Stringers
GitHub open-source project · written 11-6
0kzh/glisse · 0kzh

A 19-second video turns a "played-out" topic into 400 stars: Glisse and its Liquid Glass controls

What it is A free React component library. Install it and you get iPhone-identical Liquid Glass buttons, switches, sliders and tab bars on the web.

Why it took off Most rivals give you one glass panel. This gives you a full set of controls that also feel right. The author's 19-second demo post got 105k views and 1,500 bookmarks, and in early November Instagram repost accounts and CodePen spread it into a second wave.

BHow you could follow it Build a Vue or Svelte version to the same fidelity bar, or fill the gaps it leaves (Sheet, Alert, navigation bar), and post a short feel-focused screen recording to X and Instagram.

Grade B: the play is clear and the framework ports and missing controls are still open. But Liquid Glass has been hot for a year and a half, so this kind of project has a low star ceiling, and the author could add those controls themselves. Chatter in small circles
Data (updated daily) · Repo created 2026-10-23 · 436 stars · 7 days +300
GitHub · stars
020040010-2810-3111-0311-0511-08436
Data 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-08 (12 days, 12 observations). Points before 10-28 come from deeply / archive backfill, not every day has one

A designer-engineer in New York spent two weeks porting iOS 26's full Liquid Glass control set to the web. Plenty of repos on this topic already exist, and the largest had 6,600 stars a year ago. His edge is "looks more like it": every parameter was measured against the iOS simulator. Below: why it broke out in a crowded niche, where the stars came from, and where to start if you want the same.

A 19-second video

On the afternoon of Oct 26, 2026, Kelvin Zhang (@kelvinzhg on X) posted with one line of text, "Introducing Glisse - iOS 26 Liquid Glass for the web", and a 19-second screen recording: a row of buttons, switches, sliders and a bottom tab bar on a webpage, looking just like an iPhone. Drag the background and the glass bends the light behind it.

As of 11-06, the post had 105k views, about 1,700 likes and 1,500 bookmarks. Bookmarks nearly matching likes usually means developers are saving it to use in a project later.

The repo, 0kzh/glisse, was created 10-23 three days before the post. The author's GitHub had 189 followers and two earlier small projects with a hundred-odd stars each (minimal-youtube, minicraft). No real fan base.

What it actually is

A React component library. npm install glisse and go. Styles ship with the components, no separate CSS to load. It covers the full iOS 26 control set: Button, TabBar, Switch, Slider, SegmentedControl, Menu, Input. MIT licensed, free.

Technically it doesn't use WebGL. It uses SVG filters plus CSS. Safari and Firefox don't support SVG filters on backdrop blur, so it copies the background and does its own refraction, keeping all three browsers looking roughly the same.

Why it stood out in a crowded field

Liquid Glass has been the hottest visual language in design circles since WWDC 2025. Web versions started appearing around June 2025. These are the others doing the same thing:

ProjectLaunchedScaleHow it differs from Glisse
rdev/liquid-glass-react2025-066,621 stars, about 37k weekly npm downloadsOnly a single glass container, no full control set
AndrewPrifer/liquid-dom2026-042,581 starLower-level effect engine
dashersw/liquid-glass-js2025-061,700 starPure JS effects
shuding/liquid-glass2025-061,225 starA copyable shader demo
liquidGL / liquid-glass-studio2025-061,046 / 811 starWebGL/WebGPU, heavy, leans toward demos
callstack/liquid-glass2025-091,726 stars, about 215k weekly downloadsReact Native, not web
Glassy UI, Tactile Glass UI, etc.2026-10Very smallAppeared around the same time, mediocre feel

(GitHub and npm, 11-06)

Others build "a piece of glass." Glisse builds "a whole set of iOS controls that you can use right away, and the feel is right." The author's commit log is full of lines like this: "measured in the simulator at 3x" (measured at 3x resolution in the simulator), "red bends a fifth further than blue" (red light bends a fifth more than blue). Buttons scale up 15 px on press and spring back; the thumb of a switch or slider "lifts up and turns into a lens" when held; the tab bar lens has 2–3 px of chromatic dispersion at its edges; the edge highlight fades out within 1.2 px. You can see all of this in a 19-second video, and that is the reason for the 1,500 bookmarks.

From 10-24 to 10-29 he shipped 9 versions (0.1.0 to 0.5.0). The commit history shows Devin bot PRs, which suggests (inferred) he used AI assistance for coding.

Not everyone was won over. The most-liked comment under the post said "doesn't feel or look the same as actual liquid glass. had my hopes up.." (39 likes). Another said "animations are smooth, but still not glass enough". The critics care about "how close is it", which is exactly what the project is competing on.

Where the stars came from: two waves

Daily GitHub stars (from 10-28):

DatestarAdded that day
10-28100—
10-29121+21
10-30 to 11-03127 → 143+2 to +7 per day
11-04191+48
11-05312+121
11-06385+73

The first wave came from the author's own X post, which brought in about 100 stars from 10-26 to 10-28. Afterward VentureDex, What Ships, and several React component directories listed it one by one. On Threads, a Chinese account, 10-28, reposted it, and the post still contains the template placeholder "fill in your own line here", a sign of batch-reposting.

The second wave on 11-04 and 11-05 has no fully confirmed source. Three things line up with the timing:

  • 11-02: CodePen's official account used the Glisse URL to demo its own AI feature, with about 2,900 views. Small reach.
  • 11-03: Louis Raillé (@louis_rlee) on Instagram posted a Reel that opens with "This isn't iOS. It's a website." The caption lists five selling points: "Drag the wallpaper and the glass bends the light behind it", "Press and hold a slider or toggle and it lifts up into a lens", "All React components", "No WebGL, just SVG filters and CSS", and "Free, MIT". It ends with "Comment LIQUID and I'll DM you the link + my starter kit". This is a very common Instagram play: take someone else's free project that looks good, and use a "comment to get the resources" hook to build a DM list.
  • Around 11-03, X officially rolled out a Liquid Glass style (reported by taisy0.com 11-03). That likely sent a wave of people looking for "the web version too", but I found no direct evidence that this traffic came from Glisse. (Inference.)

There may be big-account reposts I didn't find. I found no posts about it on HN, Reddit, or Product Hunt.

npm downloads rose earlier and more steadily than stars: 10-24 had 818 downloads on day one, 11-04 rose to 3,461, and 10-30 to 11-05 totaled 14,296 in one week (npm; may include mirror and CI noise, not verified). Real people are installing it, and a downstream project opened an issue asking whether to use it for a toolbar.

What it doesn't do

  • React only. Vue has a small glassy-liquid package. Svelte, Solid, and native Web Components have no complete version with the right feel.
  • Only part of the iOS controls. No Sheet, Alert, navigation bar, list, or date picker, the things most apps actually use.
  • No design files. No Figma components and no full-page templates, so designers have nothing to pick up.
  • Updates have stopped. The last commit was on 10-30, and there has been nothing for a week since.
  • Some people say it doesn't look close enough. The two comments above show there's still room to get closer to the original.

If it were you

Verdict: B. Worth a try. It shows something clear: in a visual theme that has been overdone, "the closest match to the original, ready to use" plus a short video that shows the details can take off from a single post. But the star ceiling for this theme isn't high. It got 400 stars in two weeks, while the leader took a year to reach 6,600. Liquid Glass has also been trending for a year and a half, and the novelty is wearing off.

Who it suits: people who are both designer and front-end developer, obsessive about motion and pixels, with a Mac for iOS simulator measurements, and who can post a good screen recording on X or Instagram.

Who it doesn't suit: people who just want to port the code to another framework and don't care about the feel. That would be the tenth "one glass block" demo, and nobody bookmarks it. Also people with no posting channel who expect organic GitHub traffic. A repo under 60 days old won't make trending, and the stars come only from posts.

How to do it. Three options, ranked by how worth it they are:

  1. Switch ecosystems: build a full Liquid Glass control set for Vue or Svelte, matching Glisse's fidelity standard, and document the "parameters measured in the simulator" clearly in the README and commits, as they did. Right now the Vue side has only one small project.
  2. Fill in the controls it lacks: Sheet, Alert, navigation bar, and list. You can submit these as PRs to Glisse to build reputation, or release them as a standalone "Liquid Glass full-page template".
  3. Move to another design language and use the same method: the next visual style a big company ships that web pages can't access through native APIs (for example, Apple's next system style, or the spatial look of visionOS). Whoever builds "the closest match" first gets this wave of stars.

How to get users: one vertical screen recording under 20 seconds that only shows the feel: press, drag, hold to become a lens, with the first line "This isn't an app, it's a website." Post on X first, then send the same video to accounts on Instagram and TikTok that cover front-end and design content. They are short on this kind of material and will repost it themselves. Build a playable demo site too, don't just link to GitHub.

When to move: as early as possible, ideally before January 2027. Liquid Glass has been hot for a year and a half. When Apple unveils a new style at WWDC next June, attention on this theme will likely drop off. (Inference.)

What would show I'm wrong: ① Glisse's author ships a Vue or Svelte version, or fills in the controls, within a month or two. That closes the first two options. ② After November, Glisse's daily new stars drop back to single digits, and rdev/liquid-glass-react also stops growing. That would mean the web Liquid Glass wave is over. ③ The reverse: if a new repo in the same theme gets over 1,000 stars in two weeks from one video, the ceiling is higher than estimated here, and you should move faster.

Data and sources

GitHub: the 0kzh/glisse repo page, commit history, and daily stars (10-28 to 11-06); star counts for similar repos (11-06). npm: download counts for glisse and similar packages (api.npmjs.org, as of 11-05). X: @kelvinzhg 10-26 launch post and comments, @CodePen 11-02 post. Instagram: @louis_rlee 11-03 Reel. Aggregator sites: VentureDex, What Ships, verso.haotrr.com, reactlibraryhub. X rebranding report: taisy0.com 2026-11-03. Anything marked "inference" or "not verified" is inference or unverified.

GitHub repo ↗

Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
Competitors
NameWhereLaunchedScaleHow it differs from this one
rdev/liquid-glass-reactOpen source2025-06-106,621 stars; npm ~37k downloads/weekOnly a glass wrapper container. No full iOS control set, no press/lens interaction
AndrewPrifer/liquid-domOpen source2026-04-182,581 stars; @liquid-dom/react ~860 downloads/weekA low-level effects engine. Glisse is a finished component set
shuding/liquid-glassOpen source2025-06-111,225 starA copyable SVG shader demo, not a component library
dashersw/liquid-glass-jsOpen source2025-06-111,700 stars; npm ~480 downloads/weekPure JS effects, no iOS controls
naughtyduk/liquidGL / iyinchao/liquid-glass-studioOpen source2025-061,046 / 811 starWebGL/WebGPU rendering, heavy and more demo-oriented. Glisse uses only SVG filters + CSS, with Safari/Firefox fallbacks
ybouane/liquidglassOpen source2026-04-04601 starEffects library, no controls
callstack/liquid-glassOpen source2025-09-021,726 stars; npm ~215k downloads/weekReact Native native bridge, not web
Glassy UI / Tactile Glass UIWeb2026-10-20 / 2026-10-26Small (LinkedIn self-post)Same theme around the same time, but weak on fidelity and interaction feel. Tactile uses WebGL2
Apple .glassEffect() / expo-glass-effectBig-company featuresiOS 26 and upSystem levelOnly in native apps, not on the web. This is exactly Glisse's gap
Where users come from
  • Confirmed Author's X launch post + demo video: 2026-10-26 @kelvinzhg launch post had 105.3K views, about 1.7K likes, and 1.5K bookmarks. npm downloads rose afterward
  • Confirmed Instagram creator "comment to get resources" repost: 2026-11-03 Louis Raillé Reel "This isn't iOS. It's a website", with a caption asking viewers to comment LIQUID for a DM starter kit. Timing matches the 11-04/05 star peak
  • Confirmed CodePen official account example: 2026-11-02 @CodePen used glisse to demo its AI agent, about 2.9K views, cross-posted to FB/IG
  • Confirmed Aggregator sites and repost accounts: VentureDex (10-26), What Ships, reactlibraryhub, haotrr verso (10-28), Threads @dingyi Chinese repost (template placeholder line still present)
  • Confirmed Small YouTube creator: Sadra Majidi tutorial video, about 190 views
  • Inference Platform event: X and other big apps adopted Liquid Glass in early November: taisy0.com 2026-11-03 reported X rolling out Liquid Glass. Same period as the peak, but no direct evidence of referral traffic
  • Inference HN / Reddit / ads / Product Hunt: no related posts in our hackernews library; no dedicated Reddit thread or ads found in search

0kzh/glisse:iOS 26 Liquid Glass for the web

Research date 2026-11-06. Repo github.com/0kzh/glisse, site glisse.kelvinzhang.ca (also .com), npm package glisse, MIT.

Bottom line

Glisse is a React Liquid Glass component library built in two weeks by a designer-engineer (Kelvin Zhang, New York, X @kelvinzhg). It took off mainly because of the product's craft: it matches the press spring, lens refraction, chromatic dispersion, and edge highlights pixel by pixel against iOS 26.1 simulator screenshots at 3x, and ships a full control set you can use right away with npm install (Button / TabBar / Switch / Slider / SegmentedControl / Menu / Input). A 20-second demo video then blew up on X (105K views). In early November, an Instagram repost account and CodePen's official account used it as an example, which brought a second wave. The heat came from being "the closest match" in a theme that's already been overdone, not from a new theme.

1. Data

  • GitHub (our github library repo_day / data card): created on 2026-10-23; 10-28 had 100 stars, and from 10-28 to 11-03 it grew only 3–20 per day; 11-04 added 48, 11-05 added 121, 11-06 added 73, reaching 385 (11-06 via API check, already at 402), forks 18. The repo was under 60 days old, so it did not reach trending.
  • The author's other repos: minimal-youtube 183, minicraft 117. They have a track record of small projects that took off, but the follower base is tiny (GitHub followers 189).
  • npm downloads (api.npmjs.org): 10-24 published 0.1.0; daily downloads 10-24 818 → 10-30 1,727 → 11-04 3,461 → 11-05 2,630; over the last 7 days (10-30 to 11-05) 14,296. Downloads clearly rose earlier and more steadily than stars, which suggests real people are installing it (may include mirror/CI noise, not verified).
  • Release cadence: from 10-24 to 10-29 it shipped 0.1.0 → 0.5.0, 9 versions in total. Commit messages are extremely detailed ("measured in the simulator at 3x", "red bends a fifth further than blue"), showing an author focused on fidelity. 3 external PRs (onlymoein), plus PRs from the devin-ai-integration bot. The author is using Devin to assist development.

2. Competitors (doing the same thing)

NameWhereLaunchedScaleHow it differs from Glisse
rdev/liquid-glass-reactOpen source / npm2025-06-106,621 stars; npm ~37k downloads/weekOnly gives a <LiquidGlass> wrapper container, no full iOS control set or interaction feel
AndrewPrifer/liquid-domOpen source / npm2026-04-182,581 stars; @liquid-dom/react ~860 downloads/weekAlso "Liquid Glass for the Web", but more of a low-level effect engine; Glisse is a finished control kit
shuding/liquid-glassOpen source2025-06-111,225 starA copyable SVG shader demo, not a component library
dashersw/liquid-glass-jsOpen source / npm2025-06-111,700 stars; ~480 weekly downloadsPure JS effect library
naughtyduk/liquidGL, iyinchao/liquid-glass-studioOpen source2025-061,046 / 811 starWebGL/WebGPU rendering, heavy and demo-oriented; Glisse uses only SVG filters + CSS
ybouane/liquidglassOpen source2026-04-04601 starEffect library, no iOS controls
callstack/liquid-glassOpen source (React Native)2025-09-021,726 stars; ~215k weekly downloadsRN native bridge, not for the web
Glassy UI, Tactile Glass UI, glassy-liquid (Vue)Web / open source2026-10-20, 10-26, around mid-OctoberSmall, organic posts on LinkedIn/RedditSame-period look-alikes, with weak claims on feel and fidelity; Tactile uses WebGL2
Apple's native .glassEffect() / expo-glass-effectBig-company featuresiOS 26 and up—Only available in native apps, not reachable from the web. This is exactly Glisse's gap.

Verdict: lots of competitors, and libraries at the 6-thousand-star level already existed a year earlier. Glisse is neither the first nor the biggest.

3. Growth: where users came from

  1. Author's X launch post (confirmed, main engine): 2026-10-26 @kelvinzhg "Introducing Glisse - iOS 26 Liquid Glass for the web" with a 20-second demo video, 105.3K views, about 1.7K likes, 1.5K bookmarks (read via r.jina.ai from x.com/kelvinzhg/status/2114756680047321369). Bookmarks nearly match likes, the classic "developers save it to use later" pattern. Replies also questioned it: "doesn't feel or look the same as actual liquid glass" (@wojsacewicz, 39 likes). npm downloads started rising after this post; stars climbed to around 100 between 10-26 and 10-28.
  2. Aggregator / repost accounts (confirmed): VentureDex 10-26 lists launch videos; What Ships lists launch clips; reactlibraryhub and olio.my list npm packages; haotrr verso 10-28 lists; Threads account @dingyi 10-28 relays it (the post still has the template placeholder "add your own line here", so it's bulk reposting).
  3. Instagram creator + "comment to get the resources" funnel (confirmed, timing matches the second wave): 2026-11-03 Louis Raillé (@louis_rlee) posted a Reel "This isn't iOS. It's a website." ending with "Comment LIQUID and I'll DM you the link + my starter kit". This is a common Instagram play: use someone else's open-source project as DM-bait to sell or build your own resource pack. Another Instagram post (DfXPc2CDQ5v) used the same copy.
  4. CodePen official (confirmed, small reach): 2026-11-02 @CodePen posted a demo of its AI agent reading the glisse.kelvinzhang.com URL and generating a piece from it, about 2.9K views; CodePen's Facebook and Instagram also shared it.
  5. YouTube (confirmed, small reach): Sadra Majidi "Free iOS 26 Liquid Glass for Your Website (Open Source, React)", about 190 views (late October).
  6. Downstream adoption (confirmed, a signal): cameronapak/dotflowy opened an issue "Evaluate Glisse for bounded liquid-glass toolbar adoption"; CrystalPlatforms/wspolniak opened a PRD/proposal issue for a Liquid Glass UI; GitDiagram generated an architecture diagram page.
  7. Platform events (inferred): Around 2026-11-03, X officially rolled out Liquid Glass design support (reported by taisy0.com 11-03), and TikTok and YouTube were also switching to Liquid Glass styling (lots of related TikTok videos). The demand for "Liquid Glass on the web" was reignited. The timing matches the star peak between 11-04 and 05, but there is no direct evidence linking that traffic to Glisse.
  8. Not found: HN (no Glisse post in our hackernews database), dedicated Reddit threads, ads, Product Hunt. Our local X corpus also doesn't contain related posts (not in the tracked circles).

The source of the 11-04–05 star peak is still unconfirmed: the GitHub stargazers API didn't return timestamps this time. The known 11-02 CodePen and 11-03 Instagram Reel only partly explain it; there may be unsearched big-account X reposts or TikTok/IG reposts too.

4. Why it took off

  • A topic with steady demand and no good finished web product yet: Liquid Glass has been the hottest visual language in design since WWDC 2025, 2026 iOS 27 keeps pushing it, and big apps like X, TikTok and YouTube are gradually adopting it, while web designers and indie devs want the same look but Apple only offers it through native APIs.
  • Fidelity and interaction feel are the selling points: The commits are full of parameters "measured in the simulator at 3x": buttons scale up 15px on press and spring back; Switch and Slider thumbs "lift into a lens" when held; TabBar lens has 2–3px of RGB chromatic aberration; edge highlights fade within 1.2px. All of this is visible in a 20-second video, which is why the X post got so many bookmarks.
  • Ready to use: npm install glisse, styles auto-injected (like Sonner). For Safari/Firefox where SVG filters don't apply to backdrop, data-glisse-backdrop duplicates the background for refraction, so it looks right across browsers. No WebGL.
  • The author has both design and engineering backgrounds: Their personal site calls them a "designer and engineer focused on building high-craft"; they have also built a small project with 100+ stars before.

5. Differentiation

Compared with peers, Glisse's difference is that it's a full set of iOS 26 controls (not one glass container or a single shader), and it reproduces the interaction animations using measured iOS parameters. Technically it uses only SVG filters + CSS, no WebGL, with fallbacks across browsers. That differentiation is why it took off: the demo video shows details like "holding turns it into a lens", chromatic aberration, and springs, which rivals don't have. But it has a ceiling too: commenters say it doesn't look real, and its star count (~400) is far below rdev/liquid-glass-react (6.6K).

6. Visibility and copycats

  • Visibility: circulating in small circles. The author's X post has 100k views, plus IG creators, the CodePen official account and a few aggregators. No press coverage, no HN front page, no trending. Open source and free, so there's no public revenue.
  • Copycats: no repos directly imitating Glisse, but people are already redistributing it: Instagram creators use "comment LIQUID for the starter kit" to drive traffic. Glassy UI, Tactile Glass UI and other libraries on the same theme appeared at the same time (more like parallel work than copying).

7. What others can learn

  • In a visual theme that's already been overdone, breaking through with fidelity that's "measured to match the original", plus a detailed 20-second video, can cold-start a single X post.
  • Stating in commits/docs that the parameters were "measured in the simulator" is itself credibility marketing.
  • For IG/TikTok "comment to get resources" repost accounts, a good-looking free open-source component is their ammunition. The author gets second-hand distribution without doing anything.
  • Opportunity: a paid Pro component set, a Figma kit, or a "Liquid Glass web template" at scale; nobody has done it yet. Glisse itself has no monetization.

8. Uncertain

  • The specific source of the 11-04–05 star peak (no stargazer timestamps, and no big-account post found for 11-04 that day).
  • How much of the 14k weekly npm downloads come from real users.
  • Author's X follower count and any monetization plans (not verified).
  • Whether it will be maintained long term: the last push was 10-30, with no new commits in the following week.

Sources

This article was written by AI from public data and the data we collect daily. Numbers are sourced, and inferences are labeled.