iOS design history:
skeuomorphism to Liquid Glass

Each era of iOS answered a problem the previous one created. The table shows what changed and why.

Table: The three eras of iOS design (Apple announcements and NN/g research)

iPhone OS 1 ships with skeuomorphic apps

2007

iOS 7 released: the flat redesign

18 Sep 2013

Extra time on pages with weak clickability cues (NN/g)

22%

Liquid Glass announced for iOS 26

9 Jun 2025

Early iOS imitated real materials because its users needed to be taught what a touchscreen app was. This is skeuomorphism: digital design that keeps the appearance of the physical object it replaced. The team that built it was led by Scott Forstall, Apple's senior vice president of iOS software, and the style was strongly supported by Steve Jobs.

The metaphors made sense. A button that looked raised and glossy said "press me". A page that curled at the corner said "turn me". A notes app with ruled yellow lines told people they could write there. In behavioural terms, these are signifiers: visual cues that show what an object affords (see affordance). For a population learning a new kind of device, they lowered the cost of the first tap.

By iOS 6 in 2012 the metaphors had piled up: felt tables in Game Center, wooden shelves in Newsstand, a reel-to-reel tape deck that animated in the Podcasts app. Each was crafted well. Together they made the system look heavy and inconsistent, and they used visual attention on texture rather than content.

iOS went flat in 2013 because of a management change as much as a design argument. On 29 October 2012, a month after the troubled launch of Apple Maps, Apple announced that Scott Forstall would leave and that Jony Ive, already head of industrial design, would "provide leadership and direction for Human Interface across the company"¹.

Ive's team unveiled iOS 7 at WWDC on 10 June 2013 and shipped it on 18 September 2013². It replaced textures with flat colour, used the thin Helvetica Neue typeface, added a parallax effect to the wallpaper, and redrew every icon on a common grid. Its central idea was layering: translucent panels such as Control Centre showed blurred hints of what lay beneath, so people kept their place. In Apple's announcement, Ive framed simplicity as "bringing order to complexity" rather than simply removing ornament.

The redesign had a cost that research later measured. In 2017 the Nielsen Norman Group ran an eye-tracking study comparing pages with strong and weak clickability signifiers. On pages with weak signifiers (flat text links, borderless buttons), people spent 22% more time and made 25% more fixations, evidence of uncertainty about what to tap³. The authors' conclusion was not "flat is bad" but that flat design needs deliberate cues: colour, position and consistency instead of shadows.

Apple spent the next decade adding those cues back:

1. 2013

   iOS 7

   Flat colour, thin Helvetica Neue, translucency and parallax.

2. 2015

   iOS 9

   Apple's own San Francisco typeface replaces Helvetica Neue, designed for legibility on small screens.

3. 2017

   iOS 11

   Bold large titles and heavier type: clearer hierarchy after the thin-type period.

4. 2019

   iOS 13

   System-wide Dark Mode.

5. 2020

   iOS 14

   Home-screen widgets and the App Library.

6. 2022

   iOS 16

   A customisable lock screen with depth effects behind the clock.

7. 2024

   iOS 18

   Tinted and dark app icons; icons can be placed anywhere on the grid.

8. 2025

   iOS 26

   Liquid Glass, and a new year-based version number.

9. 2026

   iOS 27

   Liquid Glass refined, with a transparency slider.

Liquid Glass is a translucent material for controls and navigation that reflects and refracts the content beneath it and responds to touch and motion. Apple introduced it at WWDC on 9 June 2025 as its broadest design update ever, spanning iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS and visionOS, and said it brought "greater focus to content"⁴. The design was led by Alan Dye, head of human interface design since 2015. At the same time Apple renamed its operating systems by year, so the version after iOS 18 became iOS 26.

The reaction from usability specialists was sharp. The Nielsen Norman Group's review, "Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26", argued the interface was less legible and less predictable, with controls that moved and changed appearance as content passed beneath them⁵. The underlying problem is measurable: accessibility guidelines ask for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for body text⁹, and text over translucent glass has a contrast ratio that changes with every frame of whatever scrolls behind it.

In December 2025 Bloomberg reported that Dye was leaving Apple for Meta and that Stephen Lemay, an Apple interface designer since 1999, would replace him⁷. At WWDC on 8 June 2026, Apple kept Liquid Glass for iOS 27 but said it was updating how it is built "to ensure exceptional readability": panels diffuse busy content more strongly, and a new setting lets people choose anywhere from "ultra clear" to "fully tinted"⁶. A slider is an admission that no single level of transparency suits everyone.

Across all three eras, the durable part of Apple's design is not the surface style but the principles in its Human Interface Guidelines: clear hierarchy, consistency, and deference to content⁸. Surface styles have changed three times in 19 years; those principles have not.

• Make tappable things look tappable — whatever your style, use colour, shape and position consistently so people never wonder what responds.
• Test contrast over real content — if you use translucency, test text over the busiest image your app will show, not over a grey placeholder.
• Let people choose — respect system settings such as Reduce Transparency, Increase Contrast and Bold Text.
• Change surfaces slowly — users relearn your app every time you redesign it; adopt new system styles where they help, not everywhere at once.
• Measure, don't argue — run a quick first-click or task test before and after a redesign instead of debating taste.

The pattern behind the reactions to iOS 7 and iOS 26 is the aesthetic-usability effect: people forgive a beautiful interface at first, which makes early praise or anger a poor guide to long-term usability. Measured task success is the only reliable guide, and it is what a mobile app UX audit checks.

Skeuomorphism — designing a digital object to imitate the material of the physical object it replaced.

Flat design — a style without simulated depth: solid colour, simple shapes and typography, no gloss or texture.

Signifier — a visual cue that shows what action an element allows, such as a button's border or a link's colour.

Translucency — partial transparency that lets blurred content show through a panel, used since iOS 7 and pushed much further by Liquid Glass.

Contrast ratio — the luminance ratio between text and its background; WCAG asks for at least 4.5:1 for normal text.

Dates and quotations come from Apple's Newsroom announcements, the Human Interface Guidelines and contemporary reporting by Bloomberg and TechCrunch. Usability findings come from the Nielsen Norman Group's published studies, and contrast requirements from the W3C's WCAG 2.2. Apple's interface artwork is copyrighted, so the icon comparison above is our own illustration, not Apple artwork; photographs are from Wikimedia Commons with credits under each. Last reviewed October 2026.