- macOS 27 Golden Gate has fixed menu icons on your Mac
- Menus are no longer stuffed to bursting with unnecessary icons
- That makes it much easier to find things at a glance
Apple’s macOS Tahoe operating system came in for its fair share of criticism, particularly when it came to design decisions. One of the most controversial concerned the way it used icons in menus, but it now appears that macOS 27 Golden Gate introduced at Apple’s WWDC 2026 event has backtracked completely — much to the relief of long-suffering Apple fans. And it has big implications for anyone who wants a better experience of using their computer.
The problem in macOS Tahoe was that app menus were stuffed full of icons, making it very difficult to tell the difference between menu items at a glance. In macOS 27, that’s been scrubbed entirely, as noticed by programmer Nikita “Tonsky” Prokopov, with most menus now containing only a smattering of icons.
Now, only certain menu items have icons next to them, with others remaining simple text entries. That restores the menu design to the way it used to be and greatly reduces the visual clutter in macOS menus, reducing the work it requires to tell menu options apart.
As well as the design change, Prokopov noticed that Apple has also updated its guidelines for third-party designers, reminding them to “use menu items sparingly and with purpose.” Icons should be used to “highlight the most common actions and key features of your app,” Apple says. If a menu item doesn’t fit an existing icon, it probably shouldn’t be used.
Better late than never
Menu design might seem like a pretty niche gripe, but it can have a big impact on how you use your computer.
If you’re having to analyze fistfuls of icons every time you open a menu, it slows you down and can cause frustration. The entire purpose of an icon is to quickly convey meaning — if a menu is overflowing with icons, an icon’s meaning is quickly lost among the sea of competing visual elements. It’s one small thing, but it taps into a broader picture: good design makes using a product effortless; bad design makes it infuriating.
The situation was so bad in macOS Tahoe that it left prominent Apple commentators livid. Influential blogger John Gruber, for example, called macOS Tahoe’s menu icons “glaringly inconsistent and often utterly inscrutable.” Respected macOS developer Rogue Amoeba called them “infuriating.”
This is not the first time Apple has had icon trouble. Both macOS Tahoe and iOS 26 came with transparent icons that obliterated your ability to tell icons apart at a glance. It felt like Apple didn’t understand the basic principles of good design — and this is the company that’s meant to be a global design leader.
For me, the worst part of all this is that Apple’s menu design in macOS Tahoe broke its own rules. As pointed out by Prokopov, Apple’s Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines from way back in 1992 said that menus chock-full of icons could “overload the user.” And yet it still went ahead and ignored its own advice in macOS Tahoe anyway, often reusing the same icons for different menu items, sometimes right next to each other.
It all contributed to my despairing feeling that macOS Tahoe’s visual language was far worse than I initially realized. Under now-departed design chief Alan Dye, it seemed that Apple naively thought design meant taking something average and painting it in pretty colors, functionality be damned. In other words, exactly the kind of shallow thinking that Apple founder Steve Jobs railed against in the past.
Yet with macOS 27 fixing its menu icons and Alan Dye out of the way, things are looking up. Putting things right in your Mac’s menus might be a small step, but it suggests that Apple is starting to remember why good design makes everything better for its users. As Gruber put it, “it’s proof that the rot has been rooted out of Apple’s software design team.”
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alexblake.techradar@gmail.com (Alex Blake)
