In macOS 27 Golden Gate, Apple removed many of the menu item icons so prevalent in macOS 26 Tahoe, as spotted by Nikita “Tonsky” Prokopov (via Bold Fireball). The developer shared before and after screenshots on Mastodon to prove the reversal.
Menu item icons in macOS 26 (left) compared to macOS 27 (image: Nikita Prokopov)
Tahoe was the first version of macOS to place a small icon next to almost every entry in Apple’s app menu bar, but the change drew heavy criticism from designers and developers. Many icons are inconsistent and often difficult to understand, with different Apple apps displaying different icons for the same menu items.
The backlash from third-party developers was strong enough that some even adopted open source code provided by NetNewsWire’s Brent Simmons to disable the icons by default.
However, in Golden Gate, they have disappeared – or are only used where they are actually useful. Apple also revised its Human Interface Guidelines to ask developers to use menu item icons “sparingly and wisely,” reserving them for common actions, file system locations, connected devices, and similar cases.
macOS 27 is currently in developer beta, with a public beta planned for next month, followed by a general release in the fall.
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