Apple isn't likely to move away from a controversial feature in its iOS 27 according to a report, despite some negative feedback from users.
The tech giant announced Liquid Glass in June 2025, unveiling the visual theme at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in California, calling it "more expressive and delightful while being instantly familiar" in a press release.
The design was created in an effort to mimic glass in the real world -- translucent, with colors influenced by the background and content around it, and able to adapt to both a light and dark environment.
Apple's former vice president of Human Interface Design, Alan Dye, called Liquid Glass "intuitive" and "beautiful."
"[Liquid Glass] lays the foundation for new experiences in the future and, ultimately, it makes even the simplest of interactions more fun and magical," Dye said in the release.
However, the backlash online was significant. Low adoption numbers of iOS 26, despite important security updates, led to speculation that Apple users were trying to avoid it.
"It is incredible how much worse my experience with the phone has become," one user wrote in a highly upvoted comment on the Hacker News forum, while others labeled the experience "terrible."
Apple isn't ready to give up on Liquid Glass so easily, according to a report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
In his "Power On" newsletter, Gurman acknowledged that there has been a lot of speculation that the departure of Dye could spell the end of Liquid Glass. Dye left Apple in late 2025, going to Apple's major rival Meta to work on consumer devices and artificial intelligence features.
Gurman, however, doesn't see it.
"My sense is that this is extremely unlikely," he explained. "Don't forget: Apple's UI head didn't develop the iOS 26 interface himself or unilaterally decide to go in that direction. The company still loves it."
According to Gurman, Dye was responsible for the interface of the Vision Pro headset and the design of many of the company's apps.
Commenters on Reddit's r/Apple forum had a mix of reactions to the report.
"I don't mind the design itself," one contributor wrote. "It's an acquired taste, I suppose. But if they can't optimize it to run better, they should absolutely drop it. No amount of fancy animations can compensate for its poor performance."
"What's important to me is that they improve the performance and fix bugs while refining the new design," another critic added.
"I'm going to echo everyone else hoping for performance improvements," a third commenter posted, adding that "the battery life in particular has been atrocious since this was released."
Finally, one individual had a more cynical outlook: "They won't because they don't want to admit how bad it is. It's corporate ego over anything else."