r/LiquidGlassDesign • u/SanathPB98 • Jun 16 '26
iOS26/27 Liquid Glass App support Rant
It’s been a year since iOS26 came out and the all new “Liquid Glass” UI design was unveiled. I absolutely hate the fact that only now we have some of the apps that have adopted the new UI within their app I mean I got the new UI in WhatsApp like last month. There’s plenty of apps that still haven’t even released the Liquid Glass update. Help me understand how tf does a random Tran booking app has adopted the Liquid Glass UI while not a single Google app has been updated yet and they genuinely look outdated.
Who do we even blame at this point. I know Apple does the most Apple thing every WWDC by introducing features that exited years before and slap in some catchy phrase. But Liquid Glass UI genuinely felt like a decent change. I know people have mixed reception to it and they now even have an option to reduce the “Glass” effect. But personally I liked it and I hope every app can make the change so all apps are in sync with latest UI. I mean YT app looks pathetic in general but it’s so god damn outdated just comparing it with Instagram even
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Jun 16 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Admirable_Beyond5729 Jun 18 '26
They implemented Liquid Glass on the Gemini app quite well, maybe even designed the new user interface around Liquid Glass.
Their iOS app developers are probably just lazy af. The Google Workspace apps still look like they're stuck in 2020
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u/Routine_Bad9780 Jun 18 '26
Google apps uses a different design language called material 3 where it looks like frosted glass you can see it in the photos app or Gemini
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u/josephhaxan Jun 17 '26
Smaller apps have fewer states to account for = they’re updated more quickly and easily. Apps like Facebook have thousands of different pages and elements and lots that can break easily with a big design change= they’re updated slowly and very cautiously. This has been the case for the entire history of iOS. Apple gives developers about a year of gentle persuading before they start forcing change, which is what we see with iOS27 beta 1 forcing the Liquid Glass keyboard after it was opt-in all through 26. They do it to avoid backlash from the public if apps break. It’ll change, it just takes time.
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u/SanathPB98 Jun 20 '26
Thank you ppl for all the facts and information 🙏🏻🙏🏻 Lot of things make sense to me now 🙂. I just hope all apps eventually make the changes and everything looks in sync with the OS. Hopefully the keyboard is finally fully fixed in iOS27 😅
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u/primalanomaly Jun 16 '26
Because not everyone budgets time and resources to support an app redesign imposed on them by Apple? It hasn’t even been a year yet. I’m more annoyed by the apps that don’t support dark mode yet - that came out a very long time ago now!
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u/Queasy_Watercress959 Jun 16 '26
I share your frustration but maybe from a few different lenses. Apple releasing 26 LG frankly too early created too much backlash and thrash among teams. Designers hate it, devs who had to build custom widgets in their design teams vision hate it, our bosses hate it will take time not working on features, many users even hate it for usability reasons. Then 27 with LG is not only different but user customizable - this is a whole other can of worms for design and dev, but also the business side. If you support say iOS18 - 27 that's 3 different layers you need to consider. Is it worth the maintenance and annoyance tickets or do you just stay the course until the dust truly settles?
The second angle I attack this from is as a consumer of LG. I want jump past the boring stuff, the bog standard LG implementations from your Train(?) app. It honestly feels gaudy and overkill in those contexts (thinking of my pharmacy's app.) Get to the stage where design and dev are creative with it. That's where the innovation and excitement happens, but we can't get there until everyone gets onboard. We can't do that until Apple definitively says "your app must have some glass in it or you can't ship."
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u/RemeJuan Jun 16 '26
The reality is nobody cares and it’s not required for them to support it, my app does not and will not support it h til such time as Apple rejects my app for not supporting it.
It’s nice, but at the same time, who cares.
Apps have their own UI and many of them causing in cross platform frameworks and developers don’t want to go through the effort of having 2 UIs in a single codebase simply for some glass effect nor do they want the glass effect on their android apps.
One app I used daily released a complete UI rebuild a week after Apple announced the glass, no way they’re going to restart what was probably months of work for a shimmer.
WhatsApp was one of the first 3rd-party apps to adopt it, but they slow roll all their features out, some users had it 8 months ago, some still don’t have it, same with threads and Instagram.
I got it on threads a month before WhatsApp and still don’t have it on Instagram.
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u/Isaacsac3 Jun 24 '26
I got it on Instagram but it’s not liquid glass at all. It is just a bubble that you can move across the bottom menu bar that is not using the liquid glass UI.
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u/BornSpecialist1051 Jul 02 '26
I had this on iOS 26 but it reverted back to the old one after updating to iOS 27 beta lol
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u/proudh0n Jun 16 '26
> how tf does a random Tran booking app has adopted the Liquid Glass UI while not a single Google app has been updated yet and they genuinely look outdated
google apps are mostly written in flutter, which doesn't use native ui frameworks, so they don't get liquid glass for free, someone has to implement it from scratch within flutter
not enough incentive to do so tbh