{"id":49188,"date":"2025-09-08T16:21:48","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T20:21:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=49188"},"modified":"2025-09-10T11:58:41","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T15:58:41","slug":"macos-icon-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/08\/macos-icon-history\/","title":{"rendered":"macOS Icon History"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/basicappleguy.com\/basicappleblog\/macos-icon-history\">BasicAppleGuy<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/basicappleguy.com\/basicappleblog\/macos-icon-history\">\n<p>With macOS 26, Apple has announced a dramatically new look to their UI: Liquid Glass. Solid material icon elements give way to softer, shinier, glassier icons. The rounded rectangle became slightly more rounded, and Apple eliminated the ability for icon elements to extend beyond the icon rectangle (as seen in the current icons for GarageBand, Photo Booth, Dictionary, etc.).<\/p>\n<p>With this release being one of the most dramatic visual overhauls of macOS's design, I wanted to begin a collection chronicling the evolution of the system icons over the years.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I linked to this in an update before, but I wanted to highlight it again since he&rsquo;s been posting updates on social media and this post collects everything in one place. The new 26 icons will be GM very soon.<\/p>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/05\/one-size-does-not-fit-all\/\">One Size Does Not Fit All<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/03\/macos-tahoe-26-developer-beta-9\/\">macOS Tahoe 26 Developer Beta 9<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/30\/assorted-notes-on-liquid-glass\/\">Assorted Notes on Liquid Glass<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/24\/macos-tahoe-26-developer-beta-2\/\">macOS Tahoe 26 Developer Beta 2<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"macos-icon-history-update-2025-09-10\">Update (<a href=\"#macos-icon-history-update-2025-09-10\">2025-09-10<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/tidbits.com\/2025\/09\/09\/basicappleguys-macos-icon-history\/\">Adam Engst<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/tidbits.com\/2025\/09\/09\/basicappleguys-macos-icon-history\/\">\n<p>Of them, I think only the new Stickies icon has improved (though I still prefer the 2000&#x2013;2020 version), but many other app icons are notably worse.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BasicAppleGuy: With macOS 26, Apple has announced a dramatically new look to their UI: Liquid Glass. Solid material icon elements give way to softer, shinier, glassier icons. The rounded rectangle became slightly more rounded, and Apple eliminated the ability for icon elements to extend beyond the icon rectangle (as seen in the current icons for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-09-08T20:21:51Z","apple_news_api_id":"37e8d26a-3ff5-4034-a1b2-fde8e3067dfc","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-09-10T15:58:43Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAg==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AN-jSaj_1QDShsv3o4wZ9_A","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[77,295,545,2785,30,2742],"class_list":["post-49188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-design","tag-history","tag-icons","tag-liquid-glass","tag-mac","tag-macos-tahoe-26"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49188"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49224,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49188\/revisions\/49224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}