Apple is giving Liquid Glass a control knob. At WWDC 2026 on Monday, the company said users will soon be able to adjust the design with a new slider that runs from ultra clear to fully tinted, alongside other changes meant to make the interface easier to read.
The timing matters because Liquid Glass was one of Apple’s boldest design swings when it debuted at last year’s WWDC, and it landed with a split reaction. Some users liked the transparent look. Others found it hard to read. Amanda Silberling, a senior writer at TechCrunch who covers the intersection of technology and culture, is among the people following how Apple responds when a visual makeover stops feeling like a statement and starts becoming a usability issue. On Monday, Apple opened WWDC by assuring users that Liquid Glass will get better, and the company said it is updating the foundations of how the design is built to ensure exceptional readability.
Apple said the revised system will diffuse complex content behind Liquid Glass to create more depth and separation between content panels. It also said the new slider and settings will let people decide how transparent they want the interface to be, rather than forcing everyone into the same look. That is a notable shift for a company that introduced Liquid Glass as a unified aesthetic across its platforms and then spent the past year listening to reactions to it.
The friction is hard to miss. Apple is now adding customization and readability improvements to a design it previously promoted as a bold new look, a sign that the first version did not work equally well for everyone. The company said its team appreciated the feedback and considered it deeply as it refined the design over the past year. It also said the customizations will work inside developers’ apps at launch, which means the changes are meant to be more than a system setting tucked away from the rest of the experience.
Apple did not say when the updated Liquid Glass design or the slider will ship. But the direction is clear: the company is no longer asking users to accept one visual style as the future of its software, and that is likely to shape how this design lands once it reaches iPhones, Macs and the apps built for them.
