Alan Dye Leaves Apple for Meta: The Designer Behind Liquid Glass Moves

Alan Dye, the brains behind Apple's Liquid Glass interface, is reportedly leaving the tech company to take the position of Chief Design Officer at Meta, as stated by Bloomberg. Dye, who has been the face of Apple’s software aesthetics from the iPhone 5 era, is supposed to take over from the last day of the year.

Dye will be the Chief of the newly created Design Studio at Meta that will be working on the AI-focused smart glasses and headsets, which are part of the company’s push into the developing world of augmented and mixed reality technology.

Dye passed through Apple in 2006 as a creative director for marketing and communications. He was already on the Jony Ive design team at the time. Back then he contributed to the visual change of iOS 7.

The idea of minimalism and flatness was then spread to all of Apple's software including iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and finally visionOS. After Ive became Chief Design Officer in 2015, Dye took over the Apple Human Interface Design team then in charge of the interface’s evolution and making sure the user experience was seamless throughout the many channels of the company.

Dye's most recent achievements include the visionary Pro of spatial computing interface and the Liquid Glass design update in iOS 26 and macOS 26, Apple’s transparency and motion effects were modernized for the current devices. His leaving marks the conclusion of a certain period in the saga of the company’s interface design history.

Apple has decided on the 25-year veteran Stephen Lemay as the one to take the place of Dye. Lemay has had a hand in nearly every major Apple interface since 1999. Apple CEO Tim Cook has voiced his approval for the appointment of Lemay, characterized it as the long-lasting impact he has on the company’s design standards and the collaborative culture. Lemay will be the one who will keep guiding the evolution of the Apple interfaces, especially as the company goes into spatial computing and AI-driven user experiences."

With the hiring of Dye, Meta shows its intent to improve hardware design and ecosystem integration. The company that owns Facebook is diversifying its product range by making immersive devices along with social media; among such devices are Quest VR headsets and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. The knowledge of Dye in determining user experience and designing for multiple platforms will help Meta in its hardware products and to rival Apple’s Vision Pro ones.

Bleeding-edge tech analysts see Dye’s career move as a sign of the reallocation of the valley’s design talent away from Apple’s strict graphical representation to Meta’s innovative hardware. He could even be the one to bring about the next generation of interface innovation and thus change user experiences over the entire spectrum.