Menu Bar Madness in macOS 26 and iPadOS 26
In beta 2, Apple added an option to restore the menu bar background. Which is good. Except it also makes me question Apple’s confidence in its design work. When Apple starts hedging its bets, it signals that it knows something is wrong, but lacks the conviction to course-correct. Or perhaps such settings are a means to temporarily shut people up, while default choices reveal the true intent and direction of travel.
On iPad, things are even worse. I’m a fan of the new windowing system, but the menu bar implementation is dreadful. The problem isn’t its auto-hide behaviour – the Mac has had something similar (although off by default) since 2015. Again, the issue is that Apple is so enamoured with transparency that it’s sacrificing visual clarity.
Unfortunately, the ‘fix’ on iPad isn’t yet anywhere near as full as the Mac one. In beta 1, a two-up window view could see menu bar text vanish entirely. In beta 2, Apple added a subtle gradient, which barely helps. Honestly, this is embarrassing – the sort of thing a design student wouldn’t hand in as part of a project. A menu bar coming to iPad is great, but not if you can’t read its text.
You do wonder what the internal processes are[…]
They’ve been trying to get rid of the Mac menu bar’s bar for about 18 years now. I don’t understand why.
In this case, the Mac actually has notably larger touch targets than the iPad version. This one is particularly notable for me because the menu has long been the go-to example for why touch on the Mac would not work, and yet the iPad has an even smaller one.
Previously:
- iPadOS Windows Mess Up Data Saving
- Assorted Notes on Liquid Glass
- macOS Tahoe 26 Developer Beta 2
- iPadOS 26 Announced
- Big Sur’s Transparent Menu Bar
- Leopard’s Menu Bar
