At Apple’s WWDC 2025 event, the company unveiled Liquid Glass, the most dramatic software design change for over a decade. This visual overhaul gives you a glimpse into what’s coming with Apple’s rumored AR glasses that will be debuting next year.
Users are getting strong inspiration from that of Apple’s Vision Pro VR headset, which means they’re connecting liquid glass to potential AR glasses.
Liquid glass is named as the idea that each window on the phone is glass pane, see-through and somewhat reflective. In the developer beta, Apple doesn’t solve any of playing with opacity at all, but it gives the screen a sophisticated look.
Vision Pro is not a commercial success, it costs $3,500 and unlike computers it hasn’t proven to be essential to our lives. But nonetheless, the Vision Pro’s UX design is impressive as wearing a headset makes it a little less disorienting.
It can feel unnatural to be so absorbed in virtual reality over a long period of time, so Apple took advantage of its mixed reality feature by overlaying windows over the user’s real environment rather than synthetic backgrounds.
While Apple may not be able to convince people that they need a $3,500 headset, Apple will need to enter this light hardware arena to keep up with competitors such as Meta’s Ray-Bans and Google’s new attempts at smart glasses. And one of Apple’s strengths as a company – what sets it apart from Meta and Google is that it is known for its elegant and modern design (except for the “notch”).
According to a report from Mark Garman of Bloomberg, these glasses have speakers that are competitors, such as cameras, microphones and speakers. Siri is still waiting for its own transformation, but it can help you make phone calls, play music, do live translations, and move forward in turn-by-turn directions. On the display, users can see notifications, photos and other overlays.
In that case, Apple will need to master the style of these slightly transparent design elements. If you’re wearing AR glasses and getting some form of notification, it’s probably not a huge colorful box that blends into your surroundings and suddenly blurs your vision while walking around.
We don’t know much about the rumored Apple AR glasses yet, but we’re happy to bet that we’ll see liquid glass.