After Effects

Liquid Glass

An Apple-inspired liquid glass effect for After Effects. Real refraction and specular highlights on any layer with alpha.

Get it Free

Mac and Windows

Real refraction, not a fake

Liquid Glass uses Snell's law with adjustable IOR. The background bends through the glass like real light does. No fiddling with displacement maps, no stacking effects to fake it. Drop the effect on a shape, pick a source layer, done.

Make it your own

Drop it on, the defaults give you a usable look out of the box. Want to push it further? Dial in IOR, blur, edge blur, chromatic aberration, specular highlights, tint, shadows, and more. Every parameter is keyframable.

Anything with alpha

Shape layers, text, PNGs, Ai vectors, pre-comps. If it has an alpha channel, it can become glass. Use it for UI elements, callouts, transitions, or just experiment with abstract effects.

Worth knowing before you download

  • Pre-comp your source layer and do all animation, transforms, and colour grades inside the pre-comp. The effect samples raw pixels, so anything outside the pre-comp won't show through the glass.
  • CPU-based, so can be slow in some instances. Render times scale with shape size and quality setting.
  • Multiframe rendering isn't supported, but the comp still renders with multiframe on.
  • Mismatched frame rates cause flicker. Make sure your background layer matches the main comp's frame rate.

Full list and workarounds in the docs.

Frequently asked questions

Yes. Personal use, commercial use, paid client work, all fine. Just don't redistribute or repackage it.

Yes. There is a .aex for Windows and a .plugin bundle for Mac. Tested on both.

Built against AE SDK 25.6, tested on AE 2026. Older versions may work but are not officially supported.

No. After Effects only. Premiere uses a different effect API.

No, CPU only. Supporting every kind of GPU reliably would be months of work, which isn't viable for a free release.

Currently 8 and 16 bit. 32-bit float is not yet supported.

No plans for a paid version right now. Liquid Glass is and will stay free.

Documentation

Free. No strings attached.

No watermarks, no time limits. Free for personal and commercial use.

Get it Free