Welcome to Apple Insights, I’m your host. Today we’re exploring “Living Glass,” a bold iOS 26 concept from former Apple designer Sebastiaan de With. With WWDC just days away, de With imagines user interfaces that truly mirror our glass-screened devices. “Philosophically, if I was Apple, I’d describe this as finally having an interface that matches the beautiful material properties of its devices,” he writes.

He traces iOS through three eras—from the skeuomorphic “Shaded Age,” to the clean minimalism of the “Flat Age,” and now toward a new era of physicality. In his mockups, buttons refract light like real glass, tab bars float above content, and controls emerge dynamically, creating visual hierarchy through glossy, frosted, and inlaid glass surfaces.

De With believes this “interface of a matching material” could only be driven by Apple’s tight hardware-software integration. “Only Apple can push the state of the art to a new interface that brings the glass of your screen to life,” he concludes.

Stay tuned for WWDC on Monday, June 9, when we’ll see whether Apple’s real redesign lives up to this visionary “Living Glass.”
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