At WWDC, Apple introduced its new Liquid Glass design language, which is coming to all of its units, together with Macs. I’ve been tinkering with the macOS Tahoe 26 developer beta on the M4 MacBook Air for a couple of day. To date, the aesthetic modifications vary from slick to barely overwrought, however the brand new Highlight search options are nifty and helpful.
There are new touches of glassy transparency throughout macOS 26, together with the Dock, Finder, widgets, and built-in apps. It’s extra refined than on the iPhone, largely as a result of the Mac’s a lot bigger display screen actual property makes the Liquid Glass components extra like accents than no matter this mess is meant to be. I’m not very keen on it simply but, however perhaps it would develop on me, like UI modifications are likely to.
The Dock now has a frosted background that’s extra translucent than Sequoia’s flatter design. The hazy, frozen glass aesthetic additionally extends to widgets, just like the calendar and climate, and drop-down menus — although the latter have a lot greater opacity. The pop-ups for quantity and brightness now use this distorted glass look as properly, although they’ve moved to the top-right nook of the display screen as an alternative of being centered above the dock. Frankly, they’re ugly, and I discover their new elongated horizontal look unusual and misplaced.
Surprisingly, the Menu Bar on the prime of the display screen is now invisible, so it not masks the display screen’s notch cutout with a darkish grey bar. At first I discovered this barely jarring, however I adjusted to it rapidly, simply as I did the primary time I noticed a notched MacBook. It turned largely innocuous with even a brilliant wallpaper displaying its borders. (For those who actually hate it you possibly can allow “Cut back transparency” within the accessibility menu, bringing again the filled-in Menu Bar and killing just about all of Tahoe’s different clear results.) The one cool factor the invisible Menu Bar permits is a brand new animation: whenever you three-finger swipe up for Mission Management, a glass pane descends from the highest and distorts the view of the wallpaper beneath. It’s a kitschy flourish, nevertheless it’s one of many few results in Tahoe that tickles me.
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Widgets now stay on the desktop as an alternative of requiring a swipe-over of the Notification Middle, permitting you to populate your desktop with a lot of glanceable information like an iPad house display screen when you select. Open a Finder window and also you see extra of Tahoe’s rounded design, with the sidebar now trying like its personal tall, oval-ish nested window. Darkish mode and light-weight mode present some variations right here, with gentle mode flattening the Finder home windows fairly a bit greater than its darker model, which seems to be extra glassy to me.
The theme controls that launched with iOS 18 at the moment are in macOS. Opening the Look menu permits you to change Tahoe’s general seems to be (gentle, darkish, and auto), spotlight colours, and icon and widget kinds. The correct (or unsuitable) mixture of those settings can dramatically change macOS’s seems to be, from minimalist to garish.
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Extra thrilling for energy customers are the modifications to Highlight that make it a lot simpler to function your Mac by keyboard alone. Highlight search now provides you shortcuts to discovering information, launching apps, performing actions, and accessing clipboard historical past. Urgent Command and House calls up Highlight because it all the time has, however now when you hover over the search bar with the mouse you’re proven 4 icons for these new features, with every providing a helpful keyboard shortcut.
Now that is spotlighting: by urgent Command and both number one, 2, 3, or 4 keys you may get fast entry to Apps, Recordsdata, Shortcuts, and Clipboard. Then, you possibly can kind out no matter you’re trying to find or making an attempt to do. The Apps drawer can act as a mini categorized launcher. Recordsdata places solutions and recents on the prime. Shortcuts permits you to kind out features you’d like your Mac to do through suitable apps. Clipboard is a reverse chronological historical past of the newest stuff you copied.
I actually like the flexibility to set customized fast key instructions. For instance, I set “M” to be the short key for a message, and “TM” to set a timer. Every of these actions requires typing out some a part of the immediate, just like the variety of minutes in your timer or the contents of a message and the recipient. However when you like to make use of a lot of hotkeys and navigating round an app with the Tab and Alt keys you’re prone to really feel proper at house.
A number of readers have been fast to remark that that is Apple “sherlocking” Raycast. Raycast is a way more customizable and expansive Highlight different. It may do math and unit conversions, set timers, has its personal appendable clipboard historical past, and a bunch extra, and it additionally helps third-party extensions. Whereas the modifications in macOS Tahoe let Highlight encroach on a number of the issues Raycast can do, it’s not fairly as expansive. Not less than, not but. Raycast is a power-user instrument, and it might take Apple a while and much more growth to win over these customers.
I’ve been utilizing the primary Tahoe developer beta for a couple of day. There will probably be a lot extra to find out about macOS Tahoe as builders proceed utilizing it in its present beta kind and Apple delivers extra updates. The general public beta isn’t coming till someday subsequent month, and it’s attainable that Apple will push out some sizable modifications and UI tweaks even earlier than then.
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