System Settings in Sequoia
Apple has refreshed the System Settings app of macOS Sequoia, with tweaks to how it looks and performs.
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The biggest difference for System Settings is that Apple has shuffled around the positioning of items in the sidebar. This does make it slightly difficult to find things if you’re used to Sonoma placements, but everything’s still findable.
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While there was previously a Passwords section in System Settings, Apple has now moved it to its own dedicated Passwords app.
This is the System Settings “redesign” LOL
reycat (via Accidental Tech Podcast):
Network locations are back in Sequoia. 👏 👏 👏
System Settings Privacy & Security now show the number of apps that have access (e.g., None and 0), which is a bit of a relief.
Look at this ridiculous UI.
I have 5 startup disks.
Is this the oldest instance of horizontal scrolling UI in macOS? It was annoying from the beginning and is even harder to use with the larger icons.
New iCloud UI in System Settings.
Can someone explain why macOS System Settings lets me reveal non-apps in Finder, via the (i) button, but not “Background” apps? Right-clicking there doesn’t work (that works only in the “Open at login” section). What a UI mess!
This is not fixed in Sequoia.
We already have to scroll a lot to get to many things due to the lazy list-y design of Setting Settings but do they have to make it so we have to scroll more? Not sure how necessary these headers are.
It’s also a header, so not sure it needs its own visual box around it or row box -- whatever you want to call it.
iOS 18 Settings app is not really different.
- big explainer headers
- new Apps section
Previously:
- Apple Passwords App in Sequoia and iOS 18
- Deleting Messages Attachments Everywhere
- Apple Account
- macOS 15 Sequoia Announced
- Janky Apple ID Security
- System Settings That Aren’t in System Settings
- System Settings That Aren’t in System Settings
- Centering the macOS Ventura Form Layout
- Network Locations in Ventura
- System Settings
Update (2024-07-22): Jeff Johnson:
This is macOS 15 all the time for me.
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> Is this the oldest instance of horizontal scrolling UI in macOS? It was annoying from the beginning and is even harder to use with the larger icons.
Reminds me of convention on NeXTStep. Like in the Preferences app: https://infinitemac.org/1992/NeXTStep%203.0
The startup disk UI is probably the most egregiously stupid part of System Settings. I too have many startup disks and it feels like a slap to the face each time I have to deal with that.
Of course the "redesign" doesn't really fix any problems. The seemingly arbitrary order of system settings / preferences has been an issue for as long as Mac OS X has been around. At least in the old design you could use icons and visual memory to find what you wanted.
What I really want is for them to fix System Setting's search bar, since we need it to be able to find any of the many confusingly organized settings. But it's frequently just totally broken.
"Network locations are back in Sequoia. "
Thank goodness for that - finally someone gets it (we hope).
I was thinking I was going mad trying to manage WiFi, Ethernet and Locations and frequently got slightly frustrated (!).
As these days it's all about MacBooks, hence being in different, you know, Locations. I can see that in one meeting they tried to dumb it down, but hey, rejoice.
I was seriously considering they'd given the job of UI design to a 9-year-old. (No offence to 9-year-olds)
@Chris Quirk: as written above, they were already back in 13.1. But if no one knows, probably no one actually uses it.
Since the new design was introduced, I have to use the search bar to find most settings, because the logic of the old system is gone.
The UI is ever-so-slightly better but that's not saying much
The big header is only in "General", which is the pane opened by default; it serves as an introduction to the Settings app, the big icon emphasizes that there are other categories in the left pane. One with usability sensibilities can scroll down to hide the header and realize that those two list of links are confusingly both vying for attention.
(A home screen like the old app, or a strong visual indication (such as an arrow-ish shape or a gradient or just no whitespace) that the selected left pane item leads to the right pane's content, are obvious solutions that aren't in line with Apple's present idea of design.)
The post talks about "headers" plural, but other headers are smaller and present only in panes that are non-obvious to grasp.
