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macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

lapcatsoftware.com

Discussion

postalcoder•about 5 hours ago

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.

ulbu•about 4 hours ago

read somewhere that maybe they’re preparing for OLED screens

franciscop•about 5 hours ago

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.

satGuess•about 4 hours ago

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.

unselect5917•about 5 hours ago

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."

MaxikCZ•about 4 hours ago

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.

sgt•about 4 hours ago

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

robthebrew•3 days ago

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

etchalon•about 5 hours ago

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.

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nikolay•4 days ago

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

mulmen•about 5 hours ago

Because they did it on purpose to demonstrate their utter contempt for their users and to show us how wrong we are.

pjmlp•about 5 hours ago

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

jiehong•about 4 hours ago

Yep, it’s just ugly IMO

steve_adams_86•about 4 hours ago

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.

iknowstuff•about 4 hours ago

Did the radius need changing

gattilorenz•about 4 hours ago

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? :)

TheFuzzball•about 5 hours ago

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

riffraff•about 5 hours ago

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.

galad87•about 5 hours ago

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.

pjmlp•about 5 hours ago

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•about 5 hours ago

> they even explained it at WWDC

Did they explain the reasoning?

littlecranky67•about 4 hours ago

Which one?

Zafira•about 4 hours ago

> 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…

galad87•about 4 hours ago

To align the window corner radius to the window close/minimize/resize buttons distance from the edge of the window.

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conductr•about 4 hours ago

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

nikolay•about 4 hours ago

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

Previous: The myth and reality of Mac OS X Snow Leopard revisited
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Jeff Johnson (My apps, PayPal.Me, Mastodon)

March 4 2026

I’m sometimes late to notice new and terrible things about macOS 26 Tahoe, because I use it only for testing, on a secondary Mac. My main Mac remains on Sequoia, as enforced by Little Snitch. I was of course aware that app windows on Tahoe have exaggerated corner radiuses, but I was unaware until now that the window corner radius on Tahoe is not uniform: different windows can have different corner radiuses!

Below is a TextEdit window on Tahoe.

TextEdit window in front of Calculator window

And below is a Calculator window in front of the TextEdit window. Notice the corners of the TextEdit window sticking out!

Calculator window in front of TextEdit window

What accounts for the difference? A toolbar in the window.

In a new Mac app Xcode project, the main window has a less exaggerated corner radius by default, like TextEdit.

window without toolbar

When I add a toolbar to the window, the corner radius automatically becomes more exaggerated, like Calculator.

window with toolbar

That’s it. Seriously.

Apparently the corner radius also changes on Tahoe for some other window elements, such as a sidebar.

If this isn’t the stupidest user interface “feature” ever invented, I don’t know what is. The Mac used to be famous for consistency; now it’s becoming infamous for inconsistency.

By the way, Tahoe’s UI changes are perplexing not only for Apple users but also for Apple engineers. Here’s a bug fix from the open source WebKit browser engine powering Safari: [macOS] Scroll bars of root scroller may be cutoff due to corner radii of window.

Jeff Johnson (My apps, PayPal.Me, Mastodon)

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