How to Bring Back Oddly Shaped App Icons in macOS 26 Tahoe
simonbs.dev75 points by Bogdanp 4 days ago
75 points by Bogdanp 4 days ago
For anyone else confused by the version number bump from 15 to 26, apparently Apple announced they are moving to version numbers that reflect the year _after_ the release date similar to car model years. This change feels odd to me, but I can't put my finger on why.
> I can’t put my finger on why.
To me it feels inauthentic.
Based on early comments, which say it makes sense, I’m an outlier.
However, this shifts from something that had semantic value (not saying Apple used Semver, but there were linear major and minor versions) to marketing driven version numbers.
iPadOS 18 Vision os 3 watchOS 12 or whatever
This change makes a ton of sense
For those on the "it makes sense" camp, remember Apple sticks a year number on their hardware to distinguish models with the same otherwise the same name, e.g. "MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2021) " [0]
And indeed, that specific Macbook was released in 2021, not 2020.
So they're breaking their own convention purely for the marketing benefits.
I don’t think that’s totally fair. The OS version number gets mentioned a lot more often than the year of a specific laptop. Furthermore it’s only made available to the general public close to the end of the year. The majority if its use is seen in a year matching the version.
I’m not saying it’s a perfect system but I can see why they prefer that then having people use iOS 25 for the majority of 2026.
Now that they are referred to by the SoC like M1 M3 etc, but they definitely were known by year models. I have a 2011 MBP, a 2017 MBP, and a 2019 MBP. I couldn’t tell you what cpu it has because Intel’s naming convention is something mere mortals do not know or care about. I know the 2011 had the last Nvidia GPU, the 2017 had the shit keyboard, and the 2019 is the last intel cpu.
To say that they did not use the years sounds like some one commenting on something they are not as familiar as they’d like the rest of the internet to think they are.
Also, people refer to the OS by the cat or California location. I couldn’t tell you what year snow leopard or mavericks came out though
> close to the end of the year.
That wasn't a consideration in the past. e.g.
"MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2011)", introduced on October 24th 2011
https://support.apple.com/en-us/111341
> they prefer that then having people use iOS 25 for the majority of 2026.
I'm not blind to the advantage of their new naming scheme, and honestly they could name it iOS 2077 it would be their prerogative. It just sounds off to me to equate "they're just cheating a bit" to "it makes sense".
As much as I don’t like this, it’s accurate for nine months after the OS is released. I can see their point of view.
Change sometimes feels odd at first, but given time it will feel normal.
The new numbering makes sense to me, considering Apple have been on an annual release schedule for their OSes for some time. The question is, will they do this for hardware too? Will the iPhone 17 actually be the "iPhone 26"?
> will they do this for hardware too? Will the iPhone 17 actually be the "iPhone 26"?
What? No. This is just silly.
It makes sense to have everyone in 2026 running version 26. It’s also nice to announce 27 ahead of 2027 and people feel like they are on the bleeding edge getting it early
It makes sense to have all the product families on the same versioning scheme because they keep blurring the lines between iOS and macOS but that’s the part I don’t like as much
I don’t like my laptop/desktop OS to look and feel like a tablet interface but this is the way they have been going for a while
> It makes sense to have everyone in 2026 running version 26.
For that, they'd need to release iOS 26 for all devices, including discontinued ones, and force people to upgrade (and prevent them from upgrading to iOS 27 in September 2026!)
Since all that won't happen, no, it does not make sense.
They have control over one thing: The year in which they make a new iOS version available. That's the year they should have named it after.
It makes marketing sense.
That's IMHO a critical distinction, as it's neither common nor natural.
I keep pretty up to date with this stuff but I recently read a line on GitHub that said “this software requires macOS 15 or greater”. And I had no idea if that was the current version, a really old version, or the next beta.
When I see a version number, what I really care about is how new/old it is, not how many releases it’s been since the first version. Which is why one of my most common Google searches is “when did <software> <version number> release”
It reminds me of Windows 95, 98, and 2000. Going from Windows 3.11 to 95 instead of 4.0 didn’t feel right at the time, and this feels the same to me.
At least 95 felt significantly different.
It also helped that it was a moment where the market exploded considerably
I'm just really confused that macOS 26 runs on Darwin 25. Why couldn't they have bumped that too to make things match‽
I think it makes sense, the updates release in September, so that means most of the updates lifetime occurs in the following year.
Apple adopted the “Model Year” convention, used by autos and many other kinds of products. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_year
If they switched to the current year at time of release, there would be 6+ months each year where the current version represents the previous calendar year, making it seem outdated.
It’s not marketing fluff, it is maximizing the amount of time out of each year that the year matches the current version number, given that macOS releases are in the second half of the year and not on 1 January.
Doing it with version = release year would mean more days each year where the year != version.
Why are strategic decisions like this always interpreted in the most superficial ways? Apple does scumbag shit frequently (monopolistic anticompetitive practices, walled garden price gouging, illegal wage fixing) but this isn’t that. It’s just math.
> If they switched to the current year at time of release, there would be 6+ months each year where the current version represents the previous calendar year, making it seem outdated.
One could argue that this is simply a marketing concern.
I mean, the full release probably won’t come for another few months at least. That will carry us through tm October or November.
I've never heard of car models named after the year after release. Weird. But here in Europe cars aren't changed every year anyway. I don't think they're ever even numbered.
Except for some brands like Peugeot and formerly Renault but those had nothing to do with the year.
But even even naming them after the year of release makes more sense than the year after. I think for cars it's sometimes done because people don't want to buy cars in the last 3 months because it affects the resale value.
Car models get year tags mentioned all the time. Sometimes, the changes between years can be crazy.
Check out Dodge Chargers, over the years.
Oh yeah we don't have dodge here in Europe. Maybe it's just a US thing?
Most US models are not sold in Europe because they're unpractically big or don't meet our standards. Even the US brands that operate here like Ford make models specially for the foreign market. Like the Ford Escort (now Focus), Fiesta or Mondeo.
Blows my mind how slow OSX still is, there is perceptible lag in almost every interaction during the gif in the blog post. Opening the "properties" dialog looks like it takes > 1 second. It's 2025, we have amazing processors, why is this software still so bad.
I just tried it on my machine and it doesn't lag. There is an animation, and I'm not fond of those as they make interactions slower (I speed them up to max where possible). However, in that gif there's a clear lag before the animation starts, which I don't see.
Using an Intel Mac by any chance? I had a 2019 MacBook Pro and I remember it being just like this. Insanely slow and hot all the time. On my M1 almost everything is instant. Easily the most responsive computer I’ve ever used.
Not coincidentally, this started happening after the OS releases for Apple silicon.
One small cut, but one edging so so close to the line of death.
Who the *fuck* does Apple think they are forcing app icons provided by the developer into a specific shape? Or applying some weird ugly "glass" filter on it? Without permission from the user?
Hey Alan Dye, take a chill pill man. It's not your computer once I buy it.
> Who the *fuck* does Apple think they are forcing app icons provided by the developer into a specific shape?
I'm also incredibly saddened by this. I don't really hate allowing icons to use the glass effect, but forcing all icons to be the same shape is very sad.
> Part of the Mac’s soul was in its expressive, varied app icons
Hasn't that been a thing of the past for a while now?
I just had to double-check my dock to even find a non-squircle icon, and there's exactly one in mine: Spotify. (Two if we count "Disk Utility", which has a disk icon overlaid at the bottom right but is otherwise a squircle; three if we count "Activity Monitor", which shows a CPU histogram.)
I agree that it's not a great change. In my view, it makes app icons much harder to distinguish by shape alone, and increases reliance on color (which, at least on iOS, I don't have displayed anymore on most of my home screen themes).
I left macOS a few years ago but I had many apps that had such icons. Like cyberduck, little snitch etc.
But I left macOS because of the ever worsening lockdown, Apple constantly messing with the design without a way back and the move towards iOSisms. I'm glad I left when I see the sorry state it is in now.
I use KDE now which gives me a world of customisation options. I don't even have to use the themes or plugins to make it work the way I want to, which is quite different from the default.
> I had many apps that had such icons. Like cyberduck, little snitch etc.
Same here, but almost all of them have apparently proactively given in to Apple’s design “guidelines”. (It’s unclear whether Spotify is actively resisting or if this is just their regular glacial software development speed.)
Me too. And KDE connect really does an awesome job of creating an integrated multi device experience.
Really? I'll check it out.
One of the reasons I'm still in the Apple world is how well my phone works with my computer. It's little things like being able to turn my phone into a scanner from my desktop, and synchronised DnD. All these little things add up to an experience where I can ignore the tech and get on with what I'm trying to do.
If KDE connect can give me something like that then I'm jumping, even if it means switching to Android (actually, that'd be a bonus because the iPhone cameras _suck_ in comparison).
The problem with OPs method is if the package gets updated, the icns file will get deleted, so you have to replace the icns file every time the app updates.
In the very same image, the trash can icon is still oddly shaped. So maybe the Things icon is a bug or an easily fixable peculiarity (like an aspect ratio change).
Update: The article goes on to address exactly what I mentioned. It’s a change in specs, one that is easily fixable. It’s all good folks, no need to freak out.
> Update: The article goes on to address exactly what I mentioned. It’s a change in specs, one that is easily fixable. It’s all good folks, no need to freak out.
No, the article describes a workaround developers can use, it's not an official method to opt out or anything.
And no, Apple doesn't apply it to their own icons as usual, they've always ignored their own guidelines. Like with the brushed metal apps when everything else was still supposed to use the previous form (pinstripe iirc). The folder accounts also.
Android started doing the same thing to app icons many years ago, and I hate it. Luckily there's custom icon packs that help solve this but it's annoying to figure out how to set up on each new phone. Increasingly UI teams seem to be stopping developing interfaces for humans. Same has e.g. happened to icons in IntelljiJ IDEA, now only usable with icon pack plugins. All these UI teams need to put on mandatory HCI courses or fired.
MacOS is unusable to me now. I had to switch back to Windows. There is something about the iOS aesthetic on MacOS that looks like they just smeared Vaseline all over everything and this new glass design doesn't help.
> developers can still display a custom-shaped icon in the Dock by setting a view on
I suspect Apple won't approve this for apps distributed through the App Store, though, right? Not that many apps distribute through the app store on Mac in the first place.
No, luckily not. I'm glad the Mac app store never took off because it'll become another cash cow for them and app prices will rise because they will lose that 30% to Apple. Customers will just end up paying 30% more and get nothing in return.
Is anyone asking for Apple to do this? I feel like this can only be perceived as a change for the worse.
Nobody asking for something has never stopped Apple, but rather what they think they can get away with – and lately, they seem to assume that that's absolutely everything.
“Get away with”? It’s an objective improvement in all ways.
I don't agree, the old icons looked way better and were easier to recognize. Tahoe looks way too much like iOS. The only UX improvement I see in it is the launchpad removal. That was as much a turd as windows 8's start screen was and I'm surprised apple kept it that long. The new method is basically like a folder stack which was the workaround I used for launchpad anyway.
And as usually Apple doesn't bother giving the user a choice. Only a workaround which may be removed at any time.
What's the icon beside Things?
That’s IconFactory’s Tot, a nice little text holder/scratchpad app for macOS and iOS.
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