soheilpro6d ago

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
Show threadandy_ppp6d ago
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 threadSynaesthesia

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.

Mar 22 at 12:36amWeb
Show threadspijdar6d ago

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 threadbrailsafe6d ago
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 threadhbn6d ago

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 threadmicrotonal5d ago

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 threadhalapro5d ago

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 threadjosteink5d ago

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 threadkryptiskt5d ago
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 threadlatexr5d ago

> 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.