Use when planning comprehensive Liquid Glass adoption across an app, auditing existing interfaces for Liquid Glass compatibility, implementing app icon updates, or understanding platform-specific Liquid Glass behavior - comprehensive reference guide covering all aspects of Liquid Glass adoption from WWDC 2025
Use when:
axiom-liquid-glass for implementing the Liquid Glass material itself and design review pressure scenariosaxiom-swiftui-performance for profiling Liquid Glass rendering performanceaxiom-accessibility-diag for accessibility testingAdopting Liquid Glass doesn't mean reinventing your app from the ground up. Start by building your app in the latest version of Xcode to see the changes. If your app uses standard components from SwiftUI, UIKit, or AppKit, your interface picks up the latest look and feel automatically on the latest platform releases.
Standard components from SwiftUI, UIKit, and AppKit automatically adopt Liquid Glass with minimal code changes.
// ✅ Standard components get Liquid Glass automatically
NavigationView {
List(items) { item in
Text(item.name)
}
.toolbar {
ToolbarItem {
Button("Add") { }
}
}
}
// Recompile with Xcode 26 → Liquid Glass applied
// ❌ Custom backgrounds interfere with Liquid Glass
NavigationView { }
.background(Color.blue.opacity(0.5)) // Breaks Liquid Glass effects
.toolbar {
ToolbarItem { }
.background(LinearGradient(...)) // Overlays system effects
}
Solution Remove custom effects and let the system determine background appearance.
// Launch arguments for accessibility testing
app.launchArguments += [
"-UIAccessibilityIsReduceTransparencyEnabled", "1",
"-UIAccessibilityButtonShapesEnabled", "1",
"-UIAccessibilityIsReduceMotionEnabled", "1"
]
Liquid Glass seeks to bring attention to underlying content. Overusing this material in multiple custom controls distracts from content and provides subpar user experience.
// ✅ Selective application to navigation layer
struct ContentView: View {
var body: some View {
ZStack {
// Content layer - no glass
ScrollView {
ForEach(articles) { article in
ArticleCard(article) // No glass
}
}
// Navigation layer — Liquid Glass
VStack {
Spacer()
HStack {
Button("Filter") { }
.glassEffect() // ✅ Important functional element
Spacer()
Button("Sort") { }
.glassEffect() // ✅ Important functional element
}
.padding()
}
}
}
}
App icons now take on a design that's dynamic and expressive. Updates to the icon grid result in standardized iconography that's visually consistent across devices. App icons contain layers that dynamically respond to lighting and visual effects.
❌ Design includes:
- Pre-applied blur
- Manual shadows
- Hardcoded highlights
- Fixed masking
✅ Design includes:
- Clean vector shapes
- Solid fills
- Semi-transparent overlays
- Foreground/middle/background separation
System automatically adds:
- Reflection, refraction
- Shadow, blur, axiom-highlights
- Masking to final shape
Export settings:
- Format: PNG or vector (SVG recommended)
- Resolution: @1x, @2x, @3x
- Transparency: Preserved
- One file per layer
Icon Composer app (included in Xcode 26+):