Reduce Transparency Does Not Work in macOS Tahoe 26.1?

Some Mac users have discovered that the “Reduce Transparency” and “Increase Contrast” accessibility toggles no longer work completely after installing the macOS Tahoe 26.1 update, as transparency remains prominent throughout the interface.

Toggling the Accessibility switch on for ‘Reduce Transparency’ in MacOS Tahoe 26.1 might reduce the transparency in the menu bar and Control Center only, but transparency remains overtly visible throughout some aspects of the Liquid Glass visual appearance, including in some window title bars, sidebars, search bars, and elsewhere in the macOS Tahoe interface. Similarly, the “Increase Contrast” toggle will place dramatic contrasting borders around windows and visual elements, but the Liquid Glass interface remains transparent in many areas, like Finder and System Settings.

Unfortunately this means that using Reduce Transparency to address the legibility issues in MacOS Tahoe like overlapping text and weird blurry colors and shapes floating under the window titlebars no longer works. These legibility issues were originally relieved by using ‘Reduce Transparency’ in prior versions of MacOS Tahoe, but those visual issues can no longer be mitigated with that settings adjustment, making legibility issues worse for some users in macOS Tahoe 26.1.

Even with “Reduce Transparency” enabled, the transparency visual effects persist in Finder windows, System Settings, sidebars, and elsewhere, in macOS Tahoe 26.1.

Some users have also complained of the Dock being blurry, pixelated, transparent, or otherwise looking unusual in macOS Tahoe 26.1 as well.

Having excessive transparency despite using Reduce Transparency is almost certainly a bug and not intended behavior, but if you find macOS Tahoe to be visually challenging and you have relied on the Accessibility “Reduce Transparency” setting to make it tolerable for you, you’ll likely want to be aware of this new issue.

In testing, I can reproduce the ineffective Reduce Transparency bug in both dark and light mode, after system restarts, and toggling the setting off and on (along with other settings), as you can see in the various screenshots in this article. This has been replicated directly on multiple Macs, as well as virtual machines running macOS Tahoe 26.1.

Hopefully a future macOS Tahoe system software update resolves this problem quickly, as visual complaints and accessibility difficulties with Liquid Glass have been one of the top concerns of Mac users who have either installed macOS Tahoe or are avoiding it for those particular reasons.

If anyone has found a workaround, solution, or related issue with macOS Tahoe 26.1, with Accessibility, transparency, and similar settings, share it with us in the comments below.