MacOS’ icons keep getting worse every time Apple touches them

With macOS 26, Apple has announced a dramatically new look to their UI: Liquid Glass. Solid material icon elements give way to softer, shinier, glassier icons. The rounded rectangle became slightly more rounded, and Apple eliminated the ability for icon elements to extend beyond the icon rectangle (as seen in the current icons for GarageBand, Photo Booth, Dictionary, etc.).

With this release being one of the most dramatic visual overhauls of macOS’s design, I wanted to begin a collection chronicling the evolution of the system icons over the years. I’ve been rolling these out on social media over the past week and will continue to add to and update this collection slowly over the summer. Enjoy!
↫ BasicAppleGuy

Every single one of these icons is getting progressively worse with almost every design change. They go from beautifully crafted, easily readable and supremely distinguishable icons to generic, repetitive blobs of colour, void of any personality, artistry, or usability considerations. Also, Apple’s new icon design language makes the icons look fuzzy, like they’re not being rendered properly. It’s very unnerving.

The one exception is probably the generic folder icon, which looks fine in all of its incarnations. Then there’s the classic Platinum, pixelated version from Mac OS 9 and earlier, which, together with icons from Windows and BeOS from the same time period, are a whole different style that I don’t think most people would accept anymore these days, but that I absolutely adore.

Mostly I’m just sad that the craft of making exquisite icons for operating systems is dying, replaced by what almost look like “AI” generated blobs of indeterminate meaning, that rely more on preexisting knowledge of the operating system and its applications in question than on being recognisable and decipherable by anyone. I truly hope Windows and the various open source desktops don’t follow in Apple’s footsteps here.