The cross-platform redesign of Apple’s user interfaces, presented as “Liquid Glass”, has already received a lot of criticism. Some things were fixed or mitigated during the beta phase, which lasted several months; otherwise only became apparent after several months of use. A discovery by StopTheMadness developer Jeff Johnson reveals another case that Apple’s designers apparently did not consider: With a certain combination of settings, the column width in the Finder window can no longer be adjusted by hand. The problem occurs when you open a Finder window in column view (+3) calls: Permanently displayed scroll bars cover the handles displayed at the bottom edge, which can be used to adjust the column width. To do this, however, the user must have made two settings that deviate from the standard:
- In the Settings app under “Appearance,” the “Show scroll bar” setting is set to “Always.”
- In the Finder, the “Show status bar” entry is active in the “View” menu.
This combination ensures that the bottom scroll bar of a Finder window permanently covers the column width handle marked with two vertical lines. It remains (semi) visible, but cannot be clicked on. The combination of both options may sound like an exotic special case, but it is particularly popular with Mac veterans – it restores the appearance learned and used to in previous system versions.
Permanently displayed scroll bars in macOS 26 (Tahoe) block the column handles. The problem didn’t exist under Sequoia.
One option has to give way
The status bar at the bottom of the window fell out of fashion at Apple many years ago, but it shows valuable information such as the number of objects in the current folder and the remaining storage space. Fortunately, if you want to quickly adjust the columns, you can open the status bar using the key combination (+ß) temporarily hide. If you forego the permanent display of the scroll bars, you will not be confronted with this problem either: the handles are missing at the bottom and the column can be changed over the entire height of the separator.
The “Show scrollbar” setting is one of the culprits of the blockage.
