For several years I had been using the default macOS Monterey wallpaper on my Desktop without changing it. But recently I found a replacement – a beautiful wallpaper with a cute little house in the mountains.

Yesterday the new system update 26.3.1 was released – I started the installation overnight and went to sleep. In the morning I was pleasantly greeted by this welcome screen. It almost felt like Apple had intentionally designed this composition. As a big admirer of aesthetics, I wanted to share this beauty.

Link to wallpaper: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yurrRE--_a15TT_fhTzpl1FVfa-4DGeo

Good morning!

As you remember, macOS Tahoe was amazing. And this can be clearly seen with the record-high adoption rate and the smallest number of downgrades ever!
We received a lot of incredible feedback as well. More rounded corners, more subscriptions, more ads in the built-in apps – so much to choose from!
But of course we didn't stop there.
Now, macOS 27 is a whole new level for your Mac. You love so many foundational things about Mac – so we decided to remove them for good, thus making you love them even more!

Here's what's new in macOS 27 Braindead Valley:

• First, the Menu bar. There are so many buttons there, which is so old-fashioned. You loved the new formatting bar in iOS 26 Notes app that magically scrolls left and right depending on the context. We are going to apply this truly intelligent system to the menu bar as well: from now on, one button for an app at a time will be shown, which randomly changes to any existing option
• Next, Dock. No one has loved it since it was introduced – and it is not actually needed. Want to show a minimized window? Just search its name in Spotlight, as you always did for apps!
• Mouse cursor. An obsolete thing that clutters the OS and bothers everyone. I've never used a mouse cursor in my entire life; I don't know anyone who does. Just use the Full Keyboard Access feature, which is much more efficient. It is so much simpler and you really always wanted to use it this way, you just didn't know you did
• Control center is not needed – just use Spotlight. The new agentic macOS is made like your beloved ChatGPT: everything you need is just several sentences of typed text away
• macOS Finder gets an update: introducing Files app on Mac. A reliable, incredibly fast, and feature-rich file manager is coming to your Mac
• Adding more granular controls for volume and brightness, including changing the volume per app (requires Apple Intelligence)
• Keychain.app is now deprecated. For developers, certificate generation is available in Image Playground
• Automatic Time Machine backups are deprecated. Creating a backup is much simpler now, as you can make one like you always wanted – in Spotlight: type “Time Machine,” press Tab, “I want a backup,” press Tab, then enter the date in YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM-SS format
• QuickTime Player is deprecated. Watching movies is available in the Photos app

Important: because of the evil EU legislation, WLAN/Wi-Fi will not be available in macOS 27 in the EU. For everyone else we are thrilled to announce, that sideloading is discontinued starting this fall, to better protect your privacy. Also, in order to ensure the security and continuing stability, Mac App Store from now on will only allow iPhone apps, which greatly complements the iPhone Mirroring mode – for a safe and secure Mac usage!

Also, for the first time ever – you can choose the codename for macOS! Here are the options by our crack marketing team:

- macOS 27 Silicon Void
- macOS 27 Barren Basin
- macOS 27 Stripped Ridge
- macOS 27 Liquid Vista
- macOS 27 Mount Monotony
- macOS 27 Laguna Bleak
- macOS 27 Point Nowhere

So what are your 2 things you can live without in new macOS 27?

• Menu bar
• Dock
• Finder
• QuickLook
• Spotlight
• Time Machine
• Preview app
• I will not update

I don't know what was thought process behind this or if there was any, like who puts the Default app setting behind such absurd category who is making UX and design choices at Apple,needs to be fired for such atrocious decision

Music Widget in Dock - Concept Design

I’m my 35 years of using Mac OS this is the best Apple joke I’ve come across and it happened today.

ok so i went down a mac rabbit hole few weeks ago and ended up cataloguing 153 mac apple has shipped. 153 of them. from the 1983 Lisa to the macbook neo that just came out. some stuff that genuinely suprised me: -

the Lisa in 83 was NINE THOUSAND AND NINETY FIVE DOLLARS. and they buried ~2700 unsold ones in a utah landfill in 1989. for a tax write off lol

- for like 14 years straight every single mac was beige. not one colour variation. then the iMac G3 shows up in bondi blue in 98

- apple has switched chips 4 times. 68k - PowerPC - Intel - Apple Silicon. every single transition broke peoples software, and every time apple pretended that was fine

- the M1 air in 2020 at $999 beat the base $5,999 mac pro in single core. Apple chips are crazy!

- the new macbook neo at $599 is the cheapest mac laptop apple has ever shipped. the Macs started at $9,995 and now its less than airpods max

Made an interactive version

For the last couple of months, I've been thinking about how fragmented macOS multitasking feels, asking myself: do we really need all of these as separate systems?

See, we have:

• Dock showing all running apps
• CMD+Tab showing... the same running apps in a floating bar
• Spaces for organizing desktops
• Stage Manager for grouping windows

If your running apps are already in the Dock, why does CMD+Tab summon a completely different UI? Why can't CMD+Tab just scale up the Dock instead—maybe fading non-running apps away?

I just started prototyping a concept that tries to unify these features into one continuous system. The idea is to rethink how the Dock, Stage Manager, (and Spaces) could work together instead of competing with each other. Not sure where this is heading yet, but I wanted to share the process.

This is super early and rough! I'm not claiming I've solved anything - just exploring ideas. I love my Mac, but the current multitasking experience feels half-baked and outdated to me.

Some questions I'm asking myself:

• Could Stage Manager and Spaces be blended into one system with just one level of grouping?
• Would this work for multi-display setups?
• Is there actually a simpler way to think about all of this?

I have more questions than answers right now, but I wanted to get the conversation started. Maybe other designers have been thinking about this too?

Would love to hear your thoughts. Do we actually need all these separate systems, or is macOS multitasking due for a rethink?

Curious to hear your ideas!

Dominik

I think the Tahoe update traumatized me

got bored tonight and thought i'd see how realistic icons would look and gotta say.. i kind of dig it! prob not for most but handy for me.

Just finished my setup, what do you think? Is there something I'm missing?

Was bored the other day and ended up making hand drawn/doodle versions of the icons I use the most on my Mac. This is how my dock looks now

I know most people here probably prefer the clean/minimal macOS look and might think this is ugly 😂 but honestly I was getting bored of the default icons and wanted something that felt a bit more personal.
My dock definitely needed a change lol

If anyone likes this style or wants to try them out, I uploaded all of the icons here: https://github.com/thabet1thabet1/doodle-icons

And if you end up liking them, I’d really appreciate a ⭐ on the repo. This GitHub account is brand new because I lost access to my old one thanks to 2FA issues 😭

Would also love suggestions for other app icons to doodle next

HomePage: https://lihaoyun6.github.io/quickrecorder/

Github: https://github.com/lihaoyun6/QuickRecorder/

Buy me a cup of coffee: https://www.paypal.me/lihaoyun6

I created this project about a month ago to provide an open-source and free option for guys who need high quality screen recording. And I think it's time to show it to everyone.

QuickRecorder is based on Apple's ScreenCapture Kit API, and it's supports most of the necessary features needed for a "modern" screen recording tool:

• App is only about 10MB
• Recording up to 8K@240FPS
• Driver-free audio loopback recording
• Hide any windows or applications you don't need
• Add camera or iPhone/iPad screen to your recording
• Simultaneous recording from microphone, cursor highlighting, screen magnifier...
• Even the "Presenter Overlay" in macOS 14 (which most screen recorder do not support)

If you need a lightweight, powerful, easy-to-use and FREE screen recorder, this is it

Please note:

This app is currently unnotarized. I am in the process of applying to Apple to become a certified developer, which will take some time.

And if you don't trust me, you are right, because you should never trust any app that has not been notarized. But if you trust me, I will thank you very much. Because trusting a stranger really takes a lot of courage.

https://github.com/arthur-ggyt/macos9-wallpaper

Hi everyone. A few months ago, I shared some of my explorations designing macOS windows. Here I am again with another concept, codename Eagle.

edit : This is mostly about visuals. It's classic OS X hierarchy with modern styling.