject was Liquid Glass, Apple’s most divisive interface design since at least iOS 7. Apple's Vision Pro mixed-reality headset (which itself flopped) inspired the translucent design language, and the company brought it to millions of other Apple devices.

The result was a mess—at odds with Steve Jobs’ famous line, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” Liquid Glass started obsessed with gloss and effects, despite promises it would bring your content to the foreground. Yet Apple’s own press release showed interfaces with illegible text. Worse, users found constant reflections and flickering color shifts distracting, and a lack of clarity across devices hurt accessibility.

But iOS 27, alongside updates to Apple's other software platforms, signaled a shift in priorities after Kedia’s mea culpa. Kedia spoke of reincorporating design cornerstones in what was, if not quite a U-turn, then at least a rediscovery of a core principle: how it works. Instantly, interface elements across Apple devices gained greater clarity and structure, making it easier to tell apps' components from content. The most obvious change, though, was a slider.

Thinking Differently

Apple said it tuned Liquid Glass to diffuse complex content more effectively, keeping elements legible when above imagery and text. But it also acknowledged that not everyone wants the same thing—some users might prefer a more tinted look, and others “would like Liquid Glass to be even more clear.” You can now decide for yourself with the Liquid Design slider in Settings. For a company known for being opinionated, such bet-hedging was surprising but not unwelcome. Choice isn’t a bad thing, and now users had more of it.

“I immediately pushed that slider all the way to the most tinted setting, and pretty much all the legibility issues vanished,” Ben Rice McCarthy, an indie developer behind popular apps like Obscura and Indigo, tells WIRED. McCarthy has long criticized Liquid Glass. Now? Not so much.

“Liquid Glass introduced a lot of issues without adequate solutions, but this year’s operating systems solved or improved a lot of them,” McCarthy says. “There’s the adaptiveness of the interface. Buttons can grow into menus. Controls merge and divide like cells as you transition between views. Toolbars can expand and contract smoothly as the view changes size.”

Flexibility matters when resizing windows across any device. But while announcing its updates, Apple also dropped major hints that all but confirmed new hardware—it showed iPhone apps running on an iPad or a Mac could resize to a suspiciously specific shape that matched the rumored inner display dimensions of Apple’s upcoming folding phone.

Designed to Flow

When Apple showed off the iPhone Duo, everything clicked. Its passport-shaped display bucks the trend of iPhones and their rivals growing taller over the years. The Duo is wider and almost squat, and when opened, it naturally defaults to landscape, echoing the iPad Mini display.

Apple being Apple, it wanted to avoid the jarring jolt between displays that’s often evident on rival foldables, so it made content appear to move seamlessly from one screen to the other. That begins with the hardware. As Molly Anderson, Apple's vice president of Industrial Design, said at the September keynote: “To achieve this continuity, we designed iPhone Duo around a consistent aspect ratio that is the same across both displays.” But it’s the software—rooted in Liquid Glass—that sells the illusion.

The most arresting element is a fancy animation, which various folks in the Android space are now busy being “inspired” by. It reinforces the idea of a flowing interface. Meanwhile, Liquid Glass freed Apple from being prescriptive about where essential controls live. On the Duo, they sit at the side. When the phone’s closed, that frees up space for content. When it’s open, the controls stay in a consistent spot, so you never have to hunt for them. Reorient the device, and everything settles into the most appropriate place.

That’s form following function, not function being subservient to form. This device and its flexible interface don’t strictly need the Liquid Glass design language, but the two feel made for each other. Liquid Glass finally makes sense on the iPhone Duo—and with Apple’s other refinements, it’s starting to make sense elsewhere, too.

Clarity of Purpose

How much of this is happenstance is hard to say. Given Apple’s lead times, pure coincidence seems unlikely. And even if Liquid Glass wasn’t made with the Duo in mind, it adapts to it.

Liquid Glass feels more considered. It’s increasingly tuned for individual devices rather than governed by a “universal” aesthetic forced onto them all. The result is operating systems that feel solid rather than fragile, with interfaces less likely to fight content for your attention. On Macs and iPads, the Liquid Glass revamp now looks more like a love letter to Aqua—Apple's water-themed interface introduced in 2000. On the iPhone, it’s usable again. On the Duo, it’s a delight.

That’s not to say it’s perfect. “There’s some weirdness that hasn’t been fully resolved, and there needs to be a consistency to all these materials or the metaphors break down,” McCarthy says. “But overall, Liquid Glass is vastly improved.”

And it’s worth remembering that while the Duo is new, Liquid Glass is relatively young, too. As developer Steve Troughton-Smith wrote, “For some iPhone apps, even with keen developers, it will take six months to a year of work to properly support iPhone Duo. A lot of developers are still trying to finish the Liquid Glass transition they started last year.”

A useful reminder that transitions take time. But at least now, Apple’s vision looks clear.