MacOS Tahoe vs. Sequoia: Here’s How Much Liquid Glass Will Change Your Mac’s Icons

Liquid Glass does not only arrive on your iPhone – It happens to almost all Apple products with a screen you can think of, including your Mac. MacOS 26 Tahoe will bring the redesign of design, which can be both somewhat dramatic or barely perceptible, with a general aspect of feeling fresh while remaining comfortably familiar.

MacOS 26 Tahoe is far from being a simple overhaul of design and will be delivered with several new features when it is officially deployed, but it is easy to end up in everything Apple has done with this version. Some of these changes are new and some are new to the Mac but borrowed from iOS, such as changes in icons.

The new icons options for the Mac include color dye and make them completely clear as you can on the iPhone. But even without these visual adjustments, Apple went to work on the overhaul of standard Mac icons – some have not been changed for decades.

Do not miss any of our impartial technological content and laboratory criticism. Add CNET as a favorite Google source.

What is more interesting for me is that Apple manages to tell the same story while saying visually less with some of the redesigned icons.

If you are curious, I have highlighted some of the new icons that you can expect to see in MacOS 26 Tahoe, but you should keep in mind that icons could change again when the official construction is published. Below, I will compare the newly designed icons to the current version of MacOS, Sequoia.

For more, do not miss what to expect at the Apple event today.

Nestled, flattened and rounded

The icons on the Mac now resemble those on iOS, with a more rounded design. Compared to Sequoia, Tahoe icons become more flat in detail and sometimes this texture found in the icons of the old version of the operating system is replaced by a subtle translucent effect. The sometimes concave or withdrawing style of Sequoia has been pushed outwards, allowing the liquid glass to add a little shine to the corners of the elements in the design of the icon. Apple also pulled all the icon elements that had previously suspended the edges – now everything is nestled in the shape of the icon.

Books

Updates of Apple Books icons are simple, but do a lot for global design. The pages show gradients to light up the depth and the edges add a touch of the shine of signature liquid glass. In addition, a book blanket was added behind the pages, showing a layer glass look.

Contacts

The application icon of the application largely resembles what the elements as far as they are concerned are concerned, but if not – WOW, what a difference. The cardboard brown of the “contact book” is replaced by a gradient and a white translucent surface with a contrasting standard profile image. There is a less colorful tab to the right of the icon, and the other three are now flat in the design and extend over the entire height of the icon.

Digital color counter

Another good example of Apple refusing details without sacrificing the impact is the application of digital color meter. The dropper no longer hangs the edge, the background is a simple white instead of austere red, the shapes have been simplified in circles and the colors take more pastel nuances.

Disk utility

MacOS Tahoe shows that Apple removes and reduces the details of his icons while communicating the same thing. The Disk Utility application is one of the best examples – compare the new version in Sequoia and previous versions.

Files

For years and years, the default file on a Mac has been a turquoise blue, without much personalization at your disposal. And perhaps the color of the backrest on your Mac is not something that you have forced to spend time thinking, but if who wanted them to change the color of their file, you can do it with Tahoe.

Nestled in the appearance menu in the system settings is a new default file color option, allowing you to switch between red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink and graphite. In addition, Tahoe’s icon shows a document, as opposed to the empty Sequoia file.

iPhone mirror

The iphone update mirror icon is now more representative of what the application does. He may not say much about the functionality of the application, but this is a stage in the Sequoia icon with a single iPhone.

Photos

Another adjustment of the subtle liquid glass icon is in the photo application. In essence, it is the same design, but the oblong colored panels that overlap seem to have a slight decrease in the overall width and the apple added shiny glass.

Parameters

Updates of the Tahoe parameters icon are minor, but it is a good example of liquid glass subtlety. This inner depth that the icon has been maintained for more than a decade has changed, the colors are modified and the teeth of the gears are both enlarged and softened. Liquid glass is the most notable in the smallest equipment, which is slightly more transparent, as if it had a piece of glass in layers.

Tights

The redesign of the Stickies application is a return to the way in which its icon appeared from 2000 to 2020, according to the macos icon of Apple Guy. Instead of what looks like a post-it notep block, the last icon returns to a pile of three notes located on each other.

Modify the text

Tahoe’s update on the text editing application could almost be too reductive from that of Sequoia, completely deleting the pen, leaving only a segment of a piece of notebook paper. It is most certainly simplified, but Mac users who may not be so intimately familiar with each individual icon can easily confuse text edition for something else.

To find out more, don’t miss how Apple’s iPhone output calendar could change.