Apple Unveils macOS Tahoe With Liquid Glass Design, Phone App, Live Translation, and More

[cocoua]

I think I’m just getting old cause these announcements are just not as exciting as they used to be

we come from and era where visual changes were just a matter of adding more colors to the screen so more possibilitys playing with details, shadows and effects. The "WOW" effect got lost after Aqua, Brushed metal... just realistic representations of real objects, then Flat recovered some exciting clearing up the interface.
But visual effects as realistic shadows and defocus backgrounds were already covered since long time ago, there is nothing new to come with until new hardware tech makes this possible.

We would need full OLED devices to start playing with light intensity in the UI, but Apple needs to release a full ecosystem of devices with OLED screens to reach a consistent "WOW" effect.

 

[MrUpload1000]

Yay for the new Spotlight features! Can't wait to see what's possible with it in daily use

 

[stellaclose]

FYI Launchpad has been discontinued.

 

[rafark]

Posts like yours drive me insane. We get an os that's light on the fancy-shmancy but has plenty of under the hood/stability improvements we get comments like yours - "Where are the new features?" and when we get an os with lots of new features we hear "But I want stability improvements"

Apple can't win to save its life.....

Did I ever say “I want stability improvements” in a year when we got lots of new features? This might be a new concept to you, but people have different opinions and you will always find both sides (complaining and praising).....

You wanted stability and it’s driving you insane that there are people with a different opinion than yours who want more features? Okay.

 

[Blue Sun]

I hope there’s a way to adjust the degree of translucency. A slide bar would be great.

In my experience, translucency as a UI element works best when it’s subtle and is just enough to give a sense of context to active windows.

 

[interstella]

How are they going to screw up the control panel this time and what settings are they going to remove or hide?

Can they even make it worse? I still have to use the search facility in Settings on a regular basis as I can never remember where anything is!

 

[interstella]

FYI Launchpad has been discontinued.

Really? I still use that every day.

 

[J InTech82]

Wow, colorful folders... Brand new feature

This was available in Mac OS 9. It only took 24 years to get colors (Labels) back on folders!

 

[krell100]

Aqua 2.0. Everything old is new again, apparently.

 

[crezo]

There’s still going to be a dark mode though right… right?!

 

[Naraxus]

Did I ever say “I want stability improvements” in a year when we got lots of new features? This might be a new concept to you, but people have different opinions and you will always find both sides (complaining and praising).....

You wanted stability and it’s driving you insane that there are people with a different opinion than yours who want more features? Okay.

You completely missed the point of my post.

 

[kagharaht]

For me as I get older, I just want to be able to understand all this extra fancy stuff so I can turn it off. LOL

 

[krell100]

Looking closely at some of the images of it I'm not convinced, it seems kind of ugly. I hope there's a way of turning off some of the liquid stuff to make it flatter.

 

[Edouard Perreault]

NO word on the new Finder, not a preview, nothing!... Yet it's the heart of macOS! Could it be that Apple hasn't yet finished its redesign and is hesitating to reveal it? 😂

 

[basdeninard]

Adobe, Final Cut, Logic (including oem plugins), Affinity Serif, Autodesk, Blender, Disney, Microsoft, PIXAR, Game Developers, HPC, AI, CFD/FEA, etc. Pixelmator, Black Magic Design, RED, Hollywood, Sound Post production, NASA, CERN, etc.

That's 20 right there. 🤯

 

[lorikeet]

Phone app a suggestion that cellular Macs are coming soon?

 

[daneoni]

Maybe its just me but i'd have preferred a throwback to skeuomorphism than Windows Vista re-imagined.

Might have to stick to Dark Mode to maintain legibility as opposed to Auto mode

 

[steve333]

Didn't they try that see through crap before and it was hated?
Older eyes do not do well with translucency.
Is there a way to turn it off?
Cook is starting to mess around with something that should be left alone. IMO.

 

[Adam Warlock]

Cook is starting to mess around with something that should be left alone. IMO.

I doubt Tim was involved or even knew about the changes to the UI until the presentation. He doesn't strike me as the type to get his hands dirty with that sort of thing. I suspect he also lacks interest in UI or even macOS in general.

 

[platinumaqua]

Aqua 2.0. Everything old is new again, apparently.

OG Aqua didn't make things fully transparent that some elements are unreadable

They also toned down the transparency effects with every revision since the original lol

 

[platinumaqua]

True. I bet it gets tweaked. Pretty trivial to dial up the blur effect.


If the past is any guide, there will be a control in Accessibility to kill it through "reduce transparency".

If it's like current reduce transparency, you'll get an ugly stark white background with it enabled

 

[platinumaqua]

It's familiar...
View attachment 2517696

but notice how bold and high contrast the icons were, and how the text has blur underneath them to make them more readable across different backgrounds here?

 

[JFLY]

Too many floating menus or parts of menus with shadows everywhere. Needs more definition to separate the different parts of the window so it can be read easier, right now it's a bit too much of everything.

 

[acrakes]

I predict that the default level of translucency will be dialled back by the first public beta to more like frosted glass.

The accessibility settings can be set at a system level, either for frosted glass or for "high contrast" (black lines and text, white background).

 

[acrakes]

I watched a couple of developer videos and have good news.

"Meet Liquid Glass" - https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/219/

1. Colored glass is available. The examples appear to be from Apple apps.

All of the effects look better in motion. They're subtle, and most of this OS upgrade is cosmetic, but now I'm excited to see it "live" on a screen.

2. Finder sighting (I don't remember which video this was, but I screencapped it). Again, subtle, but it does feel softer, more legible, and more contemporary.