Welp, this is fugly
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macOS Tahoe's New Theming System Explained
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Even though the path and status bars do look a bit like ugly holdovers from older macOS versions in Big Sur/Sonoma/Sequoia, they look much better than this, so I also hope it’s the latter and that they’re finally taking the wholesale redesign as an opportunity to getting around to fix what was already an inconsistency of sorts.
I, for one, will personally report this as a UI bug in Feedback Assistant from the public beta if they don’t fix it by then.
As for the borders made up from the equidistant/concentric window elements… meh. I don’t love them, but I don’t hate them either. They kind of reminds me of Windows 2/3’s and Classic Mac OS’s Platinum default fat window borders, and if Apple’s team tweaked/tweaks their behaviour accordingly, they might actually make window resizing – and dragging! – easier, for the exact same reason.
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“Customize the look of your Mac desktop more than ever” and “unprecedented control over your desktop's visual appearance” — as others have pointed out, this ignores a whole era of interesting history. Back in the ‘90s, Apple created the Appearance Manager for Copland, (one of) the operating system intended to replace Mac OS 7. Copland suffered a lot of problems in development and never got released. Instead, Apple gave up and went a new direction by buying NeXT and starting over with NeXTSTEP as a foundation. This, of course, is when Jobs returned to Apple.
To buy time as they started work on that front, Apple began incorporating some of the working bits from Copland into Mac OS 7, and they released it as Mac OS 8. One of those pieces was Appearance Manager. Now, whereas this new functionality lets you tweak a few individual settings, Appearance Manager had true themes, and those themes offered far more control than what we’re getting now.
However, Jobs famously hated too much UI customization, instead favoring a super-clean, super-refined, opiniated, consistent design immediately identifiable as the Mac OS. Thus, he all but killed user-facing themes, and Apple only offered a couple of barely-differing options. That’s where Kaleidoscope, a third-party shareware app, came in. It tapped into Appearance Manager functionality and offered a way for anyone to create and share themes, and that’s how we ended up with thousands of deeply custom themes on Mac.
A few years later, Apple released OS X, and Appearance Manager as we knew it was gone — and along with it, the ability for third parties to fill the gap.
As to this new design, I’m not really digging the rounded capsules, like for the sidebars, inside the larger windows. It feels cluttered, and it makes that area feel like its own floating window (which makes me think the window stoplight controls are going to affect just that area and not the larger window). And it eats a lot of real estate. I think it also looks funny to have controls in what look like floating windows at the top of windows. I dunno… I‘ll let Apple finish it and then give it some time to see how it grows on me.
As for the completely transparent menu bar… as a classic Mac developer, I see that and instantly get chills. You see, back in the day, we would occasionally see a transparent menu bar exactly like what Apple’s giving us now — but like glass and fluids spilled on a street indicating a recent auto crash, the transparent menu bar was a clear sign that some sort of serious software crash had just happened. <shudder>
The controls themselves in Settings (blah, bring back Preferences!) sound quite confusing, but this sort of thing can be hard to explain without seeing it in action.
To buy time as they started work on that front, Apple began incorporating some of the working bits from Copland into Mac OS 7, and they released it as Mac OS 8. One of those pieces was Appearance Manager. Now, whereas this new functionality lets you tweak a few individual settings, Appearance Manager had true themes, and those themes offered far more control than what we’re getting now.
However, Jobs famously hated too much UI customization, instead favoring a super-clean, super-refined, opiniated, consistent design immediately identifiable as the Mac OS. Thus, he all but killed user-facing themes, and Apple only offered a couple of barely-differing options. That’s where Kaleidoscope, a third-party shareware app, came in. It tapped into Appearance Manager functionality and offered a way for anyone to create and share themes, and that’s how we ended up with thousands of deeply custom themes on Mac.
A few years later, Apple released OS X, and Appearance Manager as we knew it was gone — and along with it, the ability for third parties to fill the gap.
As to this new design, I’m not really digging the rounded capsules, like for the sidebars, inside the larger windows. It feels cluttered, and it makes that area feel like its own floating window (which makes me think the window stoplight controls are going to affect just that area and not the larger window). And it eats a lot of real estate. I think it also looks funny to have controls in what look like floating windows at the top of windows. I dunno… I‘ll let Apple finish it and then give it some time to see how it grows on me.
As for the completely transparent menu bar… as a classic Mac developer, I see that and instantly get chills. You see, back in the day, we would occasionally see a transparent menu bar exactly like what Apple’s giving us now — but like glass and fluids spilled on a street indicating a recent auto crash, the transparent menu bar was a clear sign that some sort of serious software crash had just happened. <shudder>
The controls themselves in Settings (blah, bring back Preferences!) sound quite confusing, but this sort of thing can be hard to explain without seeing it in action.
A couple years ago I scored a working G4 iMac (700 MHz lampshade) at an auction. It had a dual-boot setup with both Mac OS 9.2 and 10.1 onboard. Normally I would wipe the hard drive and do a fresh install of the newest OS I could put on it. When I booted into 9.2 it felt like being transported in a time machine, partly because it appeared the previous user, a high school student, never booted into OS 9 previously. That meant I had to "re-register" this iMac all over again 😇. All the familiar Platinum theme aesthetic was there with the whimsical sounds. Because of what I knew and remembered about the OS X transition, I decided to keep the iMac G4 as is, a relic of the somewhat distant past.
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Yup. I did, too. I checked that archive site and the three themes I made back in the day are there too (not linking them as it would dox me).
And the corners on windows etc. are way, way too rounded. Blech!
I don't even know where this "rounded corners" = "better" thing came from.
It certainly isn't better when taken to this degree, I would say.
Theming is possible with .car editors like theme engine. People just aren’t as interested in deep customizations anymore. I’ve been making themes for Yosemite + for a while, and I love the flatness that macOS gave us until this point, I could make anything look normal because there were no clashing design elements, everything was flat. Although much more complex and clunky than in OS 10.4 days, Theming is still possible, although, a lost art.
Not gonna happen....the last thing Apple would want you to do is to make your Mac desktop and elements look Un-Mac like or look like Linux or Windows or something. Apple is all about branding and UI look is part of branding.
Ah, the sounds! I’d almost forgotten about them. And yet, thinking about them now, they’re all coming back to me. Adding UI sounds like that is a fraught endeavor, but Apple managed to pull it off so much better than anyone else ever did.
The best UX for you is likely different from the best UX for me which is also different from the best UX for Tim. There's no objective "best" experience for everyone - it's entirely subjective.
I welcome these customization options because, frankly, multicolored app icons are distracting to my eye. I know that's not true for everyone, which is why I'd never advocate for Clear becoming the default.
"Allow Window Tinting" was left on in these screenshots. So the windows picked up some blue tint from the wallpaper.
Ill have to try again but even with window tinting disabled it still was blue and not grey for me
I think liquid glass is going to be great, but yeah it’ll look like stardock has bought out a Mac version.
I would've killed for Dark Mode Apps in Sonoma. I don't know how I quite feel about them on Tahoe but it somehow feels worse imo (probably do to the liquid glass).
I'll take themes for every version of Aqua from every version of (Mac) OS X/macOS, please. (I'd probably stick with the 10.15 'Cataline' look, but all the options should remain available for everyone.)
(…Probably too much to ask for, but a retro Platinum theme would be a nice nostalgia trip. AppKitForClassic partly shows that it's possible to wire it up, at least.)
(…Probably too much to ask for, but a retro Platinum theme would be a nice nostalgia trip. AppKitForClassic partly shows that it's possible to wire it up, at least.)
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how it appears to work is that the most recently added tag controls the color of the folder. I'm not sure how preexisting tagged folders appear (I don't really use tags to be frank), but what I see is whenever I add a tag to a folder it changes the color to match that tag
Interesting, thanks. Hopefully they'll expand it to let us pick which tag colour to use.
There's an app called Colorful Folder I use for that. It's only $2 and you can also add icons to the folder at the same timeIs there a way to change only certain folder's color? I'd love to use it as Tags - for example all of my clients' invoices folders in a certain color etc...
If it only can be set system wide then I'll stick with blue, I guess...
What really gets my goat is that I deliberately choose the dark mode of my system, but if a website refuses to support it, my Safari goes back to its bright self. It's like the inconsistent dark mode of Windows (the comparison is a bit of a stretch) - but you get the idea.
macOS 26 is the first beta that I haven't installed and used from the get-go - the same goes for iOS 26. There are a few nice touches here and there, but the majority is still quite rough around the edges. I really hope all this will be sorted out, otherwise I'll probably stick with Sequoia for as long as possible.
It's a real shame, really too bad :-(
macOS 26 is the first beta that I haven't installed and used from the get-go - the same goes for iOS 26. There are a few nice touches here and there, but the majority is still quite rough around the edges. I really hope all this will be sorted out, otherwise I'll probably stick with Sequoia for as long as possible.
It's a real shame, really too bad :-(
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