Apple introduces a delightful and elegant new software design

Apple today previewed a beautiful new software design that
makes apps and system experiences more expressive and delightful while being
instantly familiar. It’s crafted with a new material called Liquid Glass. This
translucent material reflects and refracts its surroundings, while dynamically
transforming to help bring greater focus to content, delivering a new level of
vitality across controls, navigation, app icons, widgets, and more. For the
very first time, the new design extends across platforms — iOS 26, iPadOS 26,
macOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26, and tvOS 26¹ — to establish even
more harmony while maintaining the distinct qualities that make each unique.

“At Apple, we’ve always believed in the deep integration of
hardware and software that makes interacting with technology intuitive,
beautiful, and delightful,” said Alan Dye, Apple’s vice president of Human
Interface Design. “This is our broadest software design update ever.
Meticulously crafted by rethinking the fundamental elements that make up our
software, the new design features an entirely new material called Liquid Glass.
It combines the optical qualities of glass with a fluidity only Apple can achieve,
as it transforms depending on your content or context. It lays the foundation
for new experiences in the future and, ultimately, it makes even the simplest
of interactions more fun and magical.”

Introducing Liquid Glass: A New and Expressive Material

Inspired by the depth and dimensionality of visionOS, the
new design takes advantage of Apple’s powerful advances in hardware, silicon,
and graphics technologies. The new material, Liquid Glass, is translucent and
behaves like glass in the real world. Its color is informed by surrounding
content and intelligently adapts between light and dark environments. Born out
of a close collaboration between the design and engineering teams, Liquid Glass
uses real-time rendering and dynamically reacts to movement with specular
highlights. This creates a lively experience that makes using iPhone, iPad,
Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV even more delightful.

This gorgeous new material extends from the smallest
elements users interact with every day — like buttons, switches, sliders, text,
and media controls — to larger elements, including tab bars and sidebars for
navigating apps. It also shines in system experiences, such as the Lock Screen,
Home Screen, notifications, Control Center, and more.

Updated App Designs 

Driven by the goal of bringing greater focus to content
that’s instantly familiar, Apple’s design team considered every aspect of
Apple’s platforms to identify improvements that could be made across the board.

Controls, toolbars, and navigation within apps have been
redesigned. Previously configured for rectangular displays, they now fit
perfectly concentric with the rounded corners of modern hardware and app
windows — establishing greater harmony between hardware, software, and content.
Controls are crafted out of Liquid Glass and act as a distinct functional layer
that sits above apps. They give way to content and dynamically morph as users
need more options or move between different parts of an app. And with thoughtful
groupings, it’s easier for users to find the controls they need.

Tab bars and sidebars have been redesigned with the same
approach. In iOS 26, when users scroll, tab bars shrink to bring focus to the
content while keeping navigation instantly accessible. The moment users scroll
back up, tab bars fluidly expand. In iPadOS and macOS, updated sidebars make
apps like Apple TV even more immersive. They refract the content behind them —
while reflecting content and the user’s wallpaper from around them — which
ensures users always have a sense of their context.

These updated design elements apply across fresh new
experiences in apps such as Camera, Photos, Safari, FaceTime, Apple Music,
Apple News, and Apple Podcasts.

An Enhanced Experience Across Platforms

The new design extends across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS,
and tvOS, with updates to system experiences like the Lock Screen, Home Screen,
desktop, and Dock. To maintain the focus on the subject of photo wallpapers on
the Lock Screen, the time is now crafted out of Liquid Glass and fluidly adapts
to fit elegantly behind the subject.

On the Home Screen and desktop, the Dock, app icons, and
widgets have all been crafted from multiple layers of Liquid Glass. They look
stunning, with specular highlights, and allow for greater personalization
options while still maintaining the familiarity that users rely on. For
example, in macOS Tahoe 26, users can customize the desktop and Dock with
widgets and app icons that come to life in light or dark appearances, colorful
new light and dark tints, as well as an elegant new clear look. And it’s made even
better with a completely transparent menu bar that makes the Mac display feel
even larger.

Building Dynamic Apps

For developers using SwiftUI, UIKit, and AppKit, an updated
set of APIs make it easy to adopt the new design. By using Liquid Glass
materials and the new and updated controls, developers have the opportunity to
refresh the design of their apps to make every user interaction even more
intuitive and delightful.