Embodiments of the present invention relate to the field of communications technologies, and disclose a method and an apparatus for displaying with a 3D parallax effect, to generate a relatively good 3D parallax effect. A specific solution is: displaying a graphical user interface, where the graphical user interface includes first content, and the first content includes at least two elements; obtaining a first operation instruction which is used for moving, in an area for displaying the first content, at least one first element of the at least two elements; and moving each of the at least one first element by a different distance along a direction of a first straight line, so that the first content has a 3D parallax effect, where the direction of the first straight line is a direction having a preset included angle with a plane in which the graphical user interface is located.