Glassmorphism vs visionOS Spatial Design
グラスモーフィズム / visionOS 空間デザイン
Glassmorphism comes from UI Expression and visionOS Spatial Design from Apple UI. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Glassmorphism
Shows depth and hierarchy through translucent layers, floating information lightly.
visionOS Spatial Design
The screen language Apple set out for Vision Pro in its Human Interface Guidelines. A window is an upright plane whose background is a material Apple calls glass, so the room shows through it while specular reflections and shadows report where the plane sits and how big it is. visionOS defines a point as an angle rather than a count of pixels, which keeps a window's apparent size constant as it moves away.
| Glassmorphism | visionOS Spatial Design | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 2020s | 2023– |
| Family | UI Expression | Apple UI |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Background blur / Translucency / Thin white borders / Color bleed | An upright plane with a glass background that cannot be swapped out, carrying specular reflections and shadows / A default window of 1280x720 pt, opening about two metres away with an apparent width near three metres / A hover effect that lights only the element being looked at, with one rounded target region per control / Volumes have no visible frame, and their close button and window bar rotate to face whoever walks around them |
| Best used for | Making layered information feel light · OS-grade refinement and depth | Reworking an iPad layout into a panel that stays legible while floating over a real room · Showing a product model at life size, placed in the room as a frameless volume rather than a window |
| Type | A neutral sans-serif | Use SF Pro, choosing the heavier body and title steps this platform provides. Default to white text and keep the glyphs themselves flat. Labels tied to a point in space should always turn to face the viewer. |
| Composition | Stack cards with clear front-to-back order | Start from 1280x720 pt and let the content decide the proportion. Leave at least 16 pt of margin around each interactive item and keep centres at least 60 pt apart. Always set a minimum and a maximum window size. |
| Material | Colored ground, translucent panes, fine edges | Keep the glass background. Build depth from shadow, specular reflection and colour temperature, never from raised text. Keep any 3D inside a window shallow and move deeper objects into a volume. |
| Caution | Legibility breaks with the wrong background. Give text surfaces real opacity. | Replacing the glass with an opaque fill breaks the visual relationship between elements, hurts legibility, and makes the window feel heavy because it hides the room behind it. |