How to Reduce Liquid Glass on macOS Tahoe
The Liquid Glass interface appearance is a fairly significant change in macOS Tahoe, bringing a lot of transparency, translucency, and shininess to the Mac interface appearance. While some users enjoy the new look, other Mac users may find it distracting, cumbersome, or difficult to read and interact with, and perhaps even conducive to causing eye strain. If you’re in the latter camp you might be wanting to disable the Liquid Glass user interface and revert back to the prior look of MacOS. While you can’t change back to the old look entirely, you can mostly disable Liquid Glass on macOS Tahoe with a few simple adjustments that reduce the look considerably.
How to Turn Off Liquid Glass on macOS Tahoe, Mostly
We’re going to focus on making two specific tweaks to the macOS Tahoe interface to dramatically reduce the Liquid Glass interface appearance. First we’ll be turning off the transparency effects, and second we’ll be using the traditional icons rather than the Clear or Tinted choices.
- Open “System Settings” from the ο£Ώ Apple menu and go to “Accessibility”
- Go to “Display” and toggle the switch for “Reduce Transparency” to the ON position
- Next go to System Settings > Appearance and under “Icons & Widgets” choose ‘Default’
- The macOS Tahoe interface will now more closely resemble prior MacOS versions, with much less transparency throughout the operating system, greater contrast and legibility, and without colored or clear icons
While these are visual changes, if you feel like performance has been off since updating to macOS Tahoe then you might even notice a perceptual speed boost by turning off the transparency effects, since your Mac will be using fewer system resources to draw all the fancy eye candy on screen.
Optional: Try “Increase Contrast” to Dramatically Change the macOS Tahoe UI
If the above tweaks aren’t enough and you still see too many shadows, transparencies, translucencies, and weird color situations with poor contrast, another optional tweak is Increase Contrast. Try the “Increase Contrast” setting within System Settings > Accessibility > Display > to even further reduce the look of Liquid Glass. But, as you’ll see, this setting is fairly dramatic, and it can make macOS look so unusual and kind of like a juvenile line drawing, that many Mac users won’t want to use that setting at all. Ideally the “Increase Contrast” setting would be an adjustable sliding scale that you could increase or decrease the intensity of, but that could be wishful thinking.
This article focuses on toning down and attempting to disable Liquid Glass on macOS Tahoe, but of course Liquid Glass is also on every other OS 26 release. If you find yourself also disliking Liquid Glass on iPhone and iPad, some similar tips can help that on those devices, though after continual usage it has grown on some people after an initial adjustment period.
It’s also worth pointing out that Apple is actively refining the Liquid Glass interface appearance in current beta versions of system software, so it’s plausible and even likely that there will be some additional changes made to Liquid Glass in future system software updates for MacOS, iOS, and iPadOS. A fair number of people are holding off on updating to MacOS Tahoe as they wait for these future updates, which is a reasonable choice if you’re happy with where your Mac is at with Sonoma or Sequoia, or you’re waiting for any number of other considerations before jumping ahead into the waters of Tahoe.
Do you have any thoughts about the macOS Tahoe Liquid Glass interface appearance, and are you embracing it as it is with all of the transparency and translucency, or have you made adjustments like those suggested here? Have you found other tweaks or adjustments that helped improve your Liquid Glass experience in macOS Tahoe? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
