Discussion

macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

nikolay: It keeps annoying me, too. How can their developers not see this?!

galad87: Because that's by design. The windows are meant to have different corner radius, they even explained it at WWDC. Then people forgot and rediscovered it again, like it was some new thing.I am not saying that it's a good idea to have different corner radius, just that it's nothing new.

riffraff: I'm starting to suspect most people at Apple (and Microsoft) just spend time in a browser these days and so they don't notice how the desktop has gone shitty.

robthebrew: There is a work around if you don't mind lowering the Security settings: https://github.com/aspauldingcode/apple-sharpener

TheFuzzball: It's annoying, sure, but it's not worth disabling SIP.

unselect5917: This is one of those stories that I read and I'm like, "Someone wrote an article about that? I am definitely among my people, but I smell a front end developer."

pjmlp: I won't be public shaming, but on a .NET podcast I just heard of an internal Microsoft project that took 7 years (!), to become public, it was a plain single Assembly .NET library nothing special (1 DLL).

mikae1: > they even explained it at WWDCDid they explain the reasoning?

pjmlp: Priorities on what tickets to work on, and Apple being proudly underresourced.

franciscop: This was one of the very few advantages of moving from Linux => MacOS, that at least most of the software was beautiful and consistent by default. I'm saddened to see that this is not true anymore. Been holding the Tahoe upgrade, and might just keep my macbook air m1 much longer than originally intended because of this.

jiehong: Yep, it’s just ugly IMO

satGuess: I hadn’t noticed this before, but now I can’t unsee it. UI inconsistencies like that tend to stand out once someone points them out.

galad87: To align the window corner radius to the window close/minimize/resize buttons radius.

mulmen: [delayed]

etchalon: This feels like one of those "done for backwards compatibility and we tested not doing it and it was worse" things where everyone assumes incompetence over good-faith trade-offs being driven by release schedules.

postalcoder: This one really bothers me. Whenever I maximize or tile windows (which is all the time), I see multiple layers of oddly rounded corners.I think if there's any upside to Tahoe, it's that it might push me into blogging for the first time in my life ever, because I just can't keep things to myself.I actually feel sorry for Apple's developers. I can't see how you can ship software so bad and inconsistent unless you've been handed a terrible design spec from Dye's team.

nikolay: I'd rather have my corners perfect and not have the constant eyesore of pixels bleeding from other windows' corners!

iknowstuff: Did the radius need changing

MaxikCZ: Im gonna go against the grain here, so hold your pitchforks please, but I think its better than if it were consistent. Let me explain:The author notices that adding a toolbar changes the radius, and to me it makes sense. If theres a toolbar, I know how much I can cut the corners, because the icons in the toolbar are not gonna be in far corner. At the same time, when I am unsure about what type of content might get cut by the corner, I will reduce the cut slightly to give that content more space.I couldnt care less that one radius is not the same as another, I guess my OCD levels are not that high (yet?).And I say all of this as someone who dislikes the glass design, and especially hates the small, slowly fading in volume/brightness indicators in the corner replacing the mid screen beautiful instant indicator.

gattilorenz: So… the moment the Interface Designer in XCode can identify the app only has a single button at the center of a window, the window should be a circle? :)

sgt: Maybe this is intentional? Either way, doesn't look bad.

steve_adams_86: I suppose that's subjective, because to me it looks distracting and tacky. I want the window chrome to be present, opinionated, yet consistent and plain. This is one of the many Tahoe-isms that violates the latter two. It's visual noise that detracts from one of the most basic utilities of the UI, which is to simply hold my applications in a regular, cohesive, predictable manner.Maybe it shouldn't irritate me, but it's the first time I've encountered it in 30 years. I'm all for change and trying new things, but this doesn't feel like progress.

ulbu: read somewhere that maybe they’re preparing for OLED screens

littlecranky67: Which one?

Zafira: > In the new design system, windows now have a softer, more generous corner radius, which varies based on the style of window. Windows with toolbars now use a larger radius, which is designed to wrap concentrically around the glass toolbar elements, scaling to match the size of the toolbar. Titlebar-only windows retain a smaller corner radius, wrapping compactly around the window controls. These larger corners provide a softer feel and elegant concentricity to the window…

conductr: Just a bunch of words that raised no red flags, maybe sounded like a decent idea even, but when you see it how is your reaction not “oh, that’s bad”I feel like this is the design process. You have ideas, they sound ok, you try them out, and then immediately you revert a lot of them. The ideas without the taste to know when not to do something is becoming the new Apple way

create-username: “Calm down, Postalcoder. We can vent tonight on our blog”

mrcarrot: I've started using Linux recently after not touching a desktop distro for 20-odd years, and I was surprised how good both Gnome and KDE look these days.It certainly doesn't feel like there's a trillion-dollar-company difference between those two and Tahoe.

wahnfrieden: It is intentional - it was explained at WWDC. And it looks good.

wahnfrieden: Why should the two window varieties have the same corner radius? There's no design analysis here, only conservatism.

crote: If it is that crucial, they should add a few pixels of margin around the entire desktop, and randomly shift everything around. Doing only corners and not straight edges, and doing it by a fixed per-app amount, seems a bit silly.

oniony: No, because circles are not as cool as squircles.

Y-bar: All iPhones since the iPhone X (2017), and not the iPhone SE line, has an OLED display. iPad Pro also has OLED.

afandian: Something needed changing! And the radius was something!

ant6n: How does that argument work?

defraudbah: which will be even worse so you don't get that angry after years of bad design, lol

duskdozer: What if they randomized the radius on every launch? A fresh, modern experience every time!

stein1946: It just seems to me that that Macbook Neo is basically them telling us that come next year they will unify iOS and MacOS and they are testing the waters at the moment.All this version alignment, the blurring of "here is a laptop with A processor and iOS" points to that direction.The errs of Tahoe are basically a result of the rush on that direction

kace91: There is so much of that in modern apple. Clear issues caused by a seemingly bright idea, but the idea still pushed forward no matter what.One example that I hate on iOS: the notification/lockscreen curtain is supposed to cover the content as it slides down. That’s what a curtain does, this has been the language for years. Now the curtain is transparent, so it can’t cover the content behind. How does the content disappear then, as you slide the curtain down?… it doesn’t. Icons do a buggy looking animation crashing toward the user and through the screen, and if it’s an app there is just no transition. You can check by sliding the curtain down slowly and then letting go.

altern8: OK, Tim Cook, nice try but it looks awful.

altern8: So, there was no reasoning.

mkzet: I will never upgrade from Sequoia and when I'll have no other options migrate to another laptop!

eastbound: Beautiful, it’s nice, but the polished user experience was the ultimate argument.- Raising the lid of the laptop and the base wouldn’t stick and fall off on the desk,- A single-button click,- A Cmd+C to copy and Ctrl+C for the interruption 7 in the terminal,But now you have to configure that, yes, activate the right-click; yes, activate the three-finger click (wtf, 3 fingers); yes, activate the swipe-across-desktops on the magic mouse, all those items were selling points, so they should have studied the best behavior and implemented it by default on all deployments. But that requires studies, aesthetics, and a taste that only Steeve Jobs had, otherwise everything becomes an option. That’s right, I’m going to paraphrase Jobs’ argument against the 1990ies Microsoft:The problem with Apple is they have no taste.

ant6n: What I find confusing and unhelpful is how The Apple OS deals with windows. Say if you have 4 safari windows, 3 excel windows, 5 window word documents and a bunch of terminals spread across a bunch of desktops. To me, I have clearly conceptionalized different work streams into desktops.Apple doesn’t understand and respect that.Firstly, alt-tab doesn’t consider windows, it considers apps. So if you have multiple browser windows or word windows open, you can’t alt-tab between them. It’s totally confusing. So I install an app just to get the normal alt-tab behavior of other OSs, to alt-tab between windows (mine is called alt-tab, and it’s a bit buggy and slow, I think they all are)Next, Apple does not respect the multiple desktop boundary. If I click on the safari icon in the dock, it will switch to some seemingly random safari window in some other desktop. If I close any window, it will also run off to some other window of the same app in some other desktop (who came up with that behavior?) when I dismiss an outlook notification, it will run of to another desktop to look at outlook (actually I think this one is Microsoft’s fault, but Apple could probably do something about this one).The result is that while working, I have trouble staying on the desktop I’m working on, I constantly am getting sent off to some other random desktop, and have to find where I am and where I was.There must be a better, more productive way to manage windows and desktops.(Also what’s up with the autocorrect, I had to retype every instance of “I think” in this message, because it insists it should be “o think”)

jeroenhd: It's by design. This isn't a bug or a skipped test case.https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/310/?time=4...> Each element is designed with a curvature that sits neatly within the corner radius of its container, in this case the window itself. And this relationship goes both ways. In the new design system, windows now have a softer, more generous corner radius, which varies based on the style of window. Windows with toolbars now use a larger radius, which is designed to wrap concentrically around the glass toolbar elements, scaling to match the size of the toolbar. Titlebar-only windows retain a smaller corner radius, wrapping compactly around the window controls. These larger corners provide a softer feel and elegant concentricity to the window but they can also clip content that sits close to the edge of the window.

aucisson_masque: Yeah I found that surprising too and assumed it was a bug.I see this kind of trend with apple since big sur. It's not new but it's becoming more obvious with every release.

Reason077: There's also been rumours of a new high-end OLED MacBook ("Ultra"?) in the works, possibly this year.

afandian: Make it “on every corner” and we have a deal.

nnwright: Mac OS's UX design has been in free fall the last 5-10 years (ever since the "iOS-ify everything" zeitgeist took root). Sincerely hope that they one day revert back, because the current UX is just godawful for any usecase I can imagine.

Reason077: I really hope they roll back some of the more obnoxious and pointless aspects of "Liquid Glass" in macOS 27. And the super-rounded window corners are high up on my list. Looks childish, wastes screen space, causes so many little annoyances...

nashashmi: [delayed]

douglee650: Feels sloppy (is sloppy) but I think the idea is to prioritize OS unification for hardware reasons, and UX across product suite — devices can share data, apps, screens, everything.

marxisttemp: What is godawful about it? Tahoe is great. Spotlight shortcuts, LLM actions. “Design is how it works.”

Ultimatt: Because Spotlight now rarely finds your applications in search so you can't just quick launch anything.... from a launcher widget

hurfdurf: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47320534

marxisttemp: > Firstly, alt-tabI assume you mean cmd-tab.>doesn’t consider windows, it considers apps. So if you have multiple browser windows or word windows open, you can’t alt-tab between them. It’s totally confusing.You use cmd-tilde to switch between windows.>So I install an app just to get the normal alt-tab behavior of other OSs, to alt-tab between windows (mine is called alt-tab, and it’s a bit buggy and slow, I think they all are)You don’t need an app.>Next, Apple does not respect the multiple desktop boundary. If I click on the safari icon in the dock, it will switch to some seemingly random safari window in some other desktop. If I close any window, it will also run off to some other window of the same app in some other desktop (who came up with that behavior?) when I dismiss an outlook notification, it will run of to another desktop to look at outlook (actually I think this one is Microsoft’s fault, but Apple could probably do something about this one). The result is that while working, I have trouble staying on the desktop I’m working on, I constantly am getting sent off to some other random desktop, and have to find where I am and where I was. There must be a better, more productive way to manage windows and desktops.This is a configurable setting.>(Also what’s up with the autocorrect, I had to retype every instance of “I think” in this message, because it insists it should be “o think”)This is a configurable setting.

merlindru: > seemingly bright ideai disagree about that one.im not a UX expert by any means but my first impression at WWDC seeing liquid glass was "holy shit, they pulled that off? i know apple would never compromise on legibility, so... how? there are so many situations where this won't work, and they can't exactly control the content that the buttons are overlaid on top of"cue my confusion when it was exactly that: an obviously problematic idea implemented with all the obvious flaws showing upthey have largely fixed it now, half a year later, but the liquid glass isn't very liquid anymore. it's frosted. which is fine, but obviously not the original idea they were going forcontrasty backgrounds are always fundamentally incompatible with legibility

jacobsyc: don't know why this bothers me but apple is losing attention to detail

aucisson_masque: I wish too but they can't just back up, that would be a very bad sign for investors.

donatj: Containers with different contents look different? clutches-pearlsIn all seriousness I don't see the big deal. That seems like a reasonable design choice. Make nice rounded corners when content allows, but rectangle them up as needed?Honestly making different apps slightly more visually identifiable in a sea of sameness doesn't seem like a big deal.

asimovDev: I bought a 3k M3 Max mbp just a couple months away from the Tahoe and liquid glass announcement which I am a little miffed about, but it's still an awesome machine I enjoy using while it's on Sequoia. I am really hoping macOS 27 will be this decade's Snow Leopard

Ultimatt: I am mildly shocked after almost two decades of Mac use I never came across cmd+tilde thanks a lot!

merlindru: i hope you're wrong. they certainly have seemed to test the waters on many other fronts. the $99/yr notarization fee is now basically required as running unnotarized apps is made hard and scary enough to turn off probably 97% of average usersthey also briefly took away the ability to disable gatekeeper per terminal command (now back)next they wanna launch a touchscreen macbook, presumably this fall

marxisttemp: I haven’t had a single issue with this. I’m guessing many people had this issue immediately after upgrading while Spotlight was still re-indexing and are just running with it since it’s cool to hate Tahoe right now.

marxisttemp: Wow, you’re leaving a lot of great features like Spotlight shortcut calling, Spotlight clipboard history, and LLM shortcuts on the table because of a couple UI inconsistencies. “Design is how it works.”