Apple’s macOS 26 Tahoe has new Liquid Glass look, customizable folders, and more
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" Most significantly, the macOS menu bar has become entirely invisible" - This made me laugh out loud. Invisible elements sound great for productivity..... 
Also, didn't we have colored folders in mac classic? I'm not complaining because I always thought they were useful, but not exactly a big innovation.
Also, didn't we have colored folders in mac classic? I'm not complaining because I always thought they were useful, but not exactly a big innovation.
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I hope there is a feature to disable transparency!
I already have what passes for transparency today disabled everywhere, and I wouldn't be able to use my devices without that ability.
I already have what passes for transparency today disabled everywhere, and I wouldn't be able to use my devices without that ability.
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I'd bet money there will be a Reduce Transparency option in Accessibility, as there has been for many years now -- and I assume how you're disabling it now. They're very good about accessibility features.
I myself am "wait and see" on this aesthetic change, but I'm very excited by the other macOS features they showed off, like the souped-up Spotlight, which might enable me to stop using Alfred. (No hate for Alfred, but the less extra software I have to pay for and run, the better.) Putting a version of the Control Panel stuff from iOS also makes a ton of sense to me, if it's done right.
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Hopefully, the mds Spotlight daemon won't randomly start reindexing the whole storage after every tiny OS update, borking the whole Spotlight for hours… oh wait, who am I kidding!!!
Any idea if this could work with Crossover, Wine or the Game Porting Toolkit? That could actually be interesting.
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It definitely opens up a whole new vista to the MacOS experience!
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There was also a period of OS X where you could apply a label to a folder and, in list view, the entire row of the list would take on the color of the label. It got pretty intense looking but definitely hard to miss! Now labels just have a very subtle dot that's quite easy to lose IMO.
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I wonder what it says for innovation in desktop operating systems when the showcased feature I’m most excited about is more easily customised folder icons.
I hope that all this expanded LLM stuff can be disabled.
I hope that all this expanded LLM stuff can be disabled.
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I guess I’ll have to see more, but this does feel like a return to some the more fun aesthetics Apple’s had in the past.
I’m the weirdo who loved Aqua and all the colorful iMacs. It’s all felt like it’s been trending a little too dull and sterile for my taste sense.
I know it’s not for everyone, however, so I do hope they have some options to tone it down or back off a bit.
I’m the weirdo who loved Aqua and all the colorful iMacs. It’s all felt like it’s been trending a little too dull and sterile for my taste sense.
I know it’s not for everyone, however, so I do hope they have some options to tone it down or back off a bit.
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Really hope there's a way to either tone down the transparency and/or turn it off entirely if you don't want it. Watching some of the demos tells me I'm going to have a lot of visual annoyances with how things render under buttons with this feature.
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MacOS works great and considering how much time I spend using the operating system, it's amazing that it virtually never has problems. That stability means a lot. But I miss exciting and weird UX experiments, and generally I loath the latest Settings app.
I'm all for going back to old designs. Will force some personality back into the experience. But yeah, overhauling Settings to have some degree of coherence feels like a bigger, easier win.
I'm all for going back to old designs. Will force some personality back into the experience. But yeah, overhauling Settings to have some degree of coherence feels like a bigger, easier win.
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As a software developer, the Containerization framework seems the most interesting thing they've announced. Being able to run Linux containers without any 3rd party software will be great.
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I know most people will not use or care about this but for those few weirdos like myself that need to be able to make fast calls on their laptop for work purposes this increased integration is going to save us significant time and energy.
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Can you pin the dock to a monitor yet, or is that still something fun I have to deal with every day, where it magically moves to another screen without me doing anything but is a PITA to move it back?
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The Spotlight improvements, especially indexing the active App's menu tree, are really nice if not long overdue. When Craig announced Quick Keys, my initial reaction was that they've invented AOL Keywords. Not a bad thing, but I'm interested in seeing the complete catalog of Quick Keys to assess how useful they will actually be and whether they can be customized. Their SM to send message example makes sense, but what if I want to send an email in my preferred mail app and SM is already taken by the OS?
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Looking forward to the new features in Shortcuts. I used ControlPlane for years to turn off wifi when an Ethernet adapter was plugged in, or start / stop work things during the work day.
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I'll take Windows Aero design and this new liquid glass style any day over the lazy uninspired flat design that's common today.
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I'm here with the fellow Ars commenters waxing nostalgically over the colored folders of yore.
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I didn’t read any of the rumors leading up to this and only saw thumbnail guesses here and there. What I see presented today doesn’t quite match what I expected.
There can be too much transparency, but we can always use Accessibility options to tone it down. (Apple has always been solid there.) The lack of color to distinguish some of the controls has been annoying for years. Is it this icon or that one? Is it already on or not?
There can be too much transparency, but we can always use Accessibility options to tone it down. (Apple has always been solid there.) The lack of color to distinguish some of the controls has been annoying for years. Is it this icon or that one? Is it already on or not?
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Surprised it's taken them this long to do it. You've been able to initiate a phone call through the Mac for quite a few years now but it's always been very unintuitive.
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Actually, it’s an amorphous solid, but “amorphous solid glass” would be a horrible name from a marketing perspective.
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I just wish they and other OS makers would bring back title bars again so there's a spot to grab to move a window around properly. I have had so many issues on all operating systems where the tabs crowd out the clickable area for dragging or it gets obscured behind something like a vpn/rdp dropdown leaving nothing to click to drag the windows. And on mac its worse because there's no keyboard shortcut like Alt+Space to bring up a menu to move it with the keyboard
Otherwsise this seems a middle ground between 2000s glossy bubbles and 2010s flat plasticky panels
Otherwsise this seems a middle ground between 2000s glossy bubbles and 2010s flat plasticky panels
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The menu bar will be invisible? Uhh. How will you know which menus an app has and where to click to access them... ?
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In other words, nothing remotely substantive. Desktop operating systems have apparently reached some apotheosis of functionality and interface after which no further improvement is possible
Either that, or macOS is simply moribund, and has been so for years. There only new thing here is the sound of Jony Ive spinning in his grave.
P.S. I'll be content if 26 fixes more bugs than it introduces.
Either that, or macOS is simply moribund, and has been so for years. There only new thing here is the sound of Jony Ive spinning in his grave.
P.S. I'll be content if 26 fixes more bugs than it introduces.
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The bar is invisible. The menus are not. So, you can look and see which menus an application has and where to click to access them.
Edit: Apple refer to it as a "transparent menu bar," not "invisible." The menu bar has (optionally) been translucent for ages.
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