Apple software updates for 2026 are now reaching supported devices, bringing iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, visionOS 27, and tvOS 27 out of preview and into everyday use. The releases place Siri AI and the next generation of Apple Intelligence at the center, but many of the changes extend well beyond generative AI.

The updates began rolling out September 14. Alongside new intelligence features, Apple has made measurable performance changes to iPhone and iPad, overhauled several parental controls, refined the Liquid Glass interface introduced across its platforms, improved search, and added smaller changes to services including iCloud Shared Albums, Maps, AirPods, and Health.

Siri AI is initially rolling out as a beta in English. Apple says French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish support is scheduled for October, making some of the headline functionality a staggered release rather than something every user receives immediately after installing the new operating systems.

Apple software updates make Siri AI a cross-device feature

Siri AI is built around personal context, onscreen awareness, expanded app actions, and access to current information from the web. The assistant can draw on material stored in areas such as Messages, Mail, and Photos when responding to requests, while Visual Intelligence allows users to ask about content currently displayed on their screen.

On iPhone, Siri mode is integrated directly into the Camera app. A user can point the camera at something and ask questions or perform supported actions based on what appears in front of them.

The assistant also gains a dedicated Siri app that synchronizes conversation history privately through iCloud. A conversation started on an iPhone can therefore be continued on an iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, or Apple Vision Pro.

Write with Siri expands the assistant into text creation and editing. Users can describe the material they need drafted or ask Siri to refine existing writing without moving to a separate application.

Apple Intelligence is also adding more specialized features outside Siri. Photos receives Spatial Reframing, Extend, and an updated Clean Up tool. Image Playground can generate images in a wider selection of styles, including photorealistic output, with metadata designed to identify AI-created material and planned support for the SynthID standard.

Safari can automatically organize tabs by topic and monitor webpages for changes, such as a product returning to stock or a price dropping. Apple is also introducing tools that can create custom extensions from a description.

iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 put more emphasis on speed

Some of the less visible changes could be among the most frequently experienced.

Apple says apps can launch up to 30% faster on iPhone and iPad after installing the new software. Photos can load an image up to 70% faster immediately after it is taken, while AirDrop transfers can be up to 80% faster.

iPadOS 27 receives additional work around file handling and multitasking. Apple says browsing files and transferring them to an external USB drive can be as much as five times faster, accompanied by smoother window closing, switching, and dragging.

Connectivity behavior has also been adjusted. Transitions between cellular connections and Wi-Fi are designed to happen more seamlessly, while Messages no longer needs to hold subsequent texts behind a large photo or video being uploaded over a slow connection.

Search across Spotlight, Photos, and Mail has been revised on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Mail gains a new ranking system for Top Hits, while Apple describes search across the three platforms as more stable and comprehensive.

Liquid Glass has received another round of refinements after becoming the common visual language across Apple’s software. A new Settings slider allows users to adjust the interface from an ultraclear appearance toward a more heavily tinted version, and app icons have been sharpened.

Screen Time and child safety controls get a substantial redesign

Apple has also expanded the controls available to families rather than limiting this software cycle to interface and AI work.

The setup process for child accounts now allows parents to specify which apps a child can access from the beginning, with additional apps added later if appropriate. Ask to Browse extends approval controls to Safari, letting parents require permission before a child opens a new website.

Communication Safety has been expanded beyond sexually explicit material to detect and intervene when gore or violent content appears in shared images and videos.

Screen Time presents average device usage and frequently used apps more prominently. Parents can establish daily time allowances across categories such as Entertainment, Games, and Social Media, while Schedules can change which apps remain available at different points during a weekday or weekend.

These changes are particularly notable because they work at the account and platform level rather than requiring parents to configure separate controls inside every individual app.

watchOS 27, visionOS 27, and tvOS 27 add targeted upgrades

The smaller platforms receive their own additions rather than simply inheriting features from iPhone and Mac.

watchOS 27 introduces a dedicated Siri app, a dynamic app grid, expanded Smart Stack suggestions, and a new single-handed tap gesture for opening widgets. Workout Buddy can now operate without the paired iPhone nearby, while Cycle Tracking in Health adds support related to perimenopause and menopause.

visionOS 27 brings Siri AI and Visual Intelligence into Apple Vision Pro, where the assistant can respond to objects a user is physically looking at. Panoramas can be converted into spatial scenes and used as personal Environments, while Mac users can bring compatible 3D models into their physical space to preview and edit them.

Apple says Vision Pro can now start up and connect to Wi-Fi up to three times faster. New curved windows, Control Center changes, eye-controlled notification expansion, and improvements to Dwell Control further adjust the spatial interface.

tvOS 27 takes a narrower approach. Apple Music gains high-resolution lossless audio support, Apple Podcasts has been redesigned, and additional text-size accessibility options have been introduced. Apple TV 4K owners can install the release on supported second- and third-generation models.

Other changes stretch across device categories. iCloud Shared Albums can now retain full-resolution photos and videos while making participation easier from Android and Windows devices. AirPods gain custom EQ settings, Maps expands Flyover with AI-assisted aerial detail, and Missed-message notifications and unread counts now synchronize more quickly and reliably across Apple devices.

With the September 14 releases now public, the software cycle shifts from preview demonstrations to staggered feature delivery. Siri AI language expansion begins in October, while some Apple Intelligence capabilities and individual app features will continue arriving through later updates rather than being tied exclusively to the initial 27.0 releases.

The post Apple software updates bring Siri AI and faster performance across devices appeared first on AppleMagazine.

Apple (release notes, security, enterprise, developer, full installer, IPSW):

Explore what’s new for macOS 27.

The page is designed in an annoying way that requires sideways scrolling, and there doesn’t seem to be a PDF list of the new features like in previous years.

See also:

• Jason Snell
• Juli Clover
• Marcus Mendes
• William Gallagher
• Mr. Macintosh
• Reddit

Jeff Johnson:

There’s also a DEPRECATION NOTICE at the top of the man page that lists the diskutil replacements for hdiutil subcommands.

Patrick Wardle:

Fixed: launchd no longer supports loading launchd property list files with the quarantine extended attribute.

Dave Nanian:

[Even] though a bootable backup is properly configured to boot, they aren’t showing up as choices in either the startup disk preference pane or the startup picker. (FB24210103, reported quite a while ago, Apple friends.)

Previously:

• Golden Gate Release Candidate
• Preparing to Update to Golden Gate
• macOS 27 Public Beta
• Glow Leopard
• macOS 27 Golden Gate Announced
• macOS Tahoe 26

Craig Hockenberry:

It looks like Xcode 27.1 is needed to test the iPhone Duo resizability - and that hasn’t been uploaded yet.

Jordan Morgan:

Cupertino and Friends™️ dropped six new videos over developing, designing, and crafting great apps for the nascent device:

1. Design for iPhone Duo
2. Prepare your app for iPhone Duo
3. Raise the bar with iPhone Duo
4. Strike a pose with adaptive layouts on iPhone Duo
5. Leverage multiple displays and scenes on iPhone Duo
6. Build a great camera experience for iPhone Duo

Nathan Manceaux-Panot:

In the Duo dev video, they describe how text buttons can’t be moved to the new vertical sidebar, as opposed to icon buttons.

I wonder if that’s one of the reasons Liquid Glass pushed hard for icon buttons, even though these are harder to understand; they make the vertical layout possible at all.

Nico Reese:

Totally confusing to me how the toolbar is ordered completely different between both modes here.

Dennis Oberhoff:

I think the problem with the iPhone Duo for developers is mostly that it does not create any new opportunities in the form of a new market or a new audience.

Previously:

• iPhone Duo
• SwiftUI Toolbars

There is no off switch for Liquid Glass in iOS 27. The only control Apple has published is a slider in Settings that moves the effect anywhere from ultra-clear to fully tinted, and nothing in Apple’s description of the update removes the design. The reason this search keeps coming back is that Liquid Glass is […]

The post How to Turn Off Liquid Glass in iOS 27: Apple Publishes a Slider, Not a Switch appeared first on The Mac Observer.

Explore a extensão Liquid Glass, que replica o efeito visual do Apple Liquid Glass no GNOME Shell do Ubuntu com estilo fluido.

O post Conheça a extensão Liquid Glass para GNOME Shell que traz o visual Apple ao Ubuntu apareceu primeiro em Blog do Edivaldo - Informações e Notícias sobre Linux.

Como esperado, as Releases Candidates (RCs) dos próximos sistemas operacionais da Apple foram disponibilizadas hoje, logo após o evento especial de apresentação dos novos iPhones, Apple Watches e AirPods.

Ainda que se tratem das versões esperadas para o lançamento, que acontecerá na semana que vem, elas trouxeram algumas mudanças e novidades que vale a pena conferirmos. A começar pelo app Câmera (Camera) do iOS 27, que ganhou a opção de customizar os botões da barra de ferramentas.

A RC do iOS 27 também adiciona um design renovado, além de dois recursos, ao Apple TV Remote: um inicializador de aplicativos, bem como os principais conteúdos do aplicativo aberto na Apple TV. É possível também visualizar a lista “Continuar assistindo”.

Apple TV Remote is getting more useful. #AppleEvent

iOS 27 RC adds a refreshed design and two features, both currently disabled:
1. An app launcher to open apps on your Apple TV.
2. Top Shelf content from the selected app on your Apple TV, with Continue Watching as a fallback. pic.twitter.com/Si3EZc1b8L

— pdfu (@itspdfu) September 9, 2026

Embora não seja necessariamente um novo recurso, o sistema também inclui um easter egg na seção de customização do Liquid Glass, presente no app Ajustes (Settings). Ao rolar pela prévia exibida no próprio app até o fim, é possível visualizar uma animação que representa uma versão repaginada do Clarus, mascote do famoso desenho de computador Dogcow criado pela Apple nos anos 1980 — o qual emite o som “Moof!”, que mistura o mugido de uma vaca com o latido de um cão.

iOS 27 has a fun Easter egg found in the Liquid Glass settings. Scroll to the bottom and keep scrolling to see it. Here is a screen recording on my iPhone on iOS 27 RC so you can see it. pic.twitter.com/HJ3MxIApnp

— Aaron Zollo (@zollotech) September 9, 2026

O iOS 27 (bem como o watchOS 27) também incluirá um aplicativo Saúde (Health) repaginado que utiliza a Apple Intelligence para interpretar melhor seus dados de saúde. As novidades incluem uma aba Insights com um resumo das informações mais relevantes do momento, além de orientações personalizadas, avaliações, uma nova pontuação de “prontidão” e o cálculo da sua “Idade de Saúde”.

🩻 iOS 27 RC Brings a more vibrant and reworked Health App – pending the upcoming improvements to it in an expected iOS 27.1 update. pic.twitter.com/dZgI9QmrKJ

— Is iOS Stable? (@isiosstable) September 9, 2026

As novidades incluem também uma nova aba de longevidade, que utiliza métricas do Apple Watch e do iPhone para avaliar sua saúde com base no sono, na movimentação, na saúde cardíaca e em outros fatores.

Além disso, o app renovado permitirá que os usuários realizem avaliações detalhadas sobre a movimentação do corpo, o que pode ajudar pessoas que estão envelhecendo ou se recuperando de lesões. Um instrutor pode até demonstrar certos movimentos para você experimentar durante a avaliação — uma experiência que, segundo a Apple, equivale a ter um treinador acompanhando você pessoalmente.

A versão atualizada do aplicativo Saúde será lançada ainda neste ano — possivelmente com o iOS 27.1 —, a princípio somente em inglês (versão dos EUA).

watchOS 27

A RC do watchOS 27 inclui um novo mostrador chamado Siri Modular, disponível tanto nos Apple Watches intermediários quanto nos modelos Ultra — no entanto, a versão para este último oferece algumas opções de personalização adicionais.

Ambas as versões do mostrador utilizam o mesmo layout, que conta com uma complicação na linha central superior, a hora (centralizada), uma complicação larga e uma linha com três complicações circulares. O Apple Watch Ultra também oferece opções de borda, adicionando mais uma maneira de configurar o novo mostrador.

New Siri Modular face in watchOS 27 pic.twitter.com/ayOdDUkbrg

— Ben (@idocode01) September 9, 2026

Três opções de estilo permitem ajustar a tela do relógio. A primeira opção apresenta o relógio mais alto e três complicações circulares. O segundo estilo traz um relógio compacto, acompanhado pela complicação larga e três complicações circulares. O terceiro estilo apresenta um relógio de tamanho médio com uma complicação larga.

Tanto no modelo intermediário quanto no Ultra também há opções de fonte para o relógio. Por fim, há a opção de definir a cor do mostrador, incluindo diversas novidades como bronze-escuro, ouro-brilhante e outras novas alternativas.

via TechCrunch, 9to5Mac

Howard Oakley:

As those new models start shipping on 22 September, the window for the first public release of Golden Gate has narrowed to 15-22 September, with greatest likelihood on the same day as the arrival of those new Macs.

[…]

At the same time as the release of Golden Gate, we should get Tahoe 26.7 and Sequoia 15.8, but it looks increasingly likely that the final version of Sonoma has been 14.8.9, released on 6 August.

Howard Oakley:

As we prepare to flee from the visual horrors of macOS Tahoe at last, this article is a reminder that it wasn’t the first major release of macOS that has had blatant bugs in its interface, although I suspect it may be unique in that those were intentional. While progress in Golden Gate has been limited, I hope you’ll find it rectifies some of the worst errors of Liquid Glass.

Many Macs will be left behind, as Golden Gate drops support for Intel.

Normally, I update around January. With Tahoe I waited until July. This time, I’m considering updating to Golden Gate soon after its release. The downside is that Xcode 26 doesn’t run on Golden Gate, so I would have to drop support for many older macOS versions (about 3% of my customers’ Macs). But it seems like Apple’s going to force that soon, anyway, as one of the next Xcode 27 updates will likely drop support for Tahoe. I want to get off Xcode 26, both to use the newer SDK and because there are various debugging/testing things that don’t work properly.

Mario Guzmán:

I am working on a new app. Right now, I am targeting back to macOS Sequoia. I think that would be a good OS to target but becoming quite old with Golden Gate just around the corner. […] I wonder if I should just target macOS Golden Gate and focus testing on that.

Previously:

• Ending the Golden Era for Backward-Compatible Apps
• Mac Studio 2026
• Mac mini 2026
• macOS 27 Public Beta
• Glow Leopard
• Avoiding Tahoe
• Ending macOS Intel Support
• Waiting to Update to Big Sur
• Waiting to Update to Catalina

Update (2026-09-04): Isaiah Carew:

i’m in the exact same boat. i’d really like to stay on macOS 15 and whatever Xcode works there. it means i can still build things in the old UI and mostly Tahoe and GG respect it.

but recent bug reports from beta testers and the inability to see these bugs on my VM has made me feel very stuck here — like apple has purposefully made it difficult to move forward and support older versions too.

Update (2026-09-11): Howard Oakley:

What if any preparations do you need to make before upgrading or updating then, or in the coming weeks?

Update (2026-09-16): Adam C. Engst:

So who should upgrade immediately, and who should wait? Let’s consider a few broad categories of users.

Matthias Gansrigler-Hrad:

I don’t appreciate being forced by Xcode 27 to drop support for macOS 10.13-11.0. It’s my decision which OSes I want to support, not Apple’s. Yes, I can keep Xcode 26 around until submissions require Xcode 27, but what then?

Originally, Xcode 27 was documented as supporting Big Sur on Intel Macs, but now the earliest is Monterey.

I’m frustrated, too, but it’s more honest than the recent releases that claimed to support deployment on older macOS versions when Apple clearly hadn’t tested that it actually worked. I filed bugs, and Apple kept responding that they’d fixed it, when they hadn’t.

Using old versions of Xcode isn’t a great solution because they aren’t supported on Golden Gate. Swift also makes it more difficult to call newer APIs when using an older SDK. You can’t just copy/paste a method prototype or constant value and conditionally use it when running on a newer OS.

Ighor July:

I eventually found a hidden workaround that changes the errors back into warnings. That is good news, but it does not make the concern disappear. The setting is undocumented, absent from the normal Xcode interface, and currently being tested only in a beta toolchain. The larger question is what Apple intends to enforce when Xcode 27 is final and, later, when App Store submission requirements move to its SDKs.

[…]

Apple’s current Xcode system requirements list Xcode 26 with deployment targets beginning at iOS 15 and macOS 11. Yet developers have been able to enter older targets manually. In an Apple Developer Forums discussion about Xcode 26, an Apple product manager explained that the published deployment target range is aligned with simulator support and on-device debugging. The accepted answer confirms that an iOS 13 target can still build even though it falls below the range in Apple’s table.

My own tests went further. Xcode 26.5 compiled a project targeting iOS 9.0. It warned that the target was older than the supported range, but the build succeeded. On macOS, I have compiled current apps with deployment targets as old as macOS 10.9. Xcode warned me, but it still produced working applications.

[…]

For iOS and iPadOS, staying on Xcode 26 is not a lasting option. Apple has repeatedly made a current Xcode and SDK mandatory for new App Store submissions. […] If any one of those conditions fails, iOS and iPadOS developers will have no normal App Store path for publishing new updates that still support versions older than 15.

Previously:

• Xcode 27 Announced
• Xcode 15.4

Update (2026-09-07): Léo Natan:

Just want to remind you guys that if you move to Xcode 27, the only “officially” supported and sanction Xcode for GG, UIDesignRequiresCompatibility is no longer respected across the 27 OSes (apps built with older Xcodes still are). So you might suddenly find out you have a lot of work ahead of you, adding support for the dreaded Glass. And 27 Glass is not the same as 26 Glass. That can be an issue if you skipped 26 altogether but still want to support it.

Previously:

• Preparing to Update to Golden Gate

Update (2026-09-11): Nick Lockwood:

I mostly ignored the Xcode 27 betas (mainly due to the barely-usable Device Hub) so I didn’t realize the passive-aggressive prompts to drop support for iOS < 15 that you get when submitting apps is being backed up by Xcode 27 refusing to compile apps at all unless you bump the deployment target 😧

Download 4 vibrant wallpapers featuring sleek glass slabs against orange, crimson, and blue backgrounds for your iPhone and Android.

A Apple anunciou o watchOS 27 com uma quantidade razoável de novidades, e neste vídeo lhes trago um resumo das principais mudanças que chegarão ao Apple Watch nesta atualização.

Entre os destaques, está a Siri AI (que requer um iPhone compatível), com um novo app dedicado a conversas mais naturais e contextuais. A interface também recebeu refinamentos visuais com o Liquid Glass, incluindo ícones redesenhados como o do Maps, além de um novo grid dinâmico de sugestões de apps ao pressionar a Digital Crown.

Outras novidades incluem novos botões para fechar ou silenciar notificações, um gesto de tocar e segurar para abrir itens do Conjunto Inteligente, e a chegada de um novo app Buscar (Find My), unificando a localização de pessoas, dispositivos e itens. Há ainda o recurso Call Context, que exibe informações relevantes durante chamadas.

No quesito desempenho, a reprodução de música ficou mais rápida, e a Apple promete melhor eficiência de bateria e conectividade Wi-Fi aprimorada. Para quem treina, o watchOS 27 traz maior precisão de distância em corridas e caminhadas na esteira, contagem de passos mais precisa e um Workout Buddy menos intrusivo, mais independente e agora com suporte a espanhol. O Acompanhamento de Ciclo (Cycle Tracking) também passa a contar com alertas de perimenopausa e menopausa.

Uma ausência notável é a do app Walkie-Talkie, que curiosamente não está presente nesta versão.

Por fim, vale lembrar que nem todos os Apple Watches vão receber o watchOS 27 — explicamos aqui por que tantos modelos ficaram de fora e trouxemos aqui a lista completa de compatíveis.

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I don’t think I ever mentioned it on MacStories (although I probably did at some point on AppStories or Unwind), but my favorite “launcher” app for iOS is a utility called Lock Launcher, which I’ve been using on and off for the last couple of years. Lock Launcher started as an app for adding URL schemes to the Lock Screen a few years back, and it gradually evolved into a comprehensive “widget studio” app to design launcher widgets of all kinds for the Home Screen, Lock Screen, Dynamic Island, Live Activities, and more.

Anyway, I’m covering the app on the site today because it was updated with two features that I didn’t think were possible or allowed on the App Store, and I want to highlight them for our readers. I’m not really sure how the developers were able to add these features to the app; you may want to download it from the App Store quickly, just in case.

For starters, Lock Launcher now lets you create launcher shortcuts that open apps directly and immediately, rather than redirecting you to the Lock Launcher app first.

For years now, launcher apps on the iPhone have had to employ this workaround: you’d tap on a shortcut that opened, say, Ivory, but you would see the launcher app flash onscreen briefly before redirecting you to the actual destination app you selected. Somehow, Lock Launcher is now circumventing this limitation with a ‘Direct Open’ mode that I haven’t seen in other launcher apps for iOS. That sequence of widget, host app, and destination app was, ultimately, the reason why I always stopped using third-party launcher apps, and I love that it’s been removed by Lock Launcher.

At long last, I’ve been able to create a dense Home Screen with 40 icons (36 in the widget plus 4 in the dock), and they all launch directly when tapped.

The screenshot above brings me to the second feature added in the version of Lock Launcher currently available on the App Store: XL widgets on iPhone in iOS 27.

Now, as far as I know, if an app wants to adopt an API exclusive to a future version of iOS, it typically needs to be built against that version’s SDK using the corresponding Xcode beta. However, the App Store isn’t currently accepting apps built with the iOS 27 SDK. And yet, the Lock Launcher developers must have figured out a way to support the new systemExtraLargePortrait widget size and make it work on devices running iOS 27 even though the app was built with the iOS 26 SDK. My best guess: they’re using a workaround that involves visionOS 26 APIs, since the Vision Pro received support for that family of widgets last year. (I’d love to know more about this.)

These two features, combined with the ability to apply the Liquid Glass material to widgets for beautiful refractions of the system wallpaper, make Lock Launcher the most powerful and customizable launcher utility on iOS to date. I hope writing about it doesn’t get the developers in trouble.

Lock Launcher is available for free on the App Store, with advanced features available through an optional Pro in-app purchase.

O app de leitura Instapaper foi atualizado hoje para a sua versão 10.0 com uma série de novidades — incluindo uma interface repaginada e adaptada ao Liquid Glass (e outras mudanças de design em grande parte do app), bem como novos recursos e melhorias de desempenho.

O Menu de Seções, por exemplo, agora pode mostrar as Contagens de seção em todos os lugares, bem como permite ordenar pastas e etiquetas por nome, ordem de adição ou contagem. Também há melhorias na exibição e suporte completo ao Liquid Glass no iPad.

Quando falamos na Lista de Artigos, ela foi redesenhada com um novo modo Condensado, opções de tipografia e uma nova ação de deslize para mover artigos para o topo. Ela também cria automaticamente listas de reprodução a partir da lista de artigos completa.

Por fim, o Leitor agora conta com quatro novas fontes de leitura (Literata, New York, Open Sans e Atkinson Hyperlegible), bem como permite escolher o que é aberto ao se tocar em um artigo (a Vista de Artigo, a Vista Web, o navegador integrado ou o padrão).

Também contando agora com um widget para ver os artigos lidos no momento ou os salvos recentemente, o Instapaper é grátis para baixar na App Store, mas para usá-lo por completo é necessária uma assinatura Premium, que sai por R$10/mês ou R$100/ano.

Apple’s Liquid Glass interface has always been a bold, polarizing experiment in translucency. With the iOS 27 public beta, the company is now letting users push it even further — into “More Clear” territory. One writer cranked the new slider all the way to maximum transparency and spent a full week living with the most warped, glassy, and delightfully distorted iPhone experience yet.

From notifications that ripple and refract app icons like light through actual glass, to menu bars that turn text into momentary abstract art, the clearest Liquid Glass setting revives the playful dimensionality Apple first chased more than a decade ago. It’s not the most practical choice for everyone, but for those willing to embrace the whimsy, it turns the phone into something closer to living, breathing art.

Wired‘s Reece Rogers dove in headfirst. Here’s what it felt like to go full transparent.

Reece Rogers for Wired:
‎

Fear not — if you don’t feel the same way as I do about transparency — you can drag that same slider to the right and boost the overall opacity of Liquid Glass. There’s still the option to Reduce Transparency and Increase Contrast as well.

I immediately cranked my settings to maximum clarity after I downloaded the public beta and left the setting on for a week to get the full experience. I understand why some prefer the heavily tinted version or need to switch it for accessibility reasons, yet I reveled in the warped colors and characters as I experienced Liquid Glass in its clearest glory.

The “more clear” option also added an increased depth to my device — reminiscent of an Apple update from more than a decade ago, in iOS 7, that you likely haven’t thought about in a minute: 3D apps. Apple added a parallax wallpaper effect during the iPhone 5’s heyday that used the smartphone’s gyroscope to make it appear as if app icons on your home screen floated slightly above the background, visibly shifting to the phone’s tilt.

Both Liquid Glass and 3D app icons gave the iPhone a more tactile sense of dimensionality…

Halfway through my week of testing, this option started to look so normal to me that I worried I had accidentally reset my phone to the default and checked my settings to ensure “more clear” was still enabled. It was. Which was a relief, and a sign I’d adjusted to this clearer version of Liquid Glass even faster than anticipated…

[T]his clear-minded update was delightful to try, and I’m keeping up with my transparent lifestyle even after the weeklong experiment ended.

‎
MacDailyNews Take: You might even say that Apple’s Liquid Glass cranked up to maximum transparency makes the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.

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The post Crank up Apple’s Liquid Glass to maximum transparency and you’ll enjoy every warped second appeared first on MacDailyNews.

Paul Kafasis:

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.

[…]

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.

Jason Snell:

Kafasis makes the important point that uniform shapes make it more difficult for users, especially those with vision issues including color deficiency, to differentiate between icons.

John Siracusa:

Squircle Jail is the worst design-related thing Apple has ever done to Mac developers, and probably the worst icon-related thing it has ever done, period. Incredibly developer-hostile.

If squircled icons are actually better, then let that design win in the market. That’s how we transitioned from the classic Mac OS icon style to the more photorealistic Mac OS X icon style. Developers adopted it because they wanted to, and because users desired it.

John Gruber (Mastodon):

The squircles, I will point out, are not in and of themselves the problem. The problem would be the same with any mandated shape, like, e.g., VisionOS’s circles.

[…]

I can’t think of any other design crime Apple has ever foisted on Mac developers that I’d argue (with Siracusa) was worse.

[…]

It’s like Apple decided every single one of its own apps must wear a stupid-looking hat, and they put those stupid-looking hats on third-party apps too, whether the developers of those apps want them or not. Scratch that. Not hats but helmets.

[…]

Just the mere silhouette of the old Keynote icon is more recognizable, and thus more iconic, than any icon on any platform from Apple today.

Jeff Johnson:

The traffic sign analogy hits me personally, because the StopTheMadness icon used to be shaped like a stop sign, but I was practically forced into making it a generic road sign.

Gus Mueller:

I get why Apple did it, but I think it’s completely wrong for the Mac.

Marcin Wichary:

On his blog, Jim Nielsen writes how Apple filed away so much expression by forcing rigid icon bureaucracy in macOS. Nielsen focuses mostly on distinctiveness; previously, you could make the icon unique by its general shape or the shape of its contents, but one of these two levers has now been taken away[…]

[…]

However, one also can’t help but notice how ugly and amateurish the Creator Studio icons are, so it all feels absolutely like a net negative – the new system took something away and the proposed replacement feels low quality[…]

Rui Carmo:

I, too, find the squircles aesthetically offensive and utterly pointless.

[…]

The part that genuinely breaks my brain, though, is that I now find icons on Linux more distinctive than on macOS, which would be impossible for my ten-year-ago self to believe. The platform that built its reputation on craft and visual identity has spent a year sanding it off, while the one everyone used to mock for its inconsistency is where individuality survives.

Jeff Johnson:

The subliminal, Orwellian message of the squircle jail is that all software is subservient to Apple, merely accessories to Apple devices, interchangeable cogs in the machine.

Mario Guzmán:

Had to grab the rest of the icons from #MacOSX Leopard. Gosh, they’re so, so pretty. So finely crafted. Gorgeous. Love it.

Dr. Drang:

I agree, but Apple’s 50th anniversary has gotten me thinking a lot lately about the early days of the Mac, so it’s only natural that my mind shifted to the highly constrained icons Mac applications had back then.

[…]

Many of the complaints about squircle jail are about the loss of icon elements that “stick out” from the rest of the design. As you can see, this idea was there from the very start; the hands stick out from the tilted rectangles.

John Gruber:

I never loved the hand on these icons. It felt too uniform. It functioned like a “this is an application” badge, but such a badge never felt necessary to me.

[…]

I think it’s less that Apple gave up on them and more that it came into focus that the “hand holding a pen over a diamond-shaped document” convention was intended for document-based apps. It signified “This is a creative tool that you use to create documents”. Apps that weren’t about creating document files — like Disk First Aid and Font/DA Mover — got different icons. Font/DA Mover’s truck icon in System 2 signified that you use this tool to move things. Disk First Aid’s ambulance was an obvious metaphor for repairing something unwell.

[…]

But the main thing about the “hand holding pen over diamond” convention was that it was only ever a convention.

John Gruber (Mastodon):

(a) I don’t think this is a good mandate for iOS either;

(b) it was always so for iOS, though, so it’s not like Apple has ever taken away rich creative icon shapes on the platform;

(c) MacOS is a far richer and more precise environment than iOS.

[…]

App icons on the iOS home screen are effectively simple buttons. I think it’s rather obvious that’s why they have had that squircle/roundsquare shape ever since the iPhone was announced in January 2007 (source). They’re one-tap launchers. App icons in MacOS are not mere buttons. You can drag them, move them, and drop things on them. You click them to select, and double-click to launch. They are richer objects that deserve a richer visual vocabulary. iOS is a world meant for fat-tipped Magic Markers and blunt safety scissors. MacOS is a world meant to support fine-tipped drafting pens and precision razor-sharp X-ACTO knives.

Louie Mantia (Mastodon):

While developers have submitted full-bleed square images for iOS app icons since 2008, for these new squircle icons in macOS 11, Apple provided a template to compose app icons in an image editing tool like Photoshop, with full control over the canvas beyond the suggested—but not required—squircle. This template made it easy-ish for designers to compose macOS app icons that were identical to or synonymous with an iOS app icon, while leaving the door open to continue using arbitrarily-shaped app icons on macOS.

[…]

The second type of Squircle Jail is more controversial, because these app icons were specifically drawn with the intention of fitting in. Overriding that intention feels like punishment for having done the right thing. App icons in a style that was recently encouraged by the system are now scaled down and put inside the squircle as if it were a container. Every icon that was utilizing the previous squircle shape suddenly looks much worse than before.

[…]

Instead of taking care to design and develop solutions specifically for Mac and iPhone, newer and bigger companies that don’t only make apps often ship apps with logo icons, rather than app icons. We’ve all seen it.

[…]

I would love if Apple provided a way for designers to poke outside that squircle boundary. Some of my favorite app icons did that. But also some of my least-favorite app icons ignored this shape entirely, when it was used for every system icon in the last five years. Whenever those apps showed up in my Dock, it was like a stain on my shirt I couldn’t get out.

John Gruber:

Ultimately this is what I object to with the squircle mandate. It favors the bottom of the heap by restricting the top. It makes bad icons mediocre but pushes great icons toward mediocrity too. That’s not The Macintosh Way.

Nick Heer:

Mantia touches on all the pragmatic reasons to unify the shape of icons in an operating system, all of which I have considered, and then drops the above paragraphs — and things started to make more sense to me. This is a different way to think about it. This is not a situation where a cleaner looks like a zesty beverage with toxic consequences. The shared general function of these icons does help communicate something and makes them less ambiguous in that sense.

But a broad category of functionality is only part of the story of an icon and — with respect to Mantia’s long and illustrious history of work in this area, and that of co-Parakeeter Luka Grafera — taking away a difference of shape also limits what an icon can communicate. It may not be a cleaning product that looks and is packaged like juice, but imagine if every consumable liquid was in identical bottles with only a different label.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

Louie’s squircle jail post just underscores that the squircle jail benefits 99% of apps, and is better for the platform overall. There is only ever a handful of apps that make great Mac app icons, and a withering number of ‘great Mac app icon designers’ — you can probably only name one or two left in the scene.

Jeff Johnson:

Mantia talks as if it were more important for apps to “belong to the Dock” than to allow Dock users to quickly select the right app in the list. That’s choosing form over functionality.

“The shape of apps is a squircle.” But Mac users already knew those were apps in the Dock!

See also: Accidental Tech Podcast.

Tyler Hall:

If you’re lucky enough to distribute an app outside the Mac App Store, you can break free of squircle jail using NSDockTilePlugIn. It’s not strictly the intended use-case of that API. And it’s not allowed in the Mac App Store, either. But it can solve the problem.

BasicAppleGuy:

If you recognize these icons, it’s probably time to schedule your routine back exam.

Previously:

• Clear and Tinted Icons Are a Hard Pass
• Liquid Glass 27 Icons
• Apple Creator Studio Icons
• Tahoe’s Terrible Icons
• One Size Does Not Fit All
• macOS Tahoe 26 Developer Beta 4
• macOS Tahoe’s New Theming System
• macOS Tahoe 26 Announced
• The macOS App Icon Book

Update (2026-07-17): Louie Mantia:

But my perspective right now is to be very pragmatic. The decision to mask all icons with squircles is a long-time coming. It was perhaps the most predictable thing to happen in Apple’s history. For 20 years, it’s been leading up to this.

I want to make nice things for macOS, whatever macOS is. And this is what it is.

Roger Wong:

Some of my favorite icons over the years have had interesting shapes, like the truck for Transmit, the vise for Compressor, or the cute bird for Twitteriffic.

[…]

But I also recall clicking some icons and not being able to select them. Why? Because I was inaccurate in my click and instead my cursor landed in the empty space just outside the shape.

[…]

If I recall correctly, developers could use a different mask for the click target to help users out. But I don’t think many did all the time, including Apple, which you can obviously see in the video above.

Louie Mantia:

I don’t want to step on toes regarding your new [StopTheMadness] icon which has great color— but I don’t understand why you elected to abandon the octagon as the outer shape. That’s a choice. You are not forced to abandon it. Why not do something like this?

I like this.

Nick Heer:

Losing some of the artistry in an icon makes it more difficult to distinguish between legitimate and well-crafted Mac apps, and everything else. It is not a perfect proxy, to be sure, and there are some very nice squircle icons. But it is nevertheless a unfortunate change that makes apps of varying levels of quality look more similar.

Adam Engst:

Of the TidBITS readers who chose to respond to the poll, only 1% said they use clear icons on the Mac, and no one admitted to using tinted icons. On the iPhone, clear icons were twice as popular—a whopping 2%—and just 1% of respondents said they use tinted icons. Dark icons, which retain color, were slightly more popular, but still couldn’t exceed single digits, with 6% on the Mac and 9% on the iPhone.

Squircle Jail is one thing; redesigning icons to be assembled within Icon Composer is another. The latter makes a lot less sense but for supporting clear and tinted icons.

Previously:

• Golden Gate Squircle Jail
• Icon Composer Notes
• macOS Tahoe’s New Theming System

Juli Clover:

Apple today released the first public beta of macOS Golden Gate, expanding the macOS 27 beta test to non-developers. You can sign up to test the update on Apple’s beta website, and then download it by going to System Settings > General > Software Update and toggling on the macOS 27 beta.

Jason Snell:

The fact that there are more design changes in macOS than any of Apple’s other 27 updates speaks volumes about how broken many of the Tahoe design decisions were. Apple describes the design as “even more refined,” because in Apple marketing-speak, broken features are never remedied or fixed—past features are just improved. The truth is, Apple has rolled back numerous missteps and made changes to others to mitigate the issues they caused.

Antonio G. Di Benedetto:

The Golden Gate developer beta has proven stable in my everyday use on an M5 MacBook Air and M5 Max MacBook Pro, which is notable since dev betas often have side effects like tanking battery life or causing hardware to run hotter than normal.

[…]

Would I still prefer to go back to the flatter design of macOS Sequoia? Yes, unequivocally. But at least Liquid Glass is more tolerable and less distracting now.

John Voorhees:

Nowhere is the Snow Leopard of it all more apparent than in the hundreds of little changes made to improve the day-to-day use of your Mac. I’m not going to catalog them all here, but I’ve used Golden Gate on two different Macs at this point, and based on my experiences so far, the changes are meaningful.

Jeff Johnson:

This is the crazy Finder column view file selection dragging behavior I’m seeing in the latest Golden Gate developer beta.

Matthias Gansrigler-Hrad:

With the release of the macOS 27 Golden Gate public beta, can we finally submit Mac apps built with Xcode 27?

Previously:

• Golden Gate Spotlight
• Apple Intelligence in appleOS 27
• macOS Touch
• AI-Generated Shortcuts
• Siri AI Announced
• Glow Leopard
• macOS 27 Golden Gate Announced
• Liquid Glass 27 Slider
• Liquid Glass 27 Icons
• Golden Gate Window Corners
• Golden Gate Sidebars and Toolbars
• Golden Gate Menu Icons
• appleOS 26 Public Betas

Juli Clover:

Apple released the iOS 27 public beta today, and if you’ve been curious about the new software, now’s the time to try it out. iOS 27 brings Siri AI, performance improvements, and lots of new Apple Intelligence features.

[…]

Everything feels snappier than it did in iOS 26. Animations are quicker, apps launch faster, and AirDrop transfers complete faster. You’ll see improvements when taking photos, opening the keyboard, using the App Library, and swapping Home Screen pages. Your iMessages between devices sync more accurately, messages won’t fail to send and will be automatically retried, and your iPhone can transition more smoothly between Wi-Fi and cellular.

Dan Moren:

In general, the iOS 27 incarnation of Liquid Glass is far easier on the eyes, dialing down the transparency in favor of legibility. Apple’s also imposed some distinction between user interface elements and content. For example, in list views like in Messages and Mail there are now much clearer “toolbar” areas at the top when you start scrolling, even if they still have some degree of translucency. App icons have also gotten a face lift; they’re sharper, and feel more vibrant.

[…]

That’s because one of the odd things about looking at iOS 27 is that there’s just a ton of small stuff—those “quality of life” improvements that chip away at little frustrations and annoyances.

Previously:

• Apple Intelligence in appleOS 27
• Siri AI Announced
• Glow Leopard
• Liquid Glass 27 Slider
• iOS 27 Announced
• appleOS 26 Public Betas

General:

• Keynote / SOTU / Videos / YouTube
• Unofficial WWDC App / Script to Title Videos in EagleFiler
• OS Beta / Xcode Beta
• macOS 27 Installers / IPSW / Creating Install Disk With DropDMG
• Sample Code
• Group Lab Summaries
• WWDC.ai Session Summaries / Viewing Guide

Documentation:

• Updates / AppKit / Foundation / Swift / SwiftData / Security / SwiftUI / UIKit / Xcode / App Intents / Core Spotlight / Foundation Models
• Xcode Release Notes / macOS / iOS & iPadOS / Safari / tvOS / visionOS / watchOS
• Design / Resources
• New Frameworks / App Intents Testing / Core AI / CrashReportExtension / DiskImageKit / Visual Intelligence
• Technotes

Sessions:

• AppKit / UIKit / Privacy and Security / Power and Performance / TextKit
• Design / Icon Composer / Names / Brand / Search
• Swift / gRPC / MLX / Lab
• SwiftData / Code-along / Lab
• SwiftUI / With AppKit and UIKit / Lazy / Graphics Effects / Drag and Drop / Beginners Lab / Lab / Lab
• Xcode / Device Hub / Testing / Cloud / MetricKit / Lab
• Coding Intelligence / ML and AI Lab
• Agents / Instruments / Prototypes / Translate
• Core Spotlight / PaperKit / Shortcuts / Visual Intelligence / Web Extensions / WidgetKit
• Core AI / Authoring and Optimization / On-Device Models
• App Intents / Advanced / AppIntentsTesting / App Schemas / Code-along
• Foundation Models / Agentic / Evaluations / Image Understanding / LLM Provider / Private Cloud Compute / Security

Podcasts:

• Accidental Tech Podcast
• AppStories
• The Dalrymple Report
• Dithering
• Empower Apps
• MacBreak Weekly
• Mac Power Users
• The Talk Show
• Upgrade

Previously:

• WWDC 2026 Keynote
• WWDC 2026 Wish Lists
• WWDC 2026 Preview
• WWDC 2025 Links

Adam Overholtzer:

Corners!

Simon B. Støvring:

“We fixed corner radius” was a WWDC keynote highlight. Let that sink in.

Rudrank:

This should have been since macOS 26 #WWDC26

Folks getting excited for consistent corner radius 😂

Kuba Suder:

Ehh, no change here, RIP Intel Macs… stuck on the v1 Liquid Glass forever 🫤

There was so much demand for this that the Liquid Radius haxie exists. People were willing to disable FileVault and System Integrity Protection to get consistent window corners.

Previously:

• macOS Golden Gate 27 Announced
• Tahoe Window Corners
• WWDC 2026 Keynote

Update (2026-06-23): Marcin Wichary:

Then, there’s the website you’ve just seen: elaborate, with nice “before and after” animations, and a fun landing page. I thought the installation steps, given the complexity of the effort, were exemplary and even educational. There’s also a page listing all the apps confirmed to work, and a “How Liquid Radius limits its blast radius” (ha) section, revealing the author is clear-eyed about their work being a hack, and even the dimensionality of its hackiness. Even within the tool there are nice design details.

But, as I was exploring the site, I kept switching between “this is ridiculous!” (laudatory) and “this is ridiculous!” (derogatory) in my head.

Joe Rossignol:

macOS Golden Gate also has design changes. For example, apps now have a unified toolbar at the top, and the sidebar now expands to the edge of the window.

Hartley Charlton:

Sidebar behavior is also being updated. Sidebars will now expand to the full edge of the window, with refraction effects continuing beneath them rather than cutting off at the sidebar boundary. Sidebar icons will also retain their color, a change that addresses a common complaint about the original Liquid Glass implementation.

I’m really happy for these changes, but it’s not clear to me that they’re improvements over what we had pre-Tahoe or, especially, pre-Big Sur.

John Siracusa:

Oh thank god! No more margins around sidebars on macOS!

Benjamin Mayo:

sidebars now work how they used to!

Mario Guzmán:

I just love that toolbars have clear/strict dividers again in #macOS27.

Whoever said your content and UI should blend is a liar.

What a wonderful and welcome fix in #macOS27.

Betamagic:

Instead of properly fixing the Liquid Glass implementation of NSToolbar buttons in macOS 27 Golden Gate, Apple decided to simply place an ugly, semi-transparent macOS 15-ish background bar behind the buttons, which makes Liquid Glass completely useless in the toolbar.

João Pavão:

macOS 26 should have never been more than one developer seed release, with these changes taking place before the actual public release.

It’s sad that we had to endure this crap of a UI for a full year and now have to maintain apps for it for I don’t know how much longer.

Previously:

• macOS Golden Gate 27 Announced
• WWDC 2026 Keynote

Update (2026-06-12): Norbert Heger:

Why has nobody told me this before?

defaults write -g NSSplitViewItemSidebarDefaultsToFloatingAppearance -bool NO

Look at this gorgeously clean sidebar on macOS Tahoe!

Jesper:

The macOS standard sidebars don’t live in a blob with very uncomfortable margins (which were required for there to be a layer fit in between the “traffic light” window controls and the window’s edge).

Update (2026-06-16): Mark Sokolovsky has screenshots of the sidebars in recent macOS versions.

Update (2026-07-22): Mario Guzmán:

No more progressive blur for scroll edges in System Settings on macOS. This is definitely a very welcome change and overall one of the many little enhancements -- driving the entire UI in the right direction. Love it.