I can't go back, can I?

[Sami13496]

Yesterday I installed the official (non-beta) macOS 26 on my Mac because I wanted to see with my own eyes what it looks like and how the UI feels to use. Well, it looks and feels much worse than I expected. Related to this, could you please help me:

Is there any easy way to go back to version 15?

If not, how can I make it look and feel less awful? Is there a way to reduce the transparency and remove those terrible borders around the icons?

I’d appreciate your help.

 

[Starfia]

Hi, Sami – I can appreciate your frustration.

The Mac is pretty flexible with reverting to older versions of the OS (and even installing and switching between multiple versions, et cetera). The easiest way is probably reverting to a backup if you have one, especially if you can accept the loss of any changes you've made since upgrading. (Or you can offload and restore those changes piecemeal.) If you don't have a backup, I'd start here, and possibly recruit a versed buddy to help if you're not comfortable playing with this kind of thing.

Before resorting to that, though: the most relevant settings to modify the appearance of the system graphics are "Increase contrast" and "Reduce transparency", found at "System Settings > General > Accessibility > Display". (Toggles for these can also be added to Control Center.)