Do You Use It? Clear and Tinted Icons
While writing “macOS 27 Golden Gate Sharpens Tahoe’s Blurry Icons” (22 June 2026), I was chatting with Paul Kafasis of Rogue Amoeba about how it was good that macOS 27 Golden Gate’s app icons will be sharper and more distinct, but that it was a shame that Apple was still forcing all icons into the squircle shape that makes them more difficult to tell apart. Scroll through the TidBITS Member Benefits for a quick tour of some apps that haven’t changed their icons—I particularly like Acorn.
More specifically, we wondered, wouldn’t the similarity of squircle icons be especially problematic if the user had chosen either Clear or Tinted in System Settings > Appearance > Icon & widget style? (On the iPhone, touch and hold an empty spot on the Home Screen, tap Edit > Customize, and select Clear or Tinted.)
Answer: Yes, it’s nearly impossible to identify a particular app when they’re all clear or tinted squircles, as you can see below. My brain just shuts down when it sees them.
For comparison, here’s that iPhone Home Screen in Default, Dark, Clear, and Tinted.
Seeing just how difficult it was to distinguish between clear or tinted icons led to our next question, and to this week’s Do You Use It? poll. What percentage of Mac or iPhone users—or at least TidBITS readers—prefer one of these Liquid Glass monochromatic looks for all their apps? Some users with color vision deficiencies might prefer them, but are they at all common otherwise? If you prefer to see your icons in clear or tinted, tell us why and share a Home Screen or Spotlight screenshot in the comments.
Default/default here. The squircles IMHO are silly tech bro nonsense.
As @ace and others keep pointing out, shape can be just as important to distinguish icons as is color or design.
As a colorblind guy, I’m surprised Apple has chosen to just ignore this simple fact.
My choices are default/tinted. Thanks for thinking of posting this poll!
As a former photographer, I used to use a desktop/homescreen wallpaper photo of my own, changing them more on iPhone than Mac. Used to customise the iPhone more than Mac.
What I’m using now has more to do with outside factors than ≤26/7 customizations. The Mac has a middle gray color wallpaper (rarely seen, admittedly with so many windows open) and the iPhone is black Wallpaper with tinted white/black/gray icons.
So much fun has gone out of the Apple experience for me, and customizing its look, in recent years (excepting TBTalk), and we have lost so many friends/neighbors/pets recently that it just doesn’t provide joy to see image Wallpapers or colors every time I turn on iPhone, so this look seems appropriate. Sad, but there it is. Good, at least, that this is available, vs. Apple inserting its own “AI” Wallpaper ;-) .
Interested to read what others do!