Liquid Glass macOS: A Polarising Redesign with a Gold-Cube Finish
Liquid Glass, Apple’s sweeping macOS interface redesign, has quickly become one of the company’s most polarising design moves. Rolled out as part of a unified visual language across Mac, iPhone, and iPad, it leans heavily on translucency, depth, and motion to create what Apple calls a more “vital” and coherent experience. Users, however, have been split. Critics argue that the new transparency and shadow effects can hurt readability, especially in complex workflows on the desktop. Yet industry peers see something different. At the Art Directors Club awards, Liquid Glass earned a coveted Gold Cube in the Interactive / UX / UI category, leading a six-win haul that underscored Apple’s ongoing dominance in design awards. The tension between user frustration and professional acclaim is now shaping the narrative around Liquid Glass macOS and its future direction.
Inside the Jury’s Logic: Why Designers Love Liquid Glass
While the ADC jury has not publicly explained its decision, Apple’s own awards pitch sheds light on why Liquid Glass resonated with design professionals. Apple described iOS 26 and its related interfaces as a “holistic reimagining” of how software should look, feel, and work. Refined typography, expressive iconography, and cohesive colors were framed as the backbone of a system that scales from micro-interactions to full system-wide structures. The parallax effects, driven by device sensors, add a perceived physicality that many designers see as pushing mainstream interfaces beyond flat minimalism. In the context of the Art Directors Club awards, Liquid Glass sits alongside Apple TV’s rebranding and emotionally driven campaigns like “Someday” and “I’m Not Remarkable,” reinforcing a pattern: Apple is rewarded not just for aesthetics, but for coherent storytelling across hardware, software, and brand.
User Backlash and Readability: The Real Pain Points
For many users, the controversy around Liquid Glass macOS centres less on philosophy and more on day-to-day usability. Even after Apple toned down the version first shown at WWDC, complaints persisted about legibility in menus, sidebars, and overlays where translucent layers and subtle shadows made text and icons harder to parse. These issues are amplified on larger displays where dense content sits behind semi-transparent chrome. The criticism echoes earlier pushback to iOS 7’s flat aesthetic, which Apple gradually refined without abandoning its core direction. Reports indicate that Apple’s next macOS interface redesign pass will focus precisely on these pain points, with targeted adjustments to transparency and shadow behaviour to improve readability. In other words, Apple is acknowledging the friction, but treating it as a tuning problem rather than a fundamental failure of the Liquid Glass design language.
Why Apple Is Refining Liquid Glass Instead of Killing It
Despite vocal opposition, Apple shows no sign of retreating from Liquid Glass. For macOS 27, Bloomberg reports only a “slight redesign” of the interface, continuing Apple’s pattern of iterating on major overhauls rather than reversing them. The company has historically followed this path: Aqua was gradually softened in early Mac OS X releases, and iOS 7’s stark flatness was slowly balanced with clarity and hierarchy improvements. With Liquid Glass, Apple is again betting on long-term cohesion. The redesign unifies macOS, iOS, and iPadOS, and Apple is nudging developers to adopt it even as some of its own apps lag behind. Design awards like the Art Directors Club Gold Cube further validate this strategy, signalling to Apple’s leadership and design teams that the broader creative industry supports the direction, even if user sentiment is currently mixed.
What This Means for Future macOS Interface Redesigns
The combination of user controversy and industry recognition sets the stage for a very specific kind of future for macOS. Rather than another radical macOS interface redesign, users should expect incremental evolutions of Liquid Glass: improved readability, smarter use of translucency, and tighter integration with cross-platform features. Apple’s work on Safari tab organisation, shared between iOS and macOS, hints at a continued push for functional polish to match visual ambition. Historically, once Apple commits to a system-wide design language, it treats backlash as feedback for refinement, not a call to revert. The Gold Cube win at the Art Directors Club awards effectively reinforces that stance, providing external validation that Liquid Glass is conceptually sound. For users, the message is clear: Liquid Glass macOS is here to stay, but the rough edges you see today are likely to be smoothed in the releases to come.