Liquid Glass
Also called: Apple Liquid Glass, iOS 26 glass, Refractive glass
Thick, clear glass capsules with bright specular rims that float over vivid photography and bend the light behind them.
Design keywords
Say these words to ask for this style.
Liquid Glass is Apple’s 2025 material: controls are slabs of clear, thick glass rather than frosted sheets. Each panel has a bright specular rim that catches light on the top-left and bottom-right, a lens-like glow along its inner edge and a glossy top sheen. Controls are capsules that float away from the screen edges over full-bleed, colourful imagery, so the picture is the colour and the glass stays almost colourless.
Best for
- Travel, hotel and booking apps over destination photography
- Media players and camera/photo apps
- Premium consumer apps that follow iOS/visionOS conventions
- Maps, weather and widgets over live content
Avoid for
- Dense admin tables and long reading pages
- Low-end Android and old browsers (blur + layered shadows are costly)
- Brands without strong imagery to sit behind the glass
✓ Do
- Put the colour in a full-bleed photo or scene; keep the glass nearly clear (white 35–55%), except the highlighted plan/CTA, which is blue→teal tinted glass
- Give every glass panel a 1px bright rim, brighter at top-left, plus a soft inner edge glow
- Float controls as capsules 12–16px away from screen edges
- Reserve tinted blue glass for main CTAs; repeated card/plan actions use clear glass
✕ Don't
- Don’t frost the glass into a flat grey blur — it must stay clear and lit
- Don’t stack glass on glass more than two levels deep
- Don’t use hard square corners or heavy dark drop shadows
- Don’t put body text directly on busy imagery without a glass slab behind it
Not to be confused with
On mobile
Make the photo full-bleed under the status bar and float the tab bar as a glass capsule 16px above the bottom edge, with the active tab as a brighter glass droplet. Limit live blur to the tab bar, app bar buttons and one hero card; lists use near-opaque glass (white 70%) for readability and speed.
Prompt builder
Paste into Claude, Cursor, v0, Lovable or any coding agent to recreate this style.