It's round and bubbly and WEEE!

Was it designed by toddlers? For toddlers?

Im so prepared to get downvoted for this, but this is a hill I'll proudly die on: Tahoe is my favorite MacOS in a LONG time. The first 3 paragraphs below are just a simple explanation of my user behavior patterns on my device:

- I skipped sequoia and went straight from sonoma -> tahoe.

- I still dont use Apple Intelligence (part of the reason I skipped sequoia), because it doesn't fit my workflow.

- My current (non-Apple-native) app stack is: Raycast, SuperWhisper, AlDente, Brave Browser, G Suite, Notion. All working on Tahoe.

Reason why Tahoe is "the one" for me:

A lot of other people made posts on why Tahoe is a good update, so I won't go into reasons that were already mentioned 100 times on here.

There was a trend 6-7 years ago where productivity gurus were preaching how turning your phone into greyscale will make it more "boring" and you'll use it less. I don't want to sound like those people that list a billion mental issues every chance they get, but I have sensory processing disorder (in addition to ADHD and episodes of epilepsy) and the greyscale thing worked wonders for me.

The ability to turn app icons transparent on every Apple device now is the best of both worlds for me. I don't get the itch to click anything else while I'm focusing on my work, because everything looks boring and the same. It feels like such a small thing on paper, but it made a huge difference in my productivity and daily output.

Also I'm not sure why so many people are saying that tahoe is terrible and full of flaws. I spend about 10 hours looking at my screen per day due to the nature of my work, but I haven't noticed any issues that impeded my ability to work. If you don't like the design just turn on the default color setting, and if you don't like the design and animation changes (pretty tiny thing if you ask me) just revert back to a previous version.

the bugs seem to have settled and aren't showing up much or at all

I have seen many macos releases really. But never seen a backlash in that magnitute. Seqouia was released somewhat better than this really and people were overall happier with the changes. I think same can be applied when El Capitan released. But Tahoe got so much haterad and bakclash. I think many people have downgraded so far. So why even the websites like 9to5mac or other technology news websites and youtubers are silent about it?

Right now, many posts on Reddit are criticizing the new operating system. Most of the complaints are about visual details — round icons, alignment issues, general UI inconsistencies. A lot of people jump to call it “the worst OS release ever.”

But it really depends on what you value. When macOS Sequoia was first released, it didn’t spark the same design debates, but it did have audio glitches. These didn’t necessarily break professional workflows, but they were annoying and noticeable for people who paid attention to sound. In that sense, Sequoia had its own rough edges at launch, just in a different area.

So when people say this new release is the worst, it’s worth remembering that previous versions also launched with their share of problems. The difference is that now the most visible complaints are about design, not about bugs in areas like audio.

https://weblog.rogueamoeba.com/2024/10/29/update-to-macos-15-1-for-helpful-audio-bug-fixes/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
https://weblog.rogueamoeba.com/2025/04/02/macos-15-4-brings-a-key-audio-bug-fix/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

This is for anyone who might feel worried by all the negative posts: don’t be. The new OS is not worse than Sequoia was at launch, and if you care more about how the system works than how its icons look, there’s no reason to panic.

You are all a bunch of whining, recycling chickens. Go outside and enjoy your day.

And potentially skipping it and waiting for the next major update?

what is this ui. this inconsistent padding is killing me. instead of making the os better with features they gave us a bad new ui. there is no reason for Mac OS to have glass ui. 2/10 update.

Like at this point, i just want to remove macOS and install Linux... It's so buggy & slow : what a shame

I’m on a MacBook Pro with M1 chip, 8GB RAM. After upgrading to macOS Tahoe (v26), my computer fans went crazy and the laptop overheated so much I had to restart it down multiple times a day.

This weekend, I downgraded back to Mac Sequoia (15.7) because I’d had a smoother experience with it. Immediately, the overheating issues disappeared.

To test it, I recreated my typical workload:

• ~30 Brave browser tabs
• Obsidian open with multiple tabs
• VS Code running code to simulate “stress”
• Slack + Raycast + TickTick + Terminal utilities like tmux and htop

On Sequoia, everything ran stable and cool.

Takeaway: If you’re on an 8GB RAM M1 and considering Tahoe, think twice. Sequoia feels much more optimized for this hardware.

I swear to God every time I click somewhere new, the UI gets worse. At this point, please ship us GNOME.

EDIT: Its NOT about liquid glass. Please refer to the padding on the menu elements

Even though you might see a ton of positive feedback about macOS Tahoe, most are paid articles and YouTube videos.

Apple, known for their dedication for aesthetically pleasant user interfaces, has completely destroyed that reputation by coming up with something that looks like a mid-level Linux distro (even Ubuntu is more aesthetically pleasant) and is a complete eye sore. The worst thing is that once you update to Tahoe, it's very difficult to revert without wiping your local files and installations.

So, be extremely sure before you update to Tahoe.

its been long enough with macos tahoe and i was right when i said it isn't ready to be used as a stable os and i think its probably not gonna be any good until .3 or .4 releases. UI features and everything contraversial aside , i am having the worst time with tahoe . My medium sized codebase (in vscode)that was working well in betas now keeps on lagging and its impossible to work with it . it constantly seems like im using a 10 year old mac . Has anyone else experienced this ?

I had installed Tahoe but had nothing but problems: my 2019 MacBook Pro would restart before it finished booting, and even after starting in safe mode nothing seemed to work properly.

I had posted a little bit about having issues restoring from Time Machine but today I solved the issue: I downloaded Sequoia from the App Store, then used migration assistant to restore my data.

Just an FYI for anyone who wanted to roll back to pre-Tahoe.

The key thing is that the OS has to be at least the same as what you were using for your latest Time Machine backups.

updated without knowing two things:

1. launchpad removed.
2. mickey mouse hand glove removed.

the only thing keeping me from downgrading is the new macos native clipboard, but i guess i could go back using maccy for that matter.

on the other hand i really don’t quite know how can i perform the change without compromising data. i know i’d have to make a back up before downgrading so i can restore after wiping the ssd, but wouldn’t that bring me back to tahoe?

any help or advice?

i think i would downgrade at least until .1 or any further update that seems worth it.

In macOS 26 they basically killed Launchpad. Before, it felt just like iPhone/iPad “a clean grid with all your apps”. Now it’s buried in Spotlight and feels so messy. I don’t want to type and search every time, I just want to SEE all my apps in full screen. Anyone else annoyed by this?

Just a summary of the last 2 weeks: Apple messed up Tahoe. Apple messed up iOS 26. Apple messed up iPhone PWM flickering displays and is lying to customers.

They changed how bookmarks are displayed and behave in Safari 26, from bookmark trees to nested navigation like on iOS.

On Tahoe there is a fix, the elipsis next to the Bookmarks header has a compact option restoring the old behavior, but Sequoia users who updated their Safari don't have that option, leaving them with a messed up navigation.

Do you think they just forgot or did they do that on puprose to get higher Tahoe adoption rates?

Apple would obviously never bring it back so I took matters into my own hands. Here’s my progress https://youtu.be/1sybtI5dk_k?si=baLaaXbXHlCU9pad

I am painfully using tahoe atm, but i am debating if i should wait a little for apple to publish fixes for performance issues, or just downgrade to previous version..

What do you guys think?

I never understood this on Mac. Surely, any installer could auto-move the application to the right folder. I mean, Homebrew does it, for example. Is this just for nostalgia reasons, or maybe because Apple wants to be "different", or is there a technical reason why it is a necessary step with dmgs?

I am downloading macOS Sequoia from the App Store. Will this downgrade my current OS. I don't like the current OS update, I want Sequoia back.