Removing Tahoe’s Unwanted Menu Icons
37 points by fanf
37 points by fanf
As a user, to disable the built-in menu icons globally you can do:
defaults write -globalDomain NSMenuEnableActionImages -bool NO
Or defaults write <bundle-id> NSMenuEnableActionImages -bool NO for a specific application.
The trick is https://gist.github.com/brentsimmons/8dbe00e8acbeede26baaaebd06a867fc
Sadly only for app developers, not something users can do system-wide.
Of all the problems with Liquid Glass (which have been iterated over extensively), this is probably the least bad, if not actually pretty good. Icons on important items serve as an anchor and make them stand out. Putting icons on less important stuff, not so much, but glad to see Apple is catching up with UI trends from 1997.
Of all the problems with Liquid Glass (which have been iterated over extensively), this is probably the least bad, if not actually pretty good.
I strongly disagree that "icons in menus everywhere is actually a good thing". I think it is quite bad.
This article resonated well with me: https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/
Honestly the UI is so bad that these excessive menu graphics are really inconsequential. “There are excessive images in the menus” vs “the text in the menu is blended with the text behind the menus” for instance, or every other bit of the nonsense.
In the same way that "my hand being cut off doesn't matter as much because I've been shot 5 times" then yes, I would agree. Inconsequential in comparison to many of the other current glaring problems, but not generally inconsequential.
Yeah - I'd think this was a big improvement were it not for literally everything else being so much worse :-/
They merely sprayed icons on everything uncritically, as if it was some blanket coding standard requirement, rather than something designed to be like that by a user interface designer.
When every item has an icon, then nothing is important, nothing stands out. Choosing where not to add icons is just as important for this to work.
New macOS increasingly feels like a shallow knock-off of Mac OS X.
Wait, app developers have to opt out of menu icons for their own menu bar items? Am I understanding this correctly? Are they determined heuristically by name or something?
They're identified by the action message the menu item sends when clicked. AppKit contains a mapping from selector to the name of the symbol to use.
AppKit has done similar things in the past where they'll add or retitle menu items in order to match changes in OS conventions (adding dictation / autofill menu items to the Edit menu, fullscreen menu items to the Window menu, renaming Preferences to Settings… in the app menu, etc).