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All the Liquid Glass Changes in macOS Golden Gate

twinpeaks_sf said:
The clearest Liquid Glass step on iOS is much clearer (with warping along the edges visible) as compared with the macOS screenshot in the article. Perhaps this will shift, or the clearest macOS will let the user go is going to still be frosty.
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Probably due to OLED screens on mobile vs miniLED screens on MacBooks.

Liquid Glass is much better on OLED screens.
 
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Mr. Awesome said:
They definitely touched up the actual appearance of glass components a ton. They look way closer to the original WWDC25 previews and the edges feel like they're actually refracting light now. Much less of the "floating bubbles that cast a weird drop shadow" that Tahoe had. Heavy aqua vibes and it's borderline lickable.

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Finally some contrast again - toolbar buttons can actually be “pressed”. Some new pinstripes or toolbar color deviation would be soooo nice.
 
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Gioser said:
Personally, I really hope they bring them back. I'm a big fan of menu icons, and honestly, I believe their disappearance is more likely a SwiftUI bug than an intentional design decision.

That said, there's a very simple solution that could make everyone happy: add a toggle under System Settings → Appearance. Users who like menu icons could keep them enabled (ideally as the default setting), while those who prefer a cleaner, more minimal look could simply turn them off.

It would be an elegant compromise that gives users a choice instead of forcing a single preference on everyone.
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State of The Union video said that they’re off by default.
 
ams1117 said:
All these are actually refining the design and making it better.

I still don't like the large corner radius but given that it's plausible that they want to add touch input (not that I understand why touch = big and round) I guess it's tolerable at 16pt, increasing from 12pt since ~Big Sur, which used to be 4pt since Mac OS X 10.0. I still like the tight 4pt radius corners better, though.
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Apple should have added a property for this so we are able to change it, like e.g. Dock style in the past.
 
I like the refinements and the added controls to manage Liquid Glass. I've skipped Tahoe completely barring a couple of weeks before reverting back to Sequoia but even the first Beta of GG seems much better than Tahoe ever has been. Still things need improving, as you would expect, but looking forward to September!
 
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She had over 250 professions over her career and now we can with certainty say Barbie Roberts can also be a UI-designer!
 
What these discussions have taught me is that now that the GUI is GPU rendered apple should just come out with an OS customiser that allows the user to adjust the roundness, transparency and border width of every element in its OS using sliders so that every user can customise the OS to their preferences and for their use case.

I was forcibly upgraded to Tahoe when I reinstalled my OS and as it’s the last upgrade for my Intel Mac and most of the bugs have been worked out I’m ok with knowing I’ll never upgrade it again nor need to adjust. It would be nice if they rolled in the same interface as Golden Gate over Tahoe though given its adios Intel users.
 
Tahoe had certainly room for improvement, but the new (old) gray, flat sidebar design of GG is a sad step back to Windows-10 design.
 
Well?

forums.macrumors.com

Are these the Men who Saved macOS 27 GUI?

The Boys Are Back In Town Steve Lemay who probably reached out directly and hired (ex-apple designer) Sebastiaan de With He post a reimagining in 2025 https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/04/ex-apple-designer-living-glass-ios-concepts/ https://www.lux.camera/physicality-the-new-age-of-ui/...
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com
 
iamdrew said:
yes yes I hear this one all the time haha. but like, can you show me examples? its just so interesting in a world full of rounded corners, why we associate the rounded corners of a UI window with a toy?

Apple Park is 100% rounded corners. AirPods, iPads, MacBook Pros... the list goes on and on. Why is it that when its a UI window do ya'll lose it?
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wut.

The world is mostly filled with squares and rectangulars and all the things with angles. It basically maximizes the space that you can use.

Yes, certain things have rounded corners or are round. Like the the Buds casing, for example. But in that case it improves the functionality as it makes it easier to slip those into the pocket. The problem with rounded corners in liquid glass is not the roundedness itself, but the degree. Previous versions already had rounded corners and it was okay. Liquid glass to it over the edge, which has some problems. Most notably it wasted so much space.

Yes, in real life you can also have round table but most of the time it's more a look things instead of an efficiency.
Is your desk round or is rather square/rectangular?

As for Fisher Price, well you don't have to be a scientist to notice that most of the things geared towards children are way more rounded and avoid sharp edges so the harm they could inflict on themselves is lower.

But macOS is not a toy, it's tool most of the time used by the professionals.
 
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Can we even call this Liquid Glass anymore? Doesn't look like it. IMHO they've should've let the slider go from current effect all the way to what's showed in golden gate (max setting).
 
I don't care about icons, transparency and window corners, I just want a stable, fast and productivity-focused OS, without distractions. This is what I switched to Fedora 44 + Cosmic as main runner and my productivity increased instantly. Apple is wasting a lot of effort on design back and forth and it's really lagging behind on functionality.
 
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iamdrew said:
Gotcha. That makes sense. Thanks for laying that out. I'm still confused by this logic, however. Would you say the same thing about an Noguchi table or an Eames lounge?
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iamdrew said:
or these elements of rounded corners in apple park?
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I think you're making this difficult for yourself.

Curve in design, (french curves!), well curves are curves and can be used as you like, no one has a problem with curves or straight lines, it's about knowing how and when to use them, balance proportions, the eye of the master designer/artist at rest.

Round corners on high volume plastic toys is a well established atheistic (they exist due to various factors)

The windows on an OS are essentially a box, bonding box, a perimeter, like a piece of paper, in terms of their form, it's an edge defining an area of content/interaction and it is really not like a wall, a chair, or a 3D object/environment, more like something you might hold in your hand, so when you overly round the corners of this box/panel you mimic the look of children toys, which are often held in their hands, and then even more so when you render a plastic or glass effect (another shared attribute of plastic toys) and so the pattern matching brain associates this look most with cheap sometimes tacky and sometimes iconic children toys and toy brands and by doing this and then doing it badly, you associate a trillion dollar brand with low-tech aesthetics, or junk.
 
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Stehsegler9 said:
My guess is they saw abysmal adoption rates compared to previous major MacOS updates.
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Yep this is a big one maybe the biggest confounding factor for Apple.

I can see already a big sentiment shift with regular expressions of intention to upgrade, many will be leapfrogging' Tahoe straight to Golden Gate, we should see this come thought the install stats soon enough.

It is IMHO the very opposite trend to Tahoe if MR is untying to go by, and how can I forget how a few folks spent a long time telling us among many things, one being that MR was not indicative of the overall Apple user base and you could infer very little form users on MR.

I found that a very poor view of the user base on MR, too many assumptions forming that view if you'd asked me.

Well, it turns out many arguments made around then are basically null and void at this point, but we won't dwell too much on that.
 
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jimothyGator said:
I'm not a fan of the icons, but they don't bug me nearly as much as the rounded corners everywhere in menues. In Tahoe, the menu title (e.g., "File", "Edit"), the drop down menu, and the selected menu item all have four rounded corners, making them look like disconnected elements. I hope they bring back the previous appearance, where a menu title and its drop-down items appear connected.

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I saw a post on Reddit that said the icons have been removed. Fingers crossed!
 
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