Apple Refines Liquid Glass With More Customization, Improved Sidebars, and Deeper App Icons

Apple is preparing to refine one of the biggest visual changes it has made to its software in years, as the company continues shaping the future of its Liquid Glass design system.

The interface style, which brought a more layered, translucent appearance across Apple’s platforms, is now receiving a round of updates aimed at giving users more control and making the overall experience feel more practical in everyday use. Rather than treating Liquid Glass as a fixed visual effect, Apple is adjusting it into something users can tune based on their own comfort and preferences.

One of the most notable additions is a new transparency control. The setting will allow users to decide how much of the glass-like effect appears throughout the system, ranging from a more solid look to a clearer, highly transparent appearance. This gives users who prefer readability and contrast a way to reduce the visual intensity, while still allowing others to keep the more futuristic look Apple originally introduced.

The update also changes how sidebars behave across apps. Instead of stopping the visual effect at the edge of a sidebar, Apple is extending the glass treatment across the full window area. This should make app layouts feel more unified and less visually divided. Apple is also restoring more color to sidebar icons, which should help improve recognition and make navigation feel less muted than before.

Apple is also expanding Liquid Glass beyond system controls and windows. The company is bringing more depth into its app icon designs by adding layered glass effects directly into the artwork. This builds on the icon redesign Apple introduced last year, which gave its first-party apps a more consistent appearance across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and other platforms.

The changes suggest Apple is not walking away from Liquid Glass, but instead refining it based on how people have actually used it. The original version gave Apple’s software a bold new visual identity, but it also drew criticism from some users who felt certain areas were too transparent, too flat, or harder to read. These adjustments appear designed to keep the style intact while making it more flexible and usable.

Liquid Glass remains a major part of Apple’s broader software design direction, and these updates show that the company is still experimenting with how far the effect should go. By adding customization, improving sidebar behavior, and giving icons more dimensional detail, Apple is positioning Liquid Glass as a design language that can evolve rather than remain locked to its first version.