[pikhq]

I hope they release a version of these fixes on iOS 18 in a form installable on an iPhone 14; I've been trying to stay away from Liquid Glass until it's actually usable. I really don't want to be forced to upgrade, since Apple seems to have replaced UX testing with "just ship it," as has become standard in the industry.

[BitwiseFool]

Liquid Glass looks pretty from a distance, but my biggest gripe with the design language is just how difficult so many things become to read or interact with. Given that the whole raison d'être of liquid glass is transparent effects, the options to limit that or otherwise increase contrast simply do not go far enough. I also balk at how much extra computing power is needed to generate effects I find no value in and would prefer to disable.

My hope was that Apple would be forced to course correct in subsequent releases but that doesn't seem to be happening.

[bs7280]

My biggest frustrations with it aren't even related to the look of things, its the all around disregard for user experience. The new screenshot UX on iOS is an insanely bad downgrade.

[Reason077]

> “My hope was that Apple would be forced to course correct in subsequent releases but that doesn't seem to be happening.”

I’m optimistic that they will eventually course correct on Liquid Glass, but we’ll have to wait until iOS/macOS 27, or perhaps longer.

There are parallels to Apple’s butterfly keyboard fiasco on the hardware side. Sleek looking on the surface but an objective step backwards in usability. Unfortunately it took Apple several years to reverse course on that one.

[ibejoeb]

The Windows ME/Fisher Price look. I can get past the drag handle problem. It's like every window is now the damn ios simulator.

[tailnode]

They almost certainly will course-correct in the next release now that the culprit responsible for Liquid Glass is no longer at the company. But they won't chuck it out wholesale; it will be a gradual evolution back to sanity.

[derefr]

> I also balk at how much extra computing power is needed to generate effects I find no value in and would prefer to disable.

I mean, "computing power" in a literal sense maybe, but does that matter if it doesn't translate to either "workload contention" or "electrical power"?

I think the Liquid Glass effects, similar to smooth scrolling, are mostly just running as pixel shaders on a spare tile of one of the SoC's GPU's Streaming Processors — a tile that likely likely would have been idle-but-burning-power-anyway, given that GPU power management occurs on the level of entire SPs. It's the same reason that ProMotion "smooth viewport scrolling" doesn't really cost anything.

[rdtsc]

> I also balk at how much extra computing power is needed to generate effects I find no value in and would prefer to disable

Sounds like you need to spend some money for a new Apple device! /s

[layer8]

They won't, it already didn't happen for 18.7.4 and 18.7.3 (only via beta channel for the latter), and the present fixes are being released as 18.7.5 for the iPhone XS/XR. Still I think that staying on iOS 18 is the lesser evil.

[47282847]

I immediately enabled “reduce transparency” and “strong contrast” in the accessibility settings and didn’t really notice much difference to 18 then. Not a big deal at all.

[bee_rider]

Reduced transparency is somewhat ugly (the giant bars on the top and bottom of the screen in the web browser for example. But it isn’t obviously awful like the giant transparency thing.

[Cider9986]

I recommend installing liquid glass on iOS. It actually has been looking good on there since 26.2. Macs have been godawful with liquid glass.

[RASBR89]

Updated my 13 mini. Performance is fine / maybe better.. but battery. Tanked. How true is the ‘it takes days for reindexing’ statement?

[lynndotpy]

Re-indexing does occur after an update, but iOS 26 consumes more battery life than iOS 18 anyways.

Just in one example video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eCUkYJ8A98 ) they see the phone get hotter and the battery drops 13x faster during non-static sequences like checking notifications, etc.

Just anecdotally, my iPhone 16 Pro seems to last half as long. Before iOS 16, I got from 80% to 20% without a problem. Now, I charge to 100% and I still need to recharge throughout the day. Apple simply fucked up our phones.

[pvab3]

ios 26 has made my 13 mini consistently laggier and hotter

[sillywalk]

Doesn't look like it. It looks like it's only iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR

https://support.apple.com/en-us/126347

[stuartd]

Is that not 18.7.5 as released yesterday or am I missing something?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/126347

[lynndotpy]

Apple used to make minor and patch releases available, but they've stopped doing that so as to increase Liquid Glass adoption. For that reason, iOS 18.7.5 is only available for the iPhone XS / XR series released.

Very consumer-hostile behavior from Apple :(

[TheDong]

> Available for: iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR, iPad 7th generation

They are explicitly choosing to only release security updates for 18.x to devices which are not eligible for liquid glass.

iPhone 14 was deemed capable of running liquid glass, even though it has worse battery life and performs sluggishly.

In the past, Apple has usually let you hold back on an older version and shipped security updates for all devices, not just ones that are incapable of running the new OS, but not this time.

[itchingsphynx]

Looks like this is for older devices only. “Available for: iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR, iPad 7th generation” so doesn’t include iPhone 16… nor is available on my device.

[markoa]

iOS Liquid Glass needs its own Snow Leopard.

[lynndotpy]

"100% usable" is an exaggeration that doesn't describe Apple's Liquid Glass. iOS 26 is still very rough and it's still not in a release-appropriate state.

Just for one instance, bug I ran into a few hours ago (persisting in 26.3!) is that, sometimes, you can't even open the lock screen. It just wiggles.

The performance continues to be very poor, rendering far below the 120fps target that iOS 18 hit consistently. This persists with 26.3.

[epistasis]

It's about 60% as usable. Weird and distracting jiggling makes it hard to target where the button will be.

Also the placement of buttons and functionality is completely scattered around the UIs, which severely reduces usability. What do all the mystery meat buttons do now? One has to relearn all the UX. There's a ton of improvement needed, it's about first-draft level quality.

Dark mode UI elements are almost invisible too, frequently.

It has a "my first redesign project" feel everywhere. On macOS I upgraded right away and it was a huge downgrade on performance. On iPhone I waited until 26.2, and merely had to suffer far lower usability.

[Zagitta]

Tell that to my keyboard that doesn't show up half the time and the other half covers random parts of the app

[AndrewStephens]

I find some parts of Liquid Glass to be an improvement over the previous flat style that lasted far too long. A lot of it seems really well thought out.

On mobile that is.

On larger screens with desktops and overlapping windows it looks kind of bad. Not unusable, just annoying. I am hoping this will change as more apps update their design.

[dewey]

Indeed, based on all the “look at that, you can’t even read xyz” screenshots around release time I thought it will be really bad. Upgraded and…it’s fine. After a week you don’t notice anything and the old OS will look dated. Just like every design change and any product that causes a lot of noise in the first week.

On the Mac it’s much rougher than on iOS.

[JoeBOFH]

I am a newer iPhone user (2 years now) and I am of the same opinion as you. I see so many people crying foul, that their phone is now unusable, but I’m just hear going “eh it’s uglier” and continuing. Curious what OP thinks is fundamentally broken.

Now I have heard about issues on MacOS and things but not really anything around the phone.

[zadikian]

I'm fine with the design, just want my phone to stop freezing up and glitching out.

[icedchai]

It's usable. It is also noticeably slower on my iPhone 13, even after turning on "reduce transparency."