I shared some of my thoughts on Liquid Glass in issue #229, so it was refreshing to see how Linear approached the new design language. Couldn’t agree with this more: ​“The one effect we chose not to reproduce was Liquid Glass’s refraction. Technically, it requires access to pixel-level data that isn’t available to third-party developers. Aesthetically, it also wasn’t the right choice because refraction can make dense professional interfaces harder to read. By relying on precise blurs, masking, and lighting, we maintained a sense of depth without losing clarity.”

Raluca Budiu from Nielsen Norman Group with a sobering critique of Apple’s new visual language: ​“iOS 26 brings Liquid Glass controls laid over noisy backgrounds, jittery animated buttons, shrunken and crowded tab bars, collapsing navigation, and ubiquitous search bars. On top of that, it breaks long‑established iOS conventions, getting closer to Android design. Overall, Apple is prioritizing spectacle over usability.”

On transparency: ​“One of the oldest findings in usability is that anything placed on top of something else becomes harder to see. Yet here we are, in 2025, with Apple proudly obscuring text, icons, and controls by making them transparent and placing them on top of busy backgrounds.”

On animations: ​“Our eyes are finely tuned to detect motion, which is why animated buttons grab attention instantly. But delight turns into distraction on the tenth, twentieth, or hundredth time. […] It’s like the interface is shouting ​“look at me” when it should quietly step aside and let the real star — the content — take the spotlight. […] Motion for motion’s sake is not usability. It’s distraction with a side of nausea.”

I was looking forward to this update since WWDC, but it left me increasingly annoyed and disappointed. From hidden actions in Safari to blurred content with jittery transitions in Mail, everyday experiences require more attention and extra steps on my part without giving anything in return. Liquid Glass feels like an ultimate departure from Steve Jobs’ ​“design is not just what it looks like and feels like, design is how it works” motto.

Max Stoiber notes how traditional design handoffs are a thing of the past at Shopify. Agree with this: ​“the hard part of making prototypes real is not ​“turning static drawings in Figma into HTML & CSS” anymore. AI can do that perfectly in seconds. What’s left is: backend implementations, wiring up the data fetching, handling state… None of which is ​“handoff.”

For most of my career, I owned both design and front-end code on products I worked on. This combination of skills used to be a (somewhat) rare differentiator, but became ubiquitous with AI. That said, for AI to work ​“perfectly in seconds” requires an extensive setup with an advanced design system shared between Figma and code. Without this foundation, prototyping designs for real apps still requires some technical knowledge. These days, I often use Figma Make for quick experiments and proofs of concepts before switching to the actual codebase and prototyping the final version with Cursor (fully adopted by the design team at Shopify as well).

“We’ve added three new Apple UI kits, watchOS, macOS, and visionOS, to help you design across even more surfaces. The kits are off by default, giving you the flexibility to switch them on only when you need them.”

The most recent update to Adobe Illustrator broke copying vectors to paste into Figma. Rogie shows how to fix this.

A nice roundup of icon sets designed in the new liquid glass style.

My sympathy goes out to web developers looking for Glass’s CSS in Dev Mode.

Apple released new iOS and iPad OS 26 design kits last week. They’ve been clearly waiting for Figma to add the new Glass effect first, as reproducing it manually would not have been sustainable. This is a core UI library if you’re designing for iOS, but also a fantastic educational resource for everyone else.

Figma’s newest product designer Rogie presents a new effect that allows you to manipulate light, depth, frost, and refraction to create dynamic elements that refract light like physical glass. This playground file will teach you how to use the effect and provide creative inspiration to have fun with glass. 

This effect looks incredible! So glad we won’t need to deal with hacky imitations. Don’t miss a breakdown of how Miggi made this video.

Hardik Pandya with a thoughtful critique: ​“When Apple places interface elements behind a glassy refractive layer and claims this brings content closer, it contradicts our lived experience with glass as a material. The iPhone’s most powerful feature has always been direct manipulation — the sense that you are touching your photos, sliding your messages, and tapping your apps directly. There is no separation layer. There is no glass between you and your content, because the screen itself disappears during interaction.”

“Inspired by the Apple iPhone 16e launch event visuals, create stunning liquid metal effects for any shape, text, or logo. Instantly transform designs into sleek, shiny metallic visuals—static or animated—for a futuristic, high-end look. Use generated code in your Framer or Webflow project.”

Joey Banks recreated Apple’s new iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 button styles using Figma, complete with their new Liquid Glass material. These buttons are fully editable and use native Figma effects.

Nice glass buttons by Oğuz Yağız Kara.

Mike Bespalov imitated the effect using an SVG Displacement filter, without any JS or WebGL. Unfortunately, it only works in Chrome and isn’t easily adaptable to other shapes.

Shu recreated the Liquid Glass effect by using an SVG displacement filter and shaders. See the demo or paste the script into any website console. This seems to be the most flexible and customizable recreation, but unfortunately it also only works in Chrome.

Allan Yu imitates the Liquid Glass effect in Figma by using the new texture feature in Figma Draw. A few other takes using similar techniques by Camden, Luis Ouriach, Brett from Designjoy, Max, and Ben South — some are with the Figma files as well.

Of course, the elephant in the room is the sneak peek by Figma that native Liquid Glass support is coming soon.

Apple slightly updated the corner rounding of their icon template. Time to update all the icons!

John LePore explains refraction — light passes from one material to the next — for non-3D designers.