Liquid Glass, for people designing an app

Liquid Glass is the name Apple gave the look of iOS 26: controls that behave like pieces of glass, refracting what is behind them and moving when you touch them. It is not a style you apply. It is the material the system’s own tab bars, toolbars and sheets are made of, and your app gets it by using those controls rather than drawing its own. Here is what that means if you are designing an app and not writing the code.

1. It is already the default on most iPhones

By Apple’s own measurement in June 2026, 79% of all iPhones were running iOS 26, and 86% of iPhones from the last four years. An app that still draws a flat, opaque tab bar on those phones looks like it was made before the update, because it was. This is the quiet reason to care: not fashion, but the fact that the phone around your app changed.

2. Glass belongs on chrome, not on content

Apple’s rule is simple: glass is for the layer that floats above content and lets you act on it. Tab bars, toolbars, the bar above the keyboard, sheets, menus. It is not for the content itself. A card of text on glass, a list on glass, a photo behind glass: these are the mistakes the first wave of redesigns made, and they are hard to read, which is exactly the complaint the material drew in its first months.

Design the content layer as you always did: solid, legible, with the phone’s text styles. Then let the chrome float over it as glass. The two layers are what make the effect work.

3. Do not fake it with a blur

A translucent view with a blur under it is not Liquid Glass and reads as a knock-off, because glass refracts and shifts with touch and a blur does not. If your design tool cannot show the real material, show a placeholder and label it. The real material arrives when the app is built with the system’s controls, which is where it should come from.

4. The three places it earns its keep

• The tab bar. The system bar on iOS 26 is glass, floats above the content and can shrink as you scroll. Use the system one. A custom bar loses all three behaviours.
• Toolbars and the action capsule. Two or three actions in one glass capsule read as a single object. Separate circular buttons do not.
• Sheets. Half-height sheets on iOS 26 adopt glass by themselves when built the system way.

Each is a decision in the design: which bar, how many actions, sheet or screen. None is a decision about colour or shadow.

5. What it means for Android

Android has no Liquid Glass and does not want it. Its equivalent is Material 3 Expressive, Google’s 2025 refresh with bolder shapes and springier motion, and the same rule applies: use the platform’s own components and the material comes with them. One design, two materials, each native. Claiming they look identical would be false; claiming each looks like it belongs is the goal.

If you design in the App Builder, the Preview shows the layering (chrome over content) and the built app uses Apple’s own controls, so the glass is real on iOS 26 and the Material version is real on Android. Your job is the two layers and the three places. The material is the phone’s.