I tested COSMIC’s new Frosted Glass effect, and it’s much better than MacOS’ Liquid Glass

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Highlights taken by ZDNET

• COSMIC Desktop released Frosted Glass.
• This effect is what Apple’s Liquid Glass should have been.
• Anyone using Pop!_OS can enjoy this new look.

When you think of which desktop has the best UI, macOS is probably the first that comes to mind.

If you were a Linux user, you’d know better, thanks to KDE Plasma — it’s slowly catching up to what Apple has to offer.

However, you may also know about what was cooking in the metaphorical labs of System76. Back in 2024, the company announced that it was working on something called Frosted Glass. When I first heard about it, I’ll admit I was moderately excited. After all, what System76 has done with COSMIC in such a short time is amazing. This new Linux desktop environment (built from the ground up with Rust) has come a long way very quickly.

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What I didn’t realize was how amazing Frosted Glass would be. In fact, I’m just going to say this here and now: COSMIC Frosted Glass is what I am a thought macOS’s Liquid Glass was meant to be.

Frosted Glass is beautiful.

Over the years, I’ve talked about how any number of Linux desktop environments can claim the title of best on the market. However, that all changed the second I upgraded COSMIC and activated Frosted Glass. Now, the rest of the desktop environment has taken a back seat to COSMIC.

Yes, the tables have turned. System76 has upped the ante so far I can’t think of another desktop environment that matches COSMIC.

What is Frosted Glass?

The new Frosted Glass feature on the COSMIC desktop adds a nice soft, frosted glow to various windows and parts of the UI. If you’ve seen the blurred background effect used on login screens, the Android App Drawer, or certain menus on macOS, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

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Take, for example, the COSMIC terminal application. With Frosted Glass enabled, the entire terminal is treated with a slightly blurred background. The same treatment is applied to various other applications, such as COSMIC System Monitor, COSMIC File Manager, COSMIC Text Editor, and COSMIC Application Launcher.

This layered look is amazing, and I believe that’s what Apple intended to do with Liquid Glass.

How to get Frosted Glass?

Getting Frosted Glass is a simple matter of upgrading the COSMIC desktop to the latest release. If you’re running Pop!_OS 24.04, you can do this by using the usual method of opening the COSMIC Store (which also gets the Frosted Glass treatment), clicking Updates, and applying the update.

Once you’ve started the upgrade, reboot your device and log in again.

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To enable Frosted Glass, open Settings (ie again gets the treatment) and navigate to Desktop > Style > Frosted Glass. In the sidebar, enable the feature to get the features of your choice, and change the thickness of the frost and the opacity of the glass to your liking.

It took me all of two minutes to make my desktop look as good as I’ve ever seen an OS desktop look. I enabled Frosted Glass for everything, because I’m crazy about the beautiful frosted effect.

The result is good.

Sorry for your bad luck, Apple

Apple had a great opportunity to take the desktop to new heights with Liquid Glass. I’m not saying its UI is bad… it’s just not good. I actually like Liquid Glass and use it on both my MacBook Pro and Apple Studio. However, now that I’ve seen what System76 has done with COSMIC, Liquid Glass looks cute and boring by comparison.

Now that Frosted Glass has been introduced, it looks like Apple has a much higher bar to reach than it did a few days ago. Even if the company goes back to the drawing board with Liquid Glass, I don’t think it will be better than what System76 did.

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To all the designers and engineers at System76, I applaud the work you have done. Once again, he’s proven that Linux is the ruler of the desktop, and that’s not going to change anytime soon.