macOS Tahoe: Apple continues to face criticism with Liquid Glass | News

Whether it’s the phone app that’s coming to the Mac, the revised Spotlight search or changes to the photo application: macOS 26 comes with a variety of innovations. When it comes to the current Mac operating system, most users primarily think of one innovation: Liquid Glass is Apple’s attempt to modernize the user interface. This doesn’t go down well with all users: Cupertino therefore decided to provide a few options to tone down the glass-like transparency a little. However, this approach doesn’t work too well – in fact, one of these configurations actually has the opposite effect.

Liquid glass settings without much effect
When Apple released macOS Tahoe, some users were limited in their joy: the operating system was considered a bit half-baked in many areas, which was not least due to the Liquid Glass. Many of the effects made it difficult to read or caused display errors that affected the workflow. However, Cupertino gives users some tools to fine-tune the design. However, these don’t seem to be particularly helpful: Tuomas Hämäläinen on Mastodon, for example, points out the “Reduce transparency” option in the operating aids. If this is switched on, the contrast between individual elements of the user interface is even reduced – if you can even see the differences:

Malice for the user interface
Although Apple added some settings and allows you to switch between the liquid glass modes “Transparent” and “Colored”, the system still lacks fine-tuning, as Hämäläinen notes. He cites the apps section in the Spotlight search as an example. This replaces the launchpad and is still accessed with a four-finger gesture. A blurry version of the overview initially appears before it changes to its final state when the gesture is ended. John Gruber comments on Hämäläinen’s comments laconically: macOS Tahoe looks like a copy hastily implemented by Huawei.