Everything is so (un)colorful here: What theming possibilities macOS 26 brings
Until now, anyone who wanted to change the look of macOS had to use special tools. With Tahoe, Apple now provides some of these itself.
macOS 26 Tahoe with a customized look: pretty, but also pretty illegible.
(Image: Apple)
Long-time macOS users couldn't help but feel a certain shock when they took their first look at macOS 26, aka Tahoe: With “Liquid Glass”, Apple is changing its design language in many places – often subtly, but definitely visibly. There will certainly still be changes in the current beta, but one thing is clear: this is a new look. What's more, for the first time Apple is giving users significantly more options for customization: There are entire theming options for the new macOS. These include the icon display, the text highlight color and the folders, which can now be freely customized.
Transparent and barely legible
There is now a new setting option for the icon and widget style. Here you can choose from four options: Standard (looks similar to before, with a few adjustments), Dark (dark mode icons including matching widgets), Clear (reasonably extreme glass look) and Tinted (colored). “Clear” will hardly appeal to older eyes in particular, as icons and widgets are difficult to read, depending on the background. But “Tinted” can also look extreme: All icons then have the same color scheme, which can largely be freely selected, as has been known from iPhone and iPad since iOS 18 and iPadOS 18.
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If you want (see image above), you can even make the background image and icon color tone-on-tone, and other UI elements are also colored to match. This can also be defined for dark or light mode. There are also new features for the highlight color, which can differ from button or pop-up colors. The folder color is also freely selectable, and folders can also be given emojis or other symbols.
Evaluation of the changes
Fortunately, Apple is not forcing anyone to use the new theming. However, the fact that it is available should please desktop hobbyists. Individual special tools for customizing the look are no longer needed in the areas that Apple now covers – and many – are no longer required.
However, you should also be careful with the settings. In particular, coloring and the aforementioned “clear” look are not at all conducive to user-friendliness, as it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish individual control elements. This raises whether it makes sense.
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