star-affinity
macrumors 68020
Could be better even here on MacRumors I think.
Are you sure thus is up to the website to adjust? Seems to me it's the way Safari does things. No matter what i don't t think it's optimal for the user.
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macOS Tahoe: A Pattern of Poor Usability and Design Regression
- Thread starter Deuce2
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Are you sure thus is up to the website to adjust? Seems to me it's the way Safari does things. No matter what i don't t think it's optimal for the user.
Kal Madda
macrumors 601
Yep, I totally agree about MacRumors, it’s basically the only site I commonly use that does this.
So I actually just looked into this a few weeks ago or so for a project I’ve been working on. And basically there are several options web devs have for status bar behavior for their site. There’s several different tags that developers can use to set the Status Bar appearance, and among those are options for it to be white with black text, black with white text, transparent, or to even customize and adjust the colors behind it to match site theme colors. Web developers have tons of options available for adjusting the look of the status bar with their website. Transparent is an option as some sites benefit from that, but a white bar with black text is actually the default, so sites using transparent status bar, the web dev specifically chose to implement it that way. At least that’s the way I understand it, and I’ve found this to be the case with the project I’ve been working on as well. It defaults to a white bar behind the status bar with black text (in iOS 26). 👍🏻
And the transparent option for the status bar existed before iOS 26, so it’s not unique to iOS 26.
It's not an issue with a website. It's Safari that has to apply the top fade, not the website. This is entirely Safari fault.
Unrelated to Liquid Glass (probably), since OS 26 I've noticed significantly more layout issues where a view loads and then corrects itself after a fraction of a second.
While it doesn't look good on any website, it's even more clownish on websites that have a fixed static opaque top bar, and then the transparent bar above that (e.g., YouTube when Safari is not fullscreen).
Kal Madda
macrumors 601
The status bar appearance for their site can actually be adjusted by web developers. It defaults to a white bar with black text. So the web devs specifically chose to make it transparent. So this is absolutely a problem with the website and web devs intentional choices to make the status bar appear that way, not Safari.
[citation needed]
Anyway, the status bar text is illegible even with the default Safari fade-in, that will adapt automatically to the content, and for some weird reasons, it's less blurry than the fade in every other iOS app.
Anyway, the status bar text is illegible even with the default Safari fade-in, that will adapt automatically to the content, and for some weird reasons, it's less blurry than the fade in every other iOS app.
Kal Madda
macrumors 601
Agreed, you need to provide at least one citation for your claim that this is on Safari and not web developers, and that web developers can’t adjust the status bar behavior on their websites…
As to my claim about meta tags for adjusting status bar appearance, here’s a screenshot from Apple’s developer documentation…
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Kal Madda
macrumors 601
Nope, because that doesn’t prove whether it is caused by developer choice to use “black-translucent” style, or if it’s forced by Safari and so is “Safari’s fault”... Clearly it is not forced by Safari, and the default is a white bar with black text…
But it proves that on news.ycombinator.com, a website that doesn't set any custom status bar style, the text is still unreadable.
The default depends on the underlying content, and will change dynamically, just like every other Liquid Glass element.
The default depends on the underlying content, and will change dynamically, just like every other Liquid Glass element.
Kal Madda
macrumors 601
They have to have set it to black-translucent. If it were default, it would look different. So they have set a custom status bar style.
This is what the default style looks like:
Kal Madda
macrumors 601
The Apple developer screenshot clearly describes the default. There are actually many different ways for devs to adjust appearance of the status bar, there are options for CSS, tags, etc. So it depends on the way the dev did it. But that style is “black-translucent”, it is not the default style.
Kal Madda
macrumors 601
Black-translucent has been a status bar style for a while now, it’s not new to iOS 26. Perhaps more web devs have chosen to adopt it. But it isn’t inherent to Liquid Glass or 26. And it’s very easy to scroll… One has to intentionally scroll it over something to make it harder to read. I don’t really think it’s a big deal…
Here's my own website, are you saying I did set some different status bar style without even knowing? That's kind hard to prove, when the source is available.
Kal Madda
macrumors 601
Perhaps a tool you used to build it did? I already gave you the source directly from Apple’s developer documentation… The developer documentation clearly states the default is not black-translucent…
Furthermore, not saying I doubt this is your site, I’m sure it probably is, but how do I know this is your site and not just some random web page you screenshot?
Kal Madda
macrumors 601
The developer documentation is right there, I already shared it, and it clearly states black-translucent is a separate option and isn’t the default style…
And on my own web project, the status bar defaults to the white bar with black text:
The documentation needs to be read properly, here's the text in question:
Normal websites do not specify that, so that property is unused. And what you are seeing in my screenshot it's Safari default behavior. If you don't believe it, make a bare bones .html file with some text, and open it in Safari.
Normal websites do not specify that, so that property is unused. And what you are seeing in my screenshot it's Safari default behavior. If you don't believe it, make a bare bones .html file with some text, and open it in Safari.
Kal Madda
macrumors 601
Fair, I was looking at it from a web app standpoint, so I guess there are different options for regular pages, though they still can adjust the appearance of status bar if they want to. There are tons of options for it. And a thread from 2 years ago said that Safari defaults to a semi-transparent appearance, so as I said, I don’t think that’s new to iOS 26. MacRumors has had this transparent status bar design thing for several years as far as I recall. And websites can easily change it.
Kal Madda
macrumors 601
avkills
macrumors 65832
Websites should not have the ability to change OS level or Application GUI elements, just my opinion. That was a super stupid thing to do; basically breaks the entire purpose of the web which is to be browser and OS agnostic. One can dream.
droplink
macrumors 6502
I still do not understand how Mac OS 26 and iOS 26 could be so ugly.
How could this Fischer Price GUI have passed any approval process.
We used to laugh at the GUI of Windows ME and its Fischer Price, but that was 20 years ago! Back then, they could be forgiven for wanting to put colors everywhere to appeal to more leisure types after the business feel of Windows and the more appealing nature of Mac OS, but now, for a company to create this, 40 years into the practical GUI.. its an embarrassment.
Yikes.
I really hope that there will be a setting to reduce everything to the very basics in Mac OS 27.
How could this Fischer Price GUI have passed any approval process.
We used to laugh at the GUI of Windows ME and its Fischer Price, but that was 20 years ago! Back then, they could be forgiven for wanting to put colors everywhere to appeal to more leisure types after the business feel of Windows and the more appealing nature of Mac OS, but now, for a company to create this, 40 years into the practical GUI.. its an embarrassment.
Yikes.
I really hope that there will be a setting to reduce everything to the very basics in Mac OS 27.
fisherking
macrumors G5
apple knows that there are plenty of people who like the look of 26, so i doubt they'll change it up much, but yes, an option to reduce (further) the look of LG seems a reasonable request...
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