With last year’s release of MacOS 26 (Tahoe), Apple made a mess of app icons. In the first betas of MacOS 27 (Golden Gate), however, there are signs of a turnaround. We’re urging Apple to continue making improvements, by restoring the ability for MacOS app icons to have distinct shapes.

Apple’s Liquid Glass App Icons

In Tahoe, Apple modified the icons for dozens of their first-party apps to give them a “Liquid Glass” appearance. The changes were a substantial regression, leading to blurry, dumbed-down icons.

With the recently unveiled Golden Gate, Apple has again updated their MacOS app icons. This time, however, the changes are genuine improvements. Here’s the refined Automator icon, for example:

The newer icon is sharper, with superfluous Liquid Glass removed. Dozens of Apple’s apps have seen similar updates. The result is that Golden Gate’s icons are superior to Tahoe’s, as this comparison from Basic Apple Guy shows. Seeing these improvements led me to think about another fix Apple should make in MacOS.

The Problem of Tahoe’s Dictated Squircles

With the Tahoe release, Apple didn’t just mess with their own icons. They also dictated the shape of every third-party app icon, forcing them to adopt the same prescribed squircle. Any icon that failed to do so found itself shrunk down and imprisoned in an ugly gray background, in order to fit Apple’s desired aesthetic.

To avoid this icon jail, developers were forced to redesign their icons to match Apple’s preferred form. After decades of beautiful, memorable Mac icons in varying shapes, Tahoe flattened personality to obtain bland uniformity. The platform is worse for it.

Past icons weren’t just more expressive. They were also more usable. Having distinct shapes provided a useful way to tell icons apart. Tahoe eliminates that cue by forcing everything into the same squircle, leaving color as the primary way to tell icons apart at a glance.

That falls down if you’ve got color vision deficiency, or even just multiple icons with similar color schemes.¹ I’m looking at you, Slack and Photos. I have to look closely, because it’s so difficult to tell you apart now.

It Doesn’t Have to Be Like This

Apple’s prohibition on shapes is a step backward for both usability and creativity in app icons. Icons are now harder to distinguish because they’re no longer allowed to be distinctive. But there’s no technical reason for it. Apple could, and should, once again allow icons to take on a wide variety of shapes.

It’s clear that some people within Apple recognize that the transition to Liquid Glass introduced mistakes. They also appear to have the authority to fix those mistakes. Refinements to Apple’s own icons in Golden Gate are a welcome course correction, as is the much-celebrated Liquid Glass opacity slider. It’s time to correct the mistake of banning icon shapes as well.²

Apple should stop forcing every icon into the same squircle. Let’s return to a world of gorgeous app icons like these:

Free the icons.

Footnotes:

1. With color now so critical to tell icons apart, it should be no surprise that the new “Clear” and “Tinted” icon styles added in Tahoe are seeing so little uptake. As Adam Engst noted, “[I]t’s nearly impossible to identify a particular app when they’re all clear or tinted squircles, as you can see below. My brain just shuts down when it sees them.”

   

   I’m not sure this “Tinted” style would be a good idea even if these icons had distinct shapes, but I know it’s a very bad one given their uniformity. ↩︎

2. For folks within Apple, this was feedback filed as FB23388490 (“Third-Party App Icons Should Not Be Restricted to Apple’s Dictated Squircle Shape”). I imagine it is a duplicate many times over. ↩︎

This week, men’s national teams from 48 countries are set to face off as the 23rd World Cup kicks off. We’re aiming to make your viewing experience a bit more pleasant with help from our audio control app, SoundSource, along with a free new audio effect.

Battling the Scourge of Vuvuzelas

The 2010 World Cup introduced the world to vuvuzelas, those loud horns which fans blow continuously during matches. The hum that results is bothersome to say the least!

With a bit of audio technology, however, it’s possible to greatly reduce that droning. We’ve previously shown how to use Audio Hijack to attack the problem, but nowadays, we recommend our utility SoundSource for a task like this.

SoundSource is purpose-built for applying audio effects to any audio on your Mac. You just configure the exact plugins you want, then let it take care of the rest. Since SoundSource is always running, it can automatically improve your audio without you needing to manually activate it.

Here, SoundSource is adding an equalizer to the TV app’s audio

Get Vuvuzelas Gone, with VuvuGone

You’re probably wondering just what effect works best to silence vuvuzelas. When vuvuzelas first arrived on the scene, a company called Prosoniq released “VuvuX” to do this job. That’s what we recommended in 2010, but alas, both the VuvuX site and its parent company are now dead.

To continue the fight for a more pleasant viewing experience, we’ve created our own plugin. “VuvuGone” is a simple Audio Unit effect that reduces the droning noise produced by vuvuzelas, and you can download it free of charge right here:

↓ Download VuvuGone

After downloading and unzipping VuvuGone, follow the simple steps below to make it available to SoundSource, and any other apps on your Mac that support Audio Units.

How to Install VuvuGone on your Mac

1. Go to the Finder and click the Go menu in the menu bar. Select the “Go to Folder…” command.

2. Enter the following location into the field:

   ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components

3. Move the VuvuGone.component file to that folder.

Once you’ve got it installed, you can add it to your desired source in SoundSource.

Though vuvuzelas are often officially banned from stadiums, the noise endures at matches around the world. With VuvuGone and SoundSource, you can save your ears and your sanity. We expect the duo will prove handy during matches this summer and beyond.

One More Thing: Special SoundSource Savings

To encourage folks to check out our powerful sound control utility, we’re offering some rare special savings. Through July 19, you can save $10 on your purchase of SoundSource with discount code WORLDCUP2026.

So learn more about SoundSource and download its free trial, then purchase before the tournament ends. Once you try it, you’ll see why we say SoundSource is so good, it ought to be built into MacOS.

Apple has just announced MacOS 27 (Golden Gate), the next major OS update for the Mac, due out this fall. We’re now hard at work on updates for all of our products, so we can provide full support for Golden Gate ahead of its release.

We Suggest Skipping MacOS Betas

We have long recommended avoiding beta versions of MacOS, and we continue to do so. The smartest path for most users is to stick with the latest officially released version of MacOS 26 (Tahoe), until Golden Gate ships.

If You Do Install the Golden Gate Beta…

All of our current releases already run on Golden Gate. However, the apps have not yet been well tested on Golden Gate, and you may run into issues. Our Status page will be updated regularly to provide full details on support for Golden Gate.

It’s likely that we’ll issue test releases in the coming weeks with updates for Golden Gate. Opt into test releases now, and you’ll be alerted once they’re available.

More to Come

In the months ahead, we’ll have more news regarding support for Golden Gate. To stay up-to-date, check the aforementioned Status page, subscribe to this blog via RSS, and follow us on social media.