Apple’s iPhone may not be getting a significant AI upgrade, but it is getting a fresh coat of paint. As are Apple’s other operating systems. At WWDC 2025, the company announced a refreshed user interface called Liquid Glass, which features shiny, reflective, and transparent visual interface elements that give the software a more “glassy” look and feel. The design refresh is inspired by Apple’s VR headset, the Vision Pro. It unifies the iPhone’s design and that of Apple’s other devices, with the interface built for the spatial computing headset. This change could also hint at a potential future that could see Apple’s operating system and software extended to other surfaces besides phones, tablets, and watches — like AR glasses, perhaps. Introduced at WWDC by Alan Dye, Apple’s vice president of design, the Liquid Glass interface represents the biggest visual update to iOS, the software powering the iPhone, since the move from the original skeumorphic design to a flat design style in iOS 7. With skeumorphism, the idea was to translate real-world objects to the touch screen — like a Notes app that looked like a yellow legal pad. Flat design upended this visual language, opting instead for simple shapes, clean lines, a minimalist user interface, and more colorful icons. Over time, iOS’s flat design evolved to have more glossy and semi-translucent layers, like a Control Center that mimicked a frosted pane of glass.

Full story : Apple redesigns its operating systems with ‘Liquid Glass’ at WWDC 25.