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No.171 · Navigation

Glass Tab Bar

A floating tab bar made of glass: the selection is a clear droplet that slides between tabs, stretching as it travels and magnifying the icon it settles on, while the page scrolls blurred beneath.

The prompt

The design brief behind this component — reuse it to regenerate, remix, or explain it.

Design a floating, iOS-style tab bar in liquid glass, over content that scrolls beneath it. The bar is a pill of frosted glass (42% white, backdrop blur 18px with saturate 1.9, a bright 1px top edge, a softer lower edge, a white hairline and a soft shadow); a separate round glass search button sits beside it. The selection is a second, clearer piece of glass inside the bar — a 'droplet' pill with a white top-to-translucent gradient, a crisp inner highlight and a small shadow. It moves by animating left and right independently: the leading edge first and the trailing edge 90ms later (swapped by direction), both 520ms on cubic-bezier(0.16,1,0.3,1), so it stretches like water between tabs before settling. The icon under the droplet springs to 1.16× (overshoot) and takes the tint colour with a light fill, as if seen through a lens. Tabs are icon-over-label, 11px labels. ←/→ move between tabs (roving tabindex).

Notes

Interaction
Tap or click a tab; ←/→ move the selection.
Motion
Droplet edges 520ms expo-out with a 90ms directional lag; icon magnify 520ms spring.
Accessibility
role=tablist with role=tab buttons, aria-selected and roving tabindex; the droplet is decorative. Reduced motion makes the droplet jump.
Responsive
Intrinsic width; designed to float over mobile layouts, works on desktop too.
On touch
Built for thumbs: 48px targets and no hover dependence.

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301 components