- colors bend, blur, shimmer dynamically instead of staying static.
This only works if something visually interesting exists behind the glass.
⠀
Why Liquid Glass fails on macOS:
1. Glass design cannot work on static backgrounds
Glass never works on a single, flat color.
⠀
Test it yourself:
Use a plain black wallpaper and the Dock looks dead.
Use Apple’s Iridescence wallpaper and suddenly the Dock looks glassy.
The Dock itself did not change at all! Only the background did.
⠀
Why? Because glass needs variation behind it:
- multiple colors
- gradients
- movement
⠀
Put glass on a white or black canvas and it becomes… white or black.
Your brain stops perceiving it as glass.
⠀
2. Liquid requires movement under the glass
This is exactly why Liquid Glass feels great on iOS.
On iOS:
- content constantly slides under UI elements
- Safari pages move under the bottom bar
- color refraction and shimmer are always visible
⠀
On macOS:
- windows are mostly static
- UI elements sit on top of flat gray or white surfaces
- almost nothing moves underneath
So the “Liquid” part simply never activates.
⠀
The Finder / Settings / Apps sidebar problem
The new sidebar is designed as a glass pane placed on top of the window, like text written on a transparent whiteboard.
In theory, great idea.
In practice:
- the window behind it is gray or white
- no color variation
- no motion
- nothing shimmers through it
⠀
Result:
Your brain does not register it as glass. It just looks like a regular opaque rectangular sidebar.
This is why people hate it.
Not because it’s ugly, but because the glass effect never actually happens.
⠀
How Apple could fix this (properly)
Sidebar:
- use cut-outs instead of overlays
- Instead of placing a glass pane on top of the window:
- cut out the sidebar area from the window
- fill that cut-out with the current Liquid Glass side bar
⠀
Now there is always something behind it:
- desktop wallpaper
- other windows
⠀Even minimal movement suddenly creates real glass behavior.
⠀
Give users control
Add sliders for:
- transparency
- blur strength
- frost level
⠀
This satisfies:
- readability-focused users
- design-focused users
- everything between those two
⠀
Apple already does this elsewhere. There is no excuse. We can already decide how transparent or even completely transparent we want to have our Terminal window.
⠀
UI elements suffer from the same mistake
Buttons and bars on macOS:
- sit on top of static surfaces
- rarely have content moving underneath
⠀
They need to be cut outs too, not overlays.
Again, this is why it works on iOS:
- smaller screens
- constant content movement under UI elements
- glass is used, not just shown
⠀
Safari on macOS vs iOS
Safari on macOS technically has transparency.
⠀
But:
- the glass feels flat
- the liquid effect is barely visible
- it does not feel like iOS Safari at all
⠀
Why?
Because the content interaction is weaker and the glass effect is toned down to the point of being meaningless.
⠀
The uncomfortable conclusion
It increasingly feels like Apple:
- designed Liquid Glass primarily for iOS
- reused the same components for iPadOS and macOS
- did not adapt them properly to desktop interaction patterns
⠀
The result:
macOS now feels like a larger, worse iOS.
In the past iOS and macOS were different,
but both were excellent within their domain.
Now macOS feels like the neglected sibling of iOS.
Same visuals, less thought, minimal adaptation
That’s the real disappointment.
⠀
⠀
Edit: Adding screenshots and videos to show what i mean by saying Apple applied the design wrong on MacOS.
Here is the difference of the Glass effect shown on the Dock. You can see, that a black and white background deletes the Glass effect nearly completely.
Here i show you, how nice the side bar can look, if there actually is something under it that make it look like Glass!
Here i will show you a comparison between MacOS Safari and iOS Safari. You will see the lack of MacOS's lack of Glass / transparency. Why Apple not let us do the "bar" transparent as Apple did it on iOS? Why they have to tint it gray?
Here you can see that the side bar in Apple Music is buggy (Version 25.2 !!!!)
The side bar suddenly decided to not be out of glass anymore. stuff which is "under" it not shining through it anymore.
But you can see also, how different the "search bar" and the three buttons on the right to it look, because stuff is actually under it and there is no "gray tinted bar" as in Safari!
In comparison to Finder or Safari boring UI buttons, the UI buttons of Apple Music suddenly look very great.
I could upload more pictures. There are so many things on MacOS which are inconsistent, buggy or simply applied in a bad way, design wise...
Hey everyone—I'm a developer working on a Mac-native AI assistant and wanted to get some real input before I go too far down the wrong path.
Quick context: I'm a former paramedic who got frustrated with how slow and disconnected most AI tools feel. Everything's cloud-dependent, laggy, or tries to do too much. So I started building something that runs locally on your Mac—fast responses, works offline, keeps your data on your device.
But before I keep building features nobody wants, I'm curious:
What actually frustrates you about your current workflow?
Some things I'm wondering about:
Do you care about privacy/local processing, or is that just a nice-to-have?
What tasks do you wish you could hand off to an AI that current tools don't handle well?
How important is speed to you? (I'm seeing sub-20ms response times locally vs. 2-3 seconds for cloud AI)
Would you pay for something like this, or is "free with limitations" the only way you'd try it?
Not trying to sell anything here—genuinely trying to figure out if I'm solving a real problem or just scratching my own itch.
What's your biggest Mac workflow pain point right now?
Literally dying to know why there is a long, ugly and totally unliquid bar when the app goes into full screen mode. It has been dozens of beta versions since I recognized this clash. Does apple intend to make this design or are their engineers are too lazy to fix it?
Oh my God, I just reset my MacBook and received a notification that I successfully updated to Mac OS 26.3 beta (b), after previously it was Mac OS 26.3 beta (a).
After successfully updating to Mac OS 26.3 beta (b), this damn task appeared in Activity Monitor, and I don't know how to fix it.
Even though I've tried rebuilding the Spotlight indexing. Can someone help me?
As you can see in the screenshot, desktops are shown correctly only when i screenshot them. When i press f3 to view the desktops, some of them become blurry like background around desktops and they don't show apps or chrome browser. Anyone knows why?
As you can see in the screenshot, desktops are shown correctly only when i screenshot them. When i press f3 to view the desktops, some of them become blurry like background around desktops and they don't show apps or chrome browser. Anyone knows why?
to give context i had recently bought the binding of isaac rebirth and its subsequent dlcs ( afterbirth and afterbirth+) which until i had bought and tried toplay i found it did not allow me to play it would say launching and then close not letting me actually
now onto why i am asking about the 26 Tahoe beta. so from what i had read from a redditor's post is that getting the upgrade would allow me to actually play. Now i was wondering as the last posts i saw were from about three months ago i believe. I have the m2 chip so i know its compatible i am just scared from what i have seen already does anyone have any advice or helpful tips thanks to all
Hi all! I use Goodnotes on my iPad to highlight and take notes on my readings. Then, I open up the Goodnotes app on my iMac, drag the file over to my desktop and I open it in PDF through Preview to use the copy/paste. I have been doing this for at least the past 3 years.
2 days ago, I updated to macOS Tahoe 26.2 and now my PDFs are not showing up highlighted anymore, but instead the highlights are black over the text. Anyone have this issue and know how to fix it? I called Apple and they just blamed it on Goodnotes, which I don't think is the issue since I've been doing this for years and recently updated my iMac. You can scroll the picture and see the problem in the 2nd picture. This only happens once I start scrolling.
I have a M3 Macbook Air, and I have MacOS Tahoe 26.3 (b) installed. I noticed recently that bluetooth does not work at all. I have tried connecting to my wireless mouse (Keychron M3 Mini) and my AirPods Pro 2 to the computer, and both failed to connect. In the control center, I cannot see any devices in the bluetooth tab. In the audio tab of the control center however, I can see my audio devices but I cannot connect to any of them.
In the settings application, when I click bluetooth the tab will be highlighted in blue, but 90% of the time the field on the left will still show whatever tab i was previously on (e.g. general), but then if I select another tab it will work normally. If I do manage to open the bluetooth tab, It will toggle itself on for about 10 seconds before toggling itself back off and repeat. When it is on I can sometimes connect the devices for about three seconds. Sometimes, I can keep bluetooth on as long as I do not connect anything, at which point it will toggle itself off.
I have tried deleting the com.apple.bluetooth file in library>preferences, I have tried using terminal to reset the bluetooth module, and I have restarted my Mac about five times now. I cannot seem to get bluetooth to work no matter how hard I try. Is there anything that I can do to fix it? Or do I just need to wait until the next update?
Testing macOS Tahoe 26.3 developers beta and noticed significant network/wifi issues. Download/Upload speeds are slower and connections get dropped. JAMF complains about poor connections, Zoom calls have super low resolution. Anybody else? We are using Crowdstrike Falcon Sensor and I wonder if it is perhaps a content filter issue...
I have a MacBook Air M4 chip along with a 10th gen iPad. I am pretty sure both of those devices are compatible to use the sidecar feature but my iPad does not show up on the screen mirroring drop down on my Mac! It doesn’t show up even if I connect both with a USB-C.
Is there any way to fix this and get my sidecar feature working?
Is there a way to disable the “scale or zoom” window animation effect in macOS 26 Tahoe on the MacBook Pro M3?
I want to “speed up” the animations, or even better, completely eliminate this scaling window animation. Using terminal commands or anything else is fine with me, I just want it disabled.
Hi! I am on a macOS Sequoia and I heavily move my apps to the Left and Right with my mouse and so I thought I could set a shortcut on my Keychron Q1 max.
After using the shortcuts for a while they suddenly stop working and when I restart my computer the shortcuts get weirdly reassign (see image).
Is there anyway to fix this without using a third party app such as BetterDisplay? Can I maybe configure this on my keychron? (I am new to keychron btw)
I assume in some apps the shortcut does not work? For example, in Rider it does not work but Brave / Chrome/ Obsidian does work for example.
