soheilpro

Hide macOS Tahoe's Menu Icons

https://512pixels.net/2026/03/hide-macos-tahoes-menu-icons-with-this-one-simple-trick/

Hide macOS Tahoe's Menu Icons With This One Simple Trick - 512 Pixels

I really dislike Apple’s choice to clutter macOS Tahoe’s menus with icons. It makes menus hard to scan, and a bunch of the icons Apple has chosen make no sense and are inconsistent between system applications. Steve Troughton-Smith is my hero for finding a Terminal command to disable them: Here’s one for the icons-in-menus haters […]

512 Pixels
Mar 21 at 5:46pmWeb
Show threadandy_pppMar 21
Usually I like Apple’s OS updates but Tahoe is absolutely awful from the glass to the noddy sizing of everything. MacOS does not have to harmonise with VisionOS at all and it’s been a disaster for macOS to try.
Show threadreddaloMar 21

I agree. Tahoe is disgustingly unusable; I'm happy that Alan Dye left Apple.

I hope Apple will backtrack on Liquid Glass after Tahoe. Otherwise, I'll just switch to Linux.

Show threadradicaldreamerMar 21

They will likely tweak it but very unlikely that they’ll remove it altogether, especially with the upcoming touch screen MacBook Pro.

Companies like Apple typically don’t make reversals quickly (the butterfly keyboard took years to remedy).

Show threadmhurronMar 21
They'll do what they always do, it'll be the greatest thing ever just getting minor tweaks for 3-4 releases and then will be superseded by the greatest thing ever.
Show threadtomalbrcMar 22
Your "upcoming" touch MacBook Pro has been a pipe dream of apple consumers for 2 decades now
Show threadisametryMar 22
I’d even say pipe dream of just Apple commentators and pundits. I’ve yet to hear from a normal, real-life Mac user who legitimately wishes for a touchscreen MacBook.
Show threadfragmedeMar 22
Kids raised on iPads totally try and touch three laptop screen, ah it's not all Internet pundits who want one.
Show threadisametryMar 22
A kid raised on an animal sounds toy keyboard might also expect the computer to go “moo” when pressing the “M” key, but that doesn’t mean Apple should build that in. Expectations from previous platforms sometimes don’t fit others, and can be unlearned.
Show threadegeozcanMar 22
Sorry to break your streak but I'm a "real-life Mac user who legitimately wishes for a touchscreen MacBook", but maybe you may argue that I'm holding it wrong and my wish is illegitimate :)
Show threadisametryMar 22

Nope, no bad faith here, I’d genuinely like to hear your use cases for the touchscreen.

I just hope you could exclude speculative new interfaces and gestures in future macOS that straight-up cannot be done with a mouse. In which case, yeah, the TouchBook would be degrading the experience for me and a huge portion of Mac users, thus making me sad.

Show threadegeozcanMar 22

I just don't want to switch to an ipad when I want to sketch something. Also some tagging interfaces for photo review work exceptionally well with a touch screen. So I don't want to carry a macbook pro and and ipad, long story short.

> I just hope you could exclude speculative new interfaces and gestures in future macOS that straight-up cannot be done with a mouse

I agree 100%. I'm already annoyed about how some stuff that's easy to do with a touchpad are straight-up broken with a normal mouse.

Show threadnomelMar 22

> disgustingly unusable

Any specifics in mind? I, personally, haven't noticed much, beyond the initial difficulty in resizing windows.

Show threadmichelbMar 22

A lot of the controls are unreadable depending on the background behind it, for example. Which is crazy. Sometimes it's also hard to figure out if something is a control, part of a site/application, a visual bug, or something else.

They've even doubled down on it, I don't see this going away in the next 2 major OS versions. I expect them to have a lot of WWDC sessions about it again this year.

That said, Apple's own apps are a crazy mixed up mess of different design systems and technologies, so maybe it will all fall apart and something new comes along in ±3 years time.

Show threadtroupoMar 22

Why would they backtrack? Alan Dye wasn't the only person at Apple pushing this with God-like powers overriding everyone's decisions. [1]

New head of design, surprise surprise: Apple's new software design chief, Steve Lemay, was "a driving force" behind Liquid Glass and was "deeply involved in its development." https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/15/ios-27-macos-27-no-majo...

[1] I have small rant about this pervasive view here: https://dmitriid.com/the-curious-case-of-alan-dye

No Major Changes to Liquid Glass Expected Across iOS 27 and macOS 27

Apple's new Liquid Glass interface introduced across iOS 26, macOS Tahoe, and its other latest software platforms is apparently here to stay. ...

MacRumors
Show threadlayer8Mar 22
Steve Lemay, who now replaced Alan Dye as the design lead, allegedly was a driving force behind Liquid Glass and deeply involved in its development, so I wouldn’t expect any reversal. (https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/15/ios-27-macos-27-no-majo...)
No Major Changes to Liquid Glass Expected Across iOS 27 and macOS 27

Apple's new Liquid Glass interface introduced across iOS 26, macOS Tahoe, and its other latest software platforms is apparently here to stay. ...

MacRumors
Show threaddrfloyd51Mar 22

Will you really switch?

There are so many other wonderful reasons to switch beyond “my current OS has a few issues”.

And it’s not as if Linux is without issues either.

I mean if Linux was “SO GREAT” why are you bothering with an inferior OS now. Just switch already.

Show threadSynaesthesiaMar 22

I don't know, I always see this pattern with iOS or MacOS releases. Everyone piles on at the time.

I've actually quite enjoyed some design changes in Tahoe, and looking at older versions of MacOS just looks old fashioned once you're used to them.

Show threadspijdarMar 22

I'm sure this is true, and that there will always be a (likely disproportionately) loud group of complainers, many of whom will forget about their complaints. I haven't really publicly complained about Tahoe before, and I don't intend on whining about it again. But...

It's fine. I'm not going to rail about how it's unusable, or say that it makes me want to gouge out my eyes, or whatever. But it's enough to dissuade me from ever wanting to buy another Mac, if I have the option of using a desktop Linux system.

That's a pretty big caveat. But those curved window borders and the rounded widgets in e.g. the settings menu are kind of awful. Not unusable. But every time I open a terminal and I deal with the choice of either having obscene padding around my content or seeing a few pixels of my prompt's corners shaved off, I get just a little more irritated, and a little less likely to pick up my Macbook the next time I'm deciding which device to use.

Show threadbrailsafeMar 22
Good UI for tools, physical or digitial, should reduce the friction between picking it up and using it for something, that's the problem at the core of design. With the small caveat that sometimes technically good but perhaps unethical design solves stupid business problems well, like deliberately making chairs uncomfortable to keep traffic moving through a busy cafe, or making anti-homeless benches, design should not dissuade you from using something you purchased to solve other problems; it's unprincipled.
Show threadhbnMar 22

Almost every update I'm skeptical at first and then after a while I see a screenshot of the old UI and think "how did I ever use that?"

Tahoe I've been using since it came out and every time I see a screenshot of prior versions I think "wow it used to look so much better"

Show threadmicrotonalMar 22

Yeah, there was a post recently
about how window chrome changed over the years and the Tahoe era does not make me recognize Apple anymore:

https://pxlnv.com/blog/window-chrome-of-our-discontent/

The usability of older versions was so much better. Tahoe is a huge regression, making everything look like one big drab.

(Though Big Sur already entered the path of monochromatic toolbar icons, etc.)

It’s a shame, because their hardware has improved significantly since Jony Ive left.

The Window Chrome of Our Discontent

In a WWDC 2011 session, Dan Schimpf explained some of the goals of the refreshed design for Aqua in Mac OS X Lion were “meant to focus the user attention on the active window content”. This sentiment was echoed by John Siracusa in his review of Lion for Ars Technica: Apple says that its goal […]

Show threadhalaproMar 22

I've always been "pro-change" for UIs, as opposed to the bunch of people in the "bring the old UI back" camp, but Tahoe looked like fecal matter from the moment it was introduced.

On iOS it's manageable with reduced transparency, but on macOS it's just so awful I won't upgrade.

Show threadjosteinkMar 22

I was forced to upgrade at work.

So I’ve enabled reduced transparency and all the other accessibility settings I can find to remove the terribleness.

The UI is now mono-coloured gray and looks like MacOS back in the days before OS X was a thing - but it’s still better than what Apple “envisioned” with Tahoe.

Show threadkryptisktMar 22
That's actually a problem with Tahoe, it is not something new and bold, it's old-fashioned. Transparency already has come and gone as a UI fad, and it doesn't really make any big difference if you throw computationally expensive effects at it.
Show threadlatexrMar 22

> Everyone piles on at the time.

Not this much, they don’t.

> looking at older versions of MacOS just looks old fashioned

It’s an operating system, not a dress to parade around on a catwalk. I don’t want it to be fashionable and change with the seasons, I want it to be usable and intuitive. And yes, it should look good (which Tahoe doesn’t) but to the extent that it makes usability better, never in detriment of it.

Show threadmrweaselMar 22

Maybe it looks better on a nicer monitor or something. To me there's nothing terribly broken about the Tahoe UI, but it's clearly rushed because there are a ton of weird little things that just look off.

The dock is suppose to look like the icons float in a class panel, but the reflections in the glass look pixilated and the effect isn't there. The dock icons are centred in the dock, but the activity indicator on the "glass" pane make it look like they're not.

In the control panel, and other windows with a left panel, it's clear that the window curve and the panel curve aren't the same and the transparency of the panel makes it even more clear. I don't understand why some panels can be transparent, but other parts of the window isn't. There's no reason for the transparency.

The Tahoe looks like Gnome theme from 2005, it's interesting, sort of pretty, but the details makes it clear that the authors doesn't quite have the skills to perfect it.

Apple have been slacking in the UI quality control department in the past few years. I have similar issues on my iPhone SE, Apple (and app authors) clearly doesn't test on this phone, because UI elements frequently overlap.

Also I'm still annoyed about the control panel being ported over from iOS. You can't find anything and the window can't even be made wider.

Show threaddrooopyMar 22
Tahoe's UI looks like a generic, "futuristic-like", user-created theme for KDE circa 2009.
Show threadmicrotonalMar 22

The only missing thing are wobbly windows and a cube desktop switcher.

(Yes, I know, don’t give them ideas.)

Show threadbesthamMar 22
Like the cube user switcher in MacOS?
Show threadmicrotonalMar 22
Oh, yeah, I completely forgot about that. No multi-user Macs in the house anymore.
Show threadisoprophlexMar 22
I kinda want a new mac because the hardware looks so ... performant. But I can't bear this tahoe glass bullshit, every screenshot I see of it looks terrible. I just don't get what Apple's play is here.
Show threaddrfloyd51Mar 22

Apple fired the head of UX after Tahoe. Apple didn’t know what Apple’s play was.

The new guy is very well respected and hopefully back off of glass.

Show threadmichelbMar 22
'The new guy' is one of the driving forces behind Apple Glass....
Show threadChrisArchitectMar 21

Related:

It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46497712

It's hard to justify Tahoe icons | Hacker News

Show threadhoochMar 21
it's as if the icons get added by a lazy LLM prompt during CI
Show thread9devMar 21
Which is probably exactly what happened. Reportedly Apple is all-in on Claude across the board.
Show threadnayrocladeMar 22

Nah, blaming AI is too easy. It's more likely that Apple's design culture got rotted out under Alan Dye https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job

Now that Dye is gone, I still hold out hope that Apple will change direction and start fixing their UI. But that fact that it got this bad in the first place implies things are seriously broken at a senior leadership level.

Bad Dye Job

It might have made some sense to bring someone from the fashion/brand world to lead software design for Apple Watch, but it sure didn’t seem to make sense for the rest of Apple’s platforms. And the decade of Dye’s HI leadership has proven it.

Daring Fireball
Show threadsaagarjhaMar 22
What makes you think that things aren't bad under him?
Show threadneomMar 21
I was really happy when they added the pictures! Dyslexia, the icons are 100% faster for me, I don't use those menus often enough to know what is in there word wise, but I can read the icons super fast.
Show threadcosmoticMar 21
How can you read the icons if they mean different things in different apps?
Show threadLeoPantheraMar 22
Can you provide some examples of this? In my experience, they're quite consistent.
Show threadOJFordMar 22
https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/ (second section on consistency)
It’s hard to justify Tahoe icons

Looking at the first principles of icon design—and how Apple failed to apply all of them in macOS Tahoe

tonsky.me
Show threadthenthenthenMar 22
The later examples are pretty wild, 3 different ‘minimize’ icons? Why? Different teams?
Show threadinatreecrown2Mar 22
This guy is doing free design work/critique for Apple
Show threadhirvi74Mar 22
A lot of those icon examples are being rather disingenuous. Some of the icon symbol changes amongst the various apps are justified because the actions being represented are different despite using the same English word. Take the "New" icon example. Adding a new reminder is not the same thing conceptually as creating a new note.
Show threadCrestwaveMar 22
Here's an in-depth analysis (also linked in the OP): https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/
It’s hard to justify Tahoe icons

Looking at the first principles of icon design—and how Apple failed to apply all of them in macOS Tahoe

tonsky.me
Show threadneomMar 22
A lot of the examples in here, I can't find? Like, I looked around for the new smart folder with the cog icon, where is it on my mac? Same with save as check, where is that? Also I'm pretty sure (although I can't find it) the save as with the up arrow is save as out to something? The ones I do find, all make perfect sense and work pretty well for me, they're not totally perfect but I'd never thought about them much before this post and I use them almost exclusively. Look at all his new for example, see new finder window? Look at the box around it, then open your window menu at the top of your screen, see how minimize has the same box around it? If you go though those icons set, most of them have: primary, secondary and sometimes tertiary visual clues. I dunno, I read that blog post and it doesn't really jive with me. I'm sure they could stand to clean it up a bit, I don't know I'm not a designer, but I'm certainly glad they are there!!! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Show threadarmMar 22
New Smart Folder with a cogwheel icon is in the File menu of Notes.app, while New Smart Folder with a folder+cogwheel icon is in the File menu of Finder.app.
Show threadneomMar 22
Thanks! I don't use the notes app, cog is not the best icon for that but I suppose it's differentiated from the file system version, if I read them both the same I might be confused, but not sure why they selected cog!!!
Show threadgarbagewomanMar 22
Yeah should be an accessibility setting for the few users who need it
Show threadsmohareMar 22
[dead]
Show threadGagarin1917Mar 22

It shouldn’t even be just you and others with dyslexia either.

Processing images is always faster than processing text for everyone.

Show threadsteve_adams_86Mar 22

I would argue this is only true when the image is apt. In Tahoe I don't think this is always true. The lack of consistency in layout and presence of icons is also visually difficult to process. The signal to noise ratio of the icon gutter is very poor.

I like it in theory but the execution seems more harmful than helpful so far. If I'm wrong and it's helping some people, that's great.

Show threadlayer8Mar 22
It depends on the images. Processing a dozen of very similar-looking small gray blobs isn’t fast. Recognizing the text labels is faster for many people. The text labels also have visual structure within a menu by their different lengths that the icons don’t.
Show threadnopakosMar 22
So it should be an accessibility setting. I don't mind if the default is on or off.
Show threadneomMar 22
Yeah I agree, this would be ideal, I actually thought this post was pretty funny because I couldn't imagine anyone wanting them off, and I suppose some people think it's funny I like them. :)
Show threadtroupoMar 22

In article we discuss has a link to this article: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025/icons-in-menus/ Which has a good paragraph with an example:

--- start quote ---

Get a bunch of people in a room, show them menus where the textual labels are gone, and see who can get the most right.

--- end quote ---

Icons won't help you when they are inconsistent, or don't mean anything.

It's impossible to find a suitable visual metaphor for every possible action of every possible app and cram it into a tiny monochrome icon.

Icons in Menus Everywhere — Send Help

Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.

Show threadwolvoleoMar 22

The problem isn't just the icons but the inconsistency. This link mentioned in the source article illustrates it well: https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/

For a company that used to pride itself on its clean and consistent UI, this is really shoddy work. It feels like Microsoft now, every app designed by a different team and nobody coordinating together.

And this would have been a really minor job to coordinate properly. It probably would have saved time in fact having predefined icons for common functions. Now theres been 8 designers working on a different icon for the same function. It seems just complete disinterest in consistency. "Just do whatever" is not the apple way.

It’s hard to justify Tahoe icons

Looking at the first principles of icon design—and how Apple failed to apply all of them in macOS Tahoe

tonsky.me
Show threadorion7Mar 22
I use Linux at home and MacOS at work; I am quite fond of every visual change in Tahoe with sole the exception of the obscenely large radius rounded window corners which make no sense on a rectangular screen and make resizing windows a relatively slow and arduous task. I really wish they could be disabled.
Show threadm463Mar 22

arguably rounded corners have been an apple brand-image thing for a long time, like the icons on ios.

I kind of wonder if this is like overdoing your watch logo stuff like in this article:
https://paulgraham.com/brandage.html

The Brand Age