When Apple released macOS 26 Tahoe I published an article exploring how you can configure its redesigned interface, using its additional variations to appearance modes and its new Liquid Glass effects. When Tahoe 26.1 was released a couple of days ago, it changed those by adding a new control for those Liquid Glass visual effects. This article shows how that might change your options.

There are now four sets of controls:

• Appearance mode, Light or Dark, in Appearance settings;
• Liquid Glass setting, Clear or Tinted, in Appearance settings;
• Display variations to Reduce transparency or Increase contrast, in Accessibility settings;
• Icon & widget style, in Appearance settings.

Apple’s descriptions of the two states for Liquid Glass read:

• “Clear is more transparent, revealing the content beneath.”
• “Tinted increases opacity and adds more contrast.”

Those terms indicate an overlap with Accessibility settings. However, if either of the Accessibility settings is enabled, then the Liquid Glass setting is unavailable. I also presume that the word tinted here refers to the faint colouration that might be seen in what would otherwise be a transparent view, rather than any more generalised addition of colour.

Light mode

There are four overall variations of light mode, depending on Liquid Glass and Accessibility settings.

The starting point and default is in light mode, Liquid Glass clear, without Accessibility, and icon & widget style set to Default. Note the effects of transparency on the menu bar, widgets, the Liquid Glass effect in the left side of the Dock, and the upper row of icons in the Finder window. If you like those, you don’t have to change any settings.

This is the same, but with Liquid Glass set to Tinted. I’m unable to see any difference between those settings in this example.

This is light mode with Reduce transparency enabled in Accessibility settings. This disables all Liquid Glass effects and restores the traditional menu bar and Dock. The effect on Desktop widgets is perhaps less beneficial.

In light mode with Increase contrast (automatically coupled with Reduce transparency) enabled, the predominant effect is the outlining of controls within each window, rather than any change in contrast. Colours used by the system, such as the traffic light controls at the top left of each window, and those in themes, are darker, but those elsewhere, as in icons, aren’t changed. The effect here is to make controls clearer rather than actually changing contrast.

Dark mode

Without changing Accessibility and leaving Icon & widget style set to Default, and Liquid Glass set to Clear, dark mode shows transparency and Liquid Glass effects as you expect. These are again most visible in the menu bar, Dock, and the upper row of icons in the Finder window.

This is the same, but with Liquid Glass set to Tinted. Two most obvious differences are seen in the back-forward controls by the title of the Appearance settings, which oddly appears white, and the widgets, which are much darker. There are some inconsistent differences in the toolbar of the Finder and Tips windows, but they are more subtle.

With Reduce transparency enabled in Accessibility settings those transparency and Liquid Glass effects are removed.

Enabling Increase contrast outlines controls clearly, but any changes in system colours are more variable than in light mode.

Icon & widget style

This is new to Tahoe and only affects the rendering of icons and widgets. Liquid Glass settings don’t appear to have any effect on these.

Using light mode without any Accessibility changes, the Default setting for Icon & widget style is the baseline, showing icons in their ‘normal’ state.

Dark icon settings in light mode contrasts more but their readability may suffer.

When Icon & widget style is set to Clear, most are decolourised, making them significantly harder to read, and impossible to distinguish in the sidebar of System Settings.

The final option is for Icon & widget style to be Tinted (no relation to the Liquid Glass setting Tinted), where they’re rendered in monochrome using a colour of your choice, selected from the popup menu below. On iPhones and other devices that are available in several case colours, some have decided to set tinting to match the case, something you might like to try with an Apple silicon iMac, for example.

However, be careful in both Clear and Tinted styles, as it’s easy to end up making many icons unreadable and almost indistinguishable, here by setting the last of those to Graphite colour. This is one of the obvious drawbacks in Tahoe’s flexibility, in that many combinations of appearance mode, Accessibility settings and icon and widget style degrade its human interface rather than enhancing it. At least you now know what not to try, and how to return it to its defaults.

Summary of controls

• Appearance mode, Light or Dark, in Appearance settings;
• Liquid Glass, Clear or Tinted, in Appearance settings;
• Display variations to Reduce transparency or Increase contrast, in Accessibility settings, but those automatically override Liquid Glass settings;
• Icon & widget styles, in Appearance settings, with Icon, widget & folder colour when appropriate.