Honor has announced MagicOS 11, its take on Android 17, introducing a liquid glass-inspired interface alongside a more capable version of its Yoyo AI assistant. The software debuted at Honor’s Global Developer Conference and is scheduled to arrive first on the upcoming Magic9 series.

Honor says MagicOS 11 was built around its Luminous and Hummingbird architectures. The company uses those foundations to manage interface behavior, artificial intelligence processing and hardware performance while retaining the visual changes introduced with the new release.

Liquid glass design with faster animations

The redesigned interface includes updated icons, menus and widgets. Users will also be able to customize the tint applied to home-screen icons and the dock, giving the software a more adjustable appearance.

Although the design takes inspiration from the liquid glass style seen in other mobile software, Honor claims MagicOS 11 is faster than its predecessor in daily interactions. According to the company, system animations can run up to 20% faster than those in MagicOS 10.

The performance claim applies to system animations rather than overall phone performance. Honor also links the update’s responsiveness to the Luminous and Hummingbird architectures that underpin the operating system.

Yoyo AI expands its range of tasks

MagicOS 11 includes an updated Yoyo assistant designed to support more use cases. Honor says it is configured for more than 1,000 scenarios and can connect with over 10,000 third-party AI services, although that broader integration is specified for China.

Honor also claims Yoyo can handle long-distance tasks involving as many as 100 steps. The announcement does not specify which tasks are supported in every market, so the assistant’s capabilities may depend on local services and availability.

Storage compression and wider device sharing

Another addition is Storage Space 2.0. Honor says the feature uses lossless compression to reduce the space occupied by stored data and can free up to 60GB.

MagicOS 11 also expands file sharing and connectivity beyond Honor’s own products. The system is designed to work with Apple ecosystem devices and with devices from Oppo, vivo and Xiaomi, potentially making it easier to move files or maintain connections across different brands.

MagicOS 11 beta availability

The public beta is already available for more than 18 devices. The eligible models include the Magic8 series, Magic V6 and Honor 600 models.

A separate internal-beta registration list includes the Magic6 series, Magic V3, and Honor 400 and Honor 500 series. Honor says the next wave of devices is expected to join the program between October and November.

MagicOS 11 will make its initial official debut with the Honor Magic9 series, while the beta rollout gives owners of selected existing phones an early look at the new design, AI features and storage tools.