It is one thing to draw attention to a hiding place that can be seen, but it’s a different challenge altogether to have to point to something that’s not even on the screen.

Let’s rewind to iOS 18 two years ago, and what happened when you swatted away a notification – the movement was nicely reversed, with the UI going back where it came from.

A year later, in iOS 26, the movement was generally similar, with a new, more bubbly and “physical” treatment – but also a rather big bug where the background disappeared on the way out. Yikes.

This year’s iOS 27 redeems itself in two ways. It not only fixes the animation quality, but it does something even better – it starts and ends the notification reveal in a little bar under the clock.

As far as I understand, iOS has consistently been using those kinds of edge bars as signifiers of available edge swipes ever since iPhone X, and this new transition feeds nicely into this system. There is a difference between top drag from the left (notifications), and top drag from the right (control center), and this not only helps convey that, but also perhaps teaches some users about what an edge bar means – so that they know what to do if they see it elsewhere.

I do miss the movement simplicity of iOS 18 – a lot of liquid glass feels too… liquid to me – but I like that this evolution also improved the animation on a slightly higher level.

Yet, one has to be careful.

Here’s YouTube’s animation that plays when you invoke “save to Watch Later”. It’s a concept similar to the iOS 27 choreography above – seeing the item hide itself inside “You” should help in knowing that’s the place to go to get it back – although the execution feels rough and not up to iOS standards:

However, the team hasn’t fully thought through the implementation, and this is what happens on the iPad:

I believe this is a bug where the left padding from the toolbar below was not added to the confirmation toast position – but its consequences are not just the animation feeling janky. It also teaches the user a wrong lesson, as the item accidentally lands on the Home icon instead.