I have a chat app with a floating composer pill (NSGlassEffectView) pinned to the bottom of my content area. Messages scroll behind it. The pill looks fine but content behind it is completely clear. Fully legible text showing through, no frosting at all.
Mail, Messages, Notes all have this frosted look where content behind a floating bar is blurred enough that you can't read it. That's what I'm going for.
My scroll view has wantsLayer = true. I tried hasVerticalScroller = true + scrollerStyle = .overlay based on a tip I saw in another thread. No change.
Is NSGlassEffectView supposed to blur what's behind it, or is the frosting in Apple's apps coming from the scroll edge effect? If it's the scroll edge effect, is there any way to trigger it for a custom floating view at the bottom of a scroll view? I can't find any AppKit API for this.
I also spent time trying this in SwiftUI using .glassEffect() on macOS. Same result, the material renders nearly clear with no way to control the frosting level via any public API.
If I'm missing something obvious I'd love to know. I've been stuck on this one for a while. Thanks for any advice! I've attached photos of my input bar (clearly transparent) and Apple Messages, which has a style that I see all over iOS and Mac OS 26.