How to Turn Liquid Glass into a Solid Interface – TidBITS

Summary

Apple’s new Liquid Glass interface design brings transparency and blur effects to all Apple operating systems, but many users find it distracting or difficult to read. Here’s how to control its effects and make your interface more usable. Although the relevant Accessibility settings are quite similar across macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS, I separate them because they offer different levels of utility in each. I have no experience with (or interest in) a Vision Pro, so I can’t comment on Liquid Glass in visionOS. macOS 26 To help you get a feel for how the various settings affect the Mac interface, I’ve taken all the screenshots below with the same screen content. For a quick comparison, download the images and then use Quick Look to flip back and forth between any two to view the differences. Select one image in the Finder, press the Space bar, and then use the arrow keys to change the Finder selection to the other image. Default Settings Here’s our starting point with macOS. Note the transparency in the menu bar, widgets, Control Center, and Dock. In the System Settings window, you can see that the sidebar is also translucent, allowing the wallpaper thumbnails to bleed through as they scroll underneath and letting the General item blur with Search at the top. Reduce Transparency The setting that makes the most difference in toning down the excesses of Liquid Glass is System Settings > Accessibility > Display > Reduce Transparency. It turns the menu bar opaque, prevents the wallpaper from being visible through the widgets, Control Center, and Dock, and eliminates the awkward bleeds under the System Settings sidebar. For those who take a lot of screenshots, like I do, Reduce Transparency is essential because it ensures that all screenshots have a consistent background. It would be highly distracting if screenshots had noticeably different colors due to being taken over different wallpapers or windows. Increase Contrast (and Reduce Transparency) To further clarify the ...