In just a few months, Apple is expected to unveil its latest round of operating systems: iOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, and so on. Previous reports on iOS 27 have heavily focused on how this years operating systems should focus more on performance improvements and overall stability.
In today’s Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that we probably won’t see any serious changes to Liquid Glass, though there could still be some minor ones.
A lot of people aren’t the biggest fans of Liquid Glass, partly due to poor readability. Personally, I’ve always liked Liquid Glass quite a bit – but I do understand a lot of peoples concerns. Design lead Alan Dye, who was largely in charge of designing Liquid Glass, even departed Apple late last year – leaving for Meta. That meant a new design lead, Steve Lemay, took his place.
Many had hoped that new design leadership would mean that things would go in a different direction shortly. Since the debut of iOS 26, we’ve gotten a few options to customize Liquid Glass, with iOS 26.1 adding the ‘Tinted’ option, and iOS 26.4 adding the option to disable Liquid Glass highlights.
Despite those tweaks, Gurman reports that we probably won’t see any sweeping changes with Liquid Glass, reporting that “the latest internal versions of iOS 27 and macOS 27 don’t reflect major design changes.” Ultimately, Liquid Glass took a lot of time to design, so it won’t get overhauled overnight. He says to expect “years of gradual improvements.”
iOS 27 might add another slider
Still, Gurman reports that Apple might add one more layer of customization to Liquid Glass:
During development of iOS 26, Apple had been working on a systemwide slider that would allow users to finely control the level of the glass effect. The company was able to implement this feature for the clock on the lock screen but ran into engineering challenges when trying to extend it across the entire system — including app folders, the home screen and navigation bars.
If Apple manages to make that systemwide control work in iOS 27 as desired — alongside broader engineering improvements — the entire conversation around Liquid Glass could once again change dramatically.
This is seemingly more speculative than direct reporting, but nonetheless – it would be really cool seeing a systemwide slider to adjust your level of glass, beyond just the ‘Clear’ and ‘Tinted’ option we have today – similar to how it works with the lock screen clock.
Are you happy with Liquid Glass, or would you like to see more sweeping changes sooner? Let us know in the comments.
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