Liquid Glass isn't just coming to your iPhone -- It's coming to just about every Apple product with a screen you can think of, including your Mac. MacOS 26 Tahoe will bring the design overhaul, which can be both somewhat dramatic or barely noticeable, with an overall look of feeling fresh while remaining comfortably familiar.
MacOS 26 Tahoe is far from just a design overhaul and will come with several new features when it officially rolls out, but it's easy to get caught up with all the styling Apple has done with this release. Some of these changes are brand new and some are new for the Mac but borrowed from iOS, like changes to the icons.
New icon options for the Mac include color tinting and making them completely clear like you can on the iPhone. But even without those visual tweaks, Apple went to work on redesigning the standard Mac icons -- some of which haven't been changed in decades.
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What's more interesting to me is that Apple manages to tell the same story while visually saying less with some of the redesigned icons.
If you're curious, I've highlighted a few of the new icons you can expect to see in MacOS 26 Tahoe, but you should keep in mind that the icons could change again by the time the official build is released. Below, I'll compare the newly designed icons to the current version of MacOS, Sequoia.
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Tucked in, flattened down and rounded out
Icons on the Mac now feel more like that of those on iOS, with a more rounded, squircle design. Compared to Sequoia, Tahoe's icons become flatter in the details and sometimes that texture found in the former OS version's icons is replaced with a subtle translucent effect. Sequoia's sometimes concave or indented style has been pushed outwards, allowing for Liquid Glass to add a little shine on the corners of elements within the icon's design. Apple has also pulled in all icon elements that had previously hung off the edges -- now everything is tucked within the icon shape.
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