Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall reaction to menu icon removal

  • Many commenters are relieved Golden Gate removes Tahoe’s ubiquitous menu icons, calling Tahoe “death by a thousand cuts.”
  • Some liked the icons aesthetically or as light visual “background music,” but even a few of them felt they became clutter when applied everywhere.
  • A few people say the change never bothered them and question how it became such a focal point for anger.

Workarounds and remaining icon behavior

  • For Tahoe, people share a Terminal command (NSMenuEnableActionImages=false) to disable icons.
  • In Golden Gate beta, icons still appear in some cases (e.g., items that open other apps/folders or mirror existing iconized actions elsewhere).

UI/UX and icon design debates

  • Consensus: icons are useful sparingly, for common or important actions, and as occasional visual anchors.
  • When every menu item has an icon, the eye has more to parse and the icons lose distinctiveness.
  • Some argue “visual consistency” taken too far is harmful; variability can aid scanning.
  • Icons must be recognizable and consistent; modern flat styles plus differing icon sets across apps make that harder. Text remains the most reliable.

Liquid Glass, transparency, and performance

  • Heavy criticism of Liquid Glass: visual noise, wasted GPU/shader work, poor legibility, and visible downsampling/pixelation in some setups.
  • Multiple reports of performance regressions on macOS Tahoe (and iOS with Liquid Glass): laggy animations, low FPS, slow GPU ramp-up, especially on some Mac models and Apple TV.
  • Others report acceptable or even improved performance, particularly with “reduce transparency/animations” enabled, so impact appears device- and settings-dependent.

Apple design culture and process

  • Several see the reversal on menu icons as evidence Apple still listens to feedback and can undo “dumb” ideas, analogous to bringing back MagSafe or ditching butterfly keyboards.
  • Others argue problems are systemic: leadership chose the prior design direction and its champions; simply swapping individuals doesn’t prove deeper change.
  • The Human Interface Guidelines are praised historically, but some say recent years used them more as post-hoc justification than principled guidance.

Upgrade strategies and hardware implications

  • Some users stayed on Sequoia or even older macOS versions due to Tahoe’s design and performance; a few reverted after trying Tahoe.
  • Golden Gate beta is described as fixing many Tahoe annoyances (icons, rounding mess, sluggishness), leading some holdouts to plan upgrading once stable.
  • Intel Mac owners are unhappy Tahoe will be their final macOS, viewing it as a rough “transition release” that nudges them toward Apple Silicon or alternative platforms like Linux and Framework laptops.