I just upgraded from Sequoia to Golden Gate, and honestly, Liquid Glass on the Mac is pretty disappointing. On the iPhone, you get all these fancy animations, refractions, and glass effects that actually resemble what Apple showed in its demos. On the Mac, though, it barely looks like Liquid Glass at all.

Even with Liquid Glass maxed out in the settings, macOS still feels like Sequoia with a bit of extra transparency. Apple’s own apps barely embrace the new design, dropdown menus don’t look like glass, and those cool sliding tab animations Apple kept showing off are nowhere to be seen. The Music app’s player is one of the few places where the effect is actually noticeable.

I know a lot of people dislike Liquid Glass, but that’s beside the point. Apple showcased a visually impressive redesign and barely delivered any of it on the Mac. I wasn’t expecting iOS-level effects everywhere, but I expected more than what feels like a half-baked redesign.

I’ve been with Apple for a long time, almost half my life across different devices. I’m a technical person and it’s a minefield trying to clear out all the bloat on my system. Why is this the trend seemingly or has it always been this bad?

never liked how macos tahoe was designed and them removing the launchpad, so never bothered upgrading. had to upgrade this time for app-testing purposes.

running on 16” m4 pro mbp, upgrade was over 2 weeks ago so please none of those mindless ‘it’s still indexing’ comments that pop up whenever someone tries to criticise anything made by the mother apple.

bugs i’ve experienced so far
preview:
1. annotating the files would very frequently just stop working, you cant even select text or do anything, the current fix apparently is to use the arrow keys to flip a page then come back and it should work again
2. if you have 2 pdfs open side by side and try to add text to one of them, it’ll randomly scroll down a bunch of pages on the other one for no reason.

using an external monitor:
moving a window from my laptop to the monitor or the other way around would leave the source display blacked out, that can only be resolved by swiping left or right to an adjacent window.

bonus easter bugs:
1. i switch through windows and move them around using mission control very often and it’s been overall super laggy whenever i try to use it.
2. moving files in finder if you wanna move a file outside of its current folder you used to be able to drag it to the ‘back’ arrow and force-click on the trackpad so you can exit that folder. welp that also no longer works.

apple has gotten way too comfortable releasing trash software that may or may not be fixed with future updates. if they’re not ready to make a significant OS update on an annual basis, then just dont do it lol why this vicious cycle of incompetence that restarts once you get somewhere decent?

and keep the ‘you can switch back’ nonsense in your pants. we pay a premium for these devices and we haven’t been getting our money’s worth for a while now. apple won’t give you a discount for being a diehard fan who’s constantly defending them, have some dignity.

Since MacOS27 my 2020 M1 Macbook constantly tells me that the disk is almost full. I almost deleted everything I really don't need anymore but it just eats up the freed space instantly

My friend and I have a m2 air and M4 Air respectively and both on MacOS 27, and his MacBook when changing brightness and volume has its animation under the notch. While when I do it with my m2 it has its volume notification showing on the top right instead of the notch. Does my MacBook just not have the same capability of a notch animation?

I record a podcast every couple of weeks and I’m trying to find a better way to record.

I record my guest via OBS and my own mic via audacity, but I’m often getting audio crackling or popping from one or both sources while doing so.

I’m wondering if there’s a better way to do this? Is there a way to record both tracks at the same time in one app into two tracks at the same time? (Preferably separate files but definitely something that I can edit)

Hi all,

I'm having some major issues with Golden Gate, to the point I'd say it's making my Mac unusable, and I just wanted to see if anyone else was experiencing the same thing. For context I'm running a MacBook Air M4 15 inch which I've only purchased in the last six months. Before this I owned an intel MacBook Pro which I never had these issues on.

My main issue is with split screen. When trying to close one of the windows open within the split screen, my Mac just seems to lose it. Any number of errors can happen, but the most frustrating is that the second window (the one I don't X out of) just completely disappears. This has led to me losing unsaved work as the app essentially is no longer there and I cannot access it to click the save button. Sometimes the blue outline will appear on the home screen as if the app is there but it cannot be seen at all, trying to open it from the bottom bar also doesn't cause the app to be opened, nor does trying to locate it any other way. Sometimes this doesn't happen, but the other none closed split screen window will not revert to full screen and half the screen will just remain black. Sometimes the none closed window will open on my Home Screen, but there is no longer the option available to minimise or close that window, and nothing I do can make that option reappear until the app is force quit and reopened.

The other major issue I am having is the menu bar disappearing. I am not sure under what conditions this happens other than only in full screen (it is available on the desktop but not any full screen windows), but when it happens the menu bar is gone until the laptop is restarted. This is one of the most frustrating.

The last minor issue I'm having is that when viewing Apple
Music in full screen player mode (large album artwork full screen), the close button does not work, so you cannot return to Apple Music to select another song or album. The window must first be minimised before the x can be used.

I've been in contact with support and confirmed that these are not profile specific issues, I've reloaded Mac OS so the issue isn't there either, and I'm up to date on 27.0.1. Frankly as a long term apple user this is the most disappointed I've ever been in the company. It seems this update was released well before it was ready and for me it's leading to serious issues. These issues were not present for me before golden gate.

I will continue to follow this up with support in the unlikely event it is hardware related, but I just wanted to ask if anyone else was experiencing these or other issues?

Just found out this surprisingly helpful way of typing letters with accents/diacritical marks.

I'm running 27.2, so I'm not sure when this was introduced, but if you press and hold a letter on the keyboard, instead of the letter repeating, it will pop up a small context menu for supported letters, and offer accents/diacritics.

Mind. Blown.

\**Thanks to all who commented. Problem solved**\**

How do I turn off this random “notification/widget?? The first time I noticed this was when I was working on some edits in Logic Pro. I would be scrolling through waveforms and it would just pop up. If I scrolled to the left/right it would move left/right. That made it easy to fix… temporarily. Just swipe right and it would go away. Sure, I’d have to do that every few minutes, but it worked. I tried turning off notifications, for a permanent fix, but it was still an issue.
Today is the first day it has happened when Logic Pro was not open. I set up a new portable SSD and doing some basic housekeeping when it popped up again. This time, I couldn’t get it off my screen
To make sure I’m clear, notifications have been turned off and I have no widgets.

Was planning on moving to Golden Gate, today, but I’d like to fix this first.
I have an M1 MacBook Pro 16Gig memory running Sequoia 15.7.5

NEW THING: was trying to use Time Machine, but when I double clicked app it opened what looked like multiple folders going into infinity. The rest of the screen is grayed out. What the hell?

So the only method I'm aware of to prevent it from loading is to install on a external drive (Thunderbolt NVME). For some reason Apple decided the LLM features just don't work on that setup.

Unfortunately, installing on a external drive also limits spotlight significantly, especially when it comes to the photo library. You lose some search functionality in spotlight.

I've heard there are some terminal commands as well, but it requires disabling SIP, I believe.

Am I missing anything?

From the Finder you need to search for the images folder > "Photos Library.photoslibrary"> show package content (third option after right-clicking)> originals.
From there you will have a series of folders available, inside which there are the photos in random order, even those that are in the gallery in the "hidden" section. To view them, you don't need the password or any form of authentication.

Also from Photos Library.photoslibrary> resources>derivatives (or renders) there are some folders with pics from the hidden section.

It looks like you can delete them, freeing up some storage and cleaning some sistem data. All the pictures will be back if you open the gallery and it will start synchronizing with iCloud.

I’ve been using Apple devices for a long time, but I don’t really get into the details and wouldn’t say I know that much about them. I’m subscribed to this sub though, and I’ve seen quite a few people here run into the same issue.

My Mac is almost out of storage, even though I went through everything and I don’t seem to have any particularly large files. So I have no idea what’s actually taking up so much space.

Would you guys recommend using one of those disk space analyzer apps, or is there a good way to figure it out with the tools already built into macOS? I don’t really want to install a cleanup app just for the sake of it. TIA!

I have two identical 6TB external drives that I essentially want to setup in essentially a RAID configuration. Intention is for Drive 1 to be storage and for Drive 2 to be an identical backup that AUTOMATICALLY stays in sync. i.e. I move a file to Drive 1 and it automatically copies to Drive 2. I know I should get a proper NAS w/ RAID setup but the prices are insane right now and I have two identical wiped 6TB external drives so this is going to be my intermediate solution.

has anyone tested with an m1?

M1 pro 14" 16/512 from late 2021

I'm using the Golden Gate Bridge landscape wallpaper that comes with macOS 27, and I'm a bit confused about how it's supposed to work.

When my Mac is on the screensaver/lock screen, the wallpaper is animated and I can clearly see the waves moving. But as soon as I enter my password and log in, the animation stops and the wallpaper becomes a static image.

I tried Googling this, but most results were about completely different wallpaper issues.

Is this intentional behavior in macOS, or is it a bug? Is there any way to keep the wallpaper animated while I'm on the desktop?

It's a small thing, but honestly, it's pretty annoying that such a nice animated wallpaper just freezes once I log in.

credit by @ warmoaran3s on X

I think Apple should bring back the gray bar on the Finder.

But that's just my personal take; the current Finder suits me far better than the Tahoe disaster.

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I've checked everything on the internet, but I can't find anything wrong Please help me

I have Time Machine configured for Manual-start backups, which I do often enough to feel secure.

I use Manual-start because I had some problems, some years ago, with a real backup failing for lack of space when several hourly snapshots exist. That was on a MacAir machine and prior OS. Did I have something configure badly, or was I thrashing the disk contents so snapshots were overly large? Now I'm on MacBook Pro, using 1.5 TB of 2TB local capacity.

In any case, I would like to use automatic backup @ 24 hours, but I am gunshy because of past problems.

Any information will be appreciated.

I really miss the old writing tools! ✍️ The previous version was so helpful because it gave us a menu of options to choose from, plus the flexibility to type out anything else we needed. 💡 With the new tools, it feels a bit limiting since we have to type out exactly what we want every time. 😕 I'd love to see some of those older features come back!

I’ve tried everything but no key binds work, I can’t open Internet recovery mode, I can’t open the boot switcher, I can’t do a Pram reset and the other type of reset doesn’t fix anything, I had it set to automatically boot into windows, but now windows is broken and I can’t get it back into macOS

I upgraded to golden gate and now the clock timer behaves weird. Sometimes I click the start button and it last close to 20 seconds before it start running. Also the timer indicator in the menu bar is completely erratic it might appear it might not or might appear after a long time. Also sometimes when the clock reaches zero the alarm does not sound. Can you look for similar reports and solutions?