Drew Ink The year

Glassmorphism

Also called Frosted glass, Blur UI

A panel you can partly see through, blurred so that whatever is behind it becomes colour and light rather than detail.

Glassmorphism: a phone lock screen over a violet, pink and amber ground, with a status bar, a large clock and date, a glass player pane holding album art, a track title and a scrubber part way through, a stack of three glass notification rows each with an app name, title, body and timestamp, the last one cut by the bottom of the screen, a lit flashlight button in the corner and a home indicator.
Glassmorphism, a lock screen, Drew Ink. Drawn 2026-09-11.
Glassmorphism: a card drawn with the style's own declarations on the ground the style needs.
Glassmorphism, the recipe on a card, Drew Ink. Drawn 2026-09-09.
Glassmorphism, a breakdown: the page with its own margins ruled in the mark colour, the player pane boxed, the recipe as declared and as measured on the file beneath, and the page's colours swatched with their shares.
Glassmorphism, the breakdown, Drew Ink. Drawn 2026-09-10.

Near it

NeumorphismClaymorphismSkeuomorphismAquaAeroElevation

Frutiger AeroFluent Design

What it looks like

Glassmorphism
background: rgba(255,255,255,0.14);
backdrop-filter: blur(16px) saturate(160%);
border: 1px solid rgba(255,255,255,0.35);
border-radius: 16px;
box-shadow: 0 8px 32px rgba(0,0,0,0.18);
color: #ffffff;

What it is made of

the background it sits onbusy and colouredthis is a requirement, not a preference: on a flat ground the blur has nothing to blur and the panel disappears
alpha0.10 to 0.25above that it stops reading as glass, below it stops reading as a panel
blur radius8px to 40px16 is the common setting
bordera single light hairline on the top and left edgesthe edge is what makes it a pane rather than a haze

Where it came from

The name dates from around December 2020, from Michal Malewicz writing at Hype4. The look is much older: Windows Aero in 2006, iOS 7's frosted panels in 2013, and macOS Big Sur in 2020 all did it before it had a word.

Where it fails

Text sits directly on it. The ground behind is arbitrary and can move, so the contrast ratio under the text is unknown and changes while you scroll. Compositing a backdrop filter over a scrolling list is also expensive enough to drop frames on mid-range hardware.

Sources