The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe (opens in new tab)

Yes, but Linux is finally in that position, not to mention we're seeing silicon from intel and amd that can compete with the M series on mobile devices.

I'm not saying 2026 is the year, but...

Still on iOS 18 and macOS 15 (Sequoia). I was a day one upgrader up until now, never had any regrets but this time things seemed very different.

It's worrisome but all is not lost, I'll start sweating for real if next year's releases don't improve things substantially.

If I buy a product and the hardware is good for 10 years (because I looked after it), I expect the software to also run just as well as when I purchased it - that is the case with Linux, why isn't it the case with macOS?

Every year the software upgrades invariably degrade system performance. Outrageous.

I'd like Apple to focus more on the things that actually matter to users. To fix bugs, to work on performance, to simplify things rather than complicate them. Focus on making it a better platform for doing work and less a playground for pointless fiddling with design and sloppiness.

I hoped the .1 or .2 would fix things, but I'm still seeing glitches and even random freezes.

Microsoft is a disaster right now, but if the new intel processor can compete on battery life with mac I might go back to linux.

"You can change your icons!" - What? Was that the big issue of my day? (Although, after I saw what they had done to them, it certainly loomed larger in my mind)

and

"Notification summaries that may be incorrect"

Miserable. Won't be upgrading the personal computer, am fast moving away from Apple as a whole, am telling others not to upgrade for as long as possible.

Can't you do a factory reset/recovery on Mac that lands on the version of macos shipped with the device? Then you could re-upgrade to the os you wanted, without trying it it seems Sequoia is still available in the app store

This is akin to MobileMe -

https://www.cultofmac.com/apple-history/steve-jobs-mobileme-...

Other than that weird resize thing written about here (which I didn't notice, thanks SizeUp for providing me with hotkeys remarkably similar to Windows) - why? Vista and 8 were immediately obvious changes in the UI, but in general it still looks and feels just like macOS has for well over a decade now.

New icons, new fonts, but... that's it?

Oh and HyperSwitch for some reason can't switch to Finder windows any more, but that's probably because HyperSwitch hasn't seen an upgrade in years...

Apple had a HIG and third party developers used it. Different apps looked consistent: toolbar, sidebar etc.

Apps had borders. If there was too much content there were big blue scrollbars.

Buttons had borders. Windows had texture. You could find stuff.

I could go on forever. But the OS was simultaneously better visible to the eye, and less visible to the mind. Stuff worked.

Or iOS 8 and 9 did revert back a lot of iOS 7 changes.

I am not against changing UI, but it seems every time they are doing it they forgot all the lesson learned from previous attempt, and in such short period of time suggest they haven't learned anything.

Just to give a few examples which annoys me the most:

- Finder. It just something else. After 10 years of using OSX I still can’t figure out how to use it efficiently for selecting the path - this experience is different every time, depending on the context where Finder was called from. I just don’t get.

- Lack of the true tiling window manager experience. Yes, there is Yabai, but it still suck due to the fact that you can’t have truly independent spaces each with individual layout and stack of windows.

- Infamous Magic Mouse’s charting port at the bottom.

I just wish I could have normal Linux natively on MB Pro.

Yes, because my apple hardware does not run properly with any other operating system. I would have switched to linux a while ago otherwise.

I’m hoping they’ll wake up and fix this with the next release, but I’m not super optimistic.

We’ll see.

I've blocked Apple's update servers via /etc/hosts so this monstrous thing doesn't sneak onto my machine in the middle of the night, still happily on Sequoia.

Vista ate every bit of RAM it could find, had severe driver issues and riddled with instabilities. It would not run on half the hardware at the time. I faintly remember a DX10 shitshow as well. And 8 hopelessly tried to apply Metro to the desktop and added a third (or was it forth?) settings panel. Also killed the Start menu.

If it wasn't for Apple Silicon and its stellar impact on battery life, I'd be gone. iOS 26 might make it happen anyway!

Resizing isn't great, but it's also deeply shitty in Win 11. I feel like window manager thought leadership has failed across the board, but the regression isn't that big of a deal in day to day usage, and is definitely not unique to Apple.

I mean Windows 10 wasn't great but I got used to the taskbar searching the web somehow and the dual config menus everywhere and so on. But 11 was just terrible.

macOS has its pain points but man oh man what a disaster Windows is.

I have had Linux on my personal desktop and laptop forever so that hasn't been an issue, only used Windows for work.

Not even close.

It's taken a few steps in the wrong direction, but nothing compaered to the user-hostility of Win8 (attempting to move users from 'real Windows' into locked-down dumbed-down touch-centric mobile-like app store hell), let alone Win11 (creating an e-waste mountain, then pushing AI slop into everything)

Are you just saying that because it has new glassy windows and is a resource hog? What is that different about Tahoe vs Sequoia?

> I'm sure people noticed this issue internally and brought it up but some thing by some designer was seen as biblically sacred and overruled all reason.

Funny how Apple went from Jony Ive sacrificing hardware usability for "beauty" (touch bars and butterfly switches) to Alan Dye mucking up macOS and iOS with Liquid glAss.

It's a throwback to BDUF.

Computers are faster than ever, every task other than UI rendering is finished faster than ever, but these geniuses keep slowing down the UI with every update. It's criminal.

The Expert (Short Comedy Sketch) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

Visual artists and graphic/ux designers weren’t exactly claiming for Tahoe either.

Going off spec is not the correct way to deal with this, and I could see how that might get you in trouble. It's counter productive.

Better choice is to escalate, but at some point you have to simply disagree and commit.

I disagree. Seems more like the group that implemented border radius at the OS UI implementation level did not work with the group that handles window sizing. Not everything is a conspiracy.

Most of the software creeping towards complete unusability devolve through non-practical apparence tweeking bullshit, ruining usability, while the functionality is intact (apart from bugfixes).

The other reason for decay is the overcomplication - pilin new and new marginal things on the top of the functionality heap - combined with sloppines, rushing through things, but that's an other discussion.

Did we reach a peek in software quality recently? So things only go down from here? I have this growing itchy feeling. I feel obstructed, forced to jump hoops, also disgust touching an increasing amount of software, most of those used for many many years without trouble (i.e. did not really registered its usage, it was doing things silently and well, but now starting to jump into my face or kick my legs).

Also, horizontal scrollbars suck. One thing later versions of Finder did well was adjust columns to minimize the presence of them.

We just don't need UI that big anymore. These days our cursors are much more accurate, from the magical Mac trackpad to high DPI optical mice, and we're 40+ years into GUIs so the limited number of people who opt-in to a full computing experience can already be expected to know the basics.

Yes Tahoe sucks, but going back to Aqua or classic MacOS would also suck, just in a different direction. If you actually spend time using classic MacOS and Aqua these days, man is it frustrating to get basic things done. Everything is so slow and you're constantly resizing windows to see whats in them. I own several Macs from the 80s-00s and they are really in need of many quality of life updates that later MacOS revs added. On a modern Mac, enabling 'show scrollbars' gets you to a pretty optimal Finder experience, minus all the stupid Mac bugs and Tahoe nonsense like this article points out.

I do think that was better overall, and it's something I miss about Snow Leopard, but I can see why they changed it.

(and yes Lion was garbage, first upgrade I skipped since Tiger, and definitely the first "what the fuck are they doing").

It was parctical (just like clearly visible scrollbars).

And my conviction is that computers are for practical and not the pretty things primarily. Can be pretty but not on the expense of usability. This last one is increasingly and sadly untrue nowadays!

(P.S. scrollbars aren't even bad)

Apple seems to have forgotten its own innovations.

I suspect you must be very careful, overwhelmingly complete and understandable presenting this kind of stuff.

otherwise:

- if it isn't, the post might be buried in drama.

- or else, the post will be another obscure warning that nobody sees.

for me, I noticed after the ios 26 "upgrade" I must continually forget, then repair my bluetooth devices. But I don't have the benefit of a clearly understandable article that calls apple out.

But is Google better? Not really, they killed a lot of good products like Reader.

But is Facebook better? Not really, Cambridge Analytica and Metaverse and .. facebook products are disposable.

But I think these Apple UX bugs are misdiagnosed. Yes they are atrocious. But think about how atrocious and non-representative and non-competitive Apple’s testing population is.

I agree, and its likely that both macOS and Windows will continue to get worse.

That said, it's important to be realistic because users can and will put up with quite a lot of discomfort before switching, and this is because for every bad feature or misstep, there are 100 others that are so good you don't even notice them. And when you switch, you start noticing all those others features you never noticed before, because they are now gone. Some of these features will be hardware, some OS, some application support, and some of them you can fix and some you just have to get used to.

An approach I recommend is to add a linux laptop to the mix. You can buy a used, powerful laptop cheap, install Linux on it and try to use it for a time, keeping your other machines around. Chances are you'll find various trade-offs - Linux will NOT be a strict improvement, it will have downsides. Linux is particularly weak with power management and certain devices like fingerprint readers. Depending on the apps you use, it can be weak there, too. That said, Linux is very usable, easy to install, and you should try it. But I think it does people a disservice to imply its better on every axis. It's better on some, worse on others.

All of these are longshots, but it really feels like we've hit a historic level of discontent.

It's like the console wars — different camps say "our console is better, it has more teraflops." In reality, nobody cares about that — buyers will get the console that has the games.

As for Linux. I also have a Linux laptop with Gnome for light gaming (Manjaro). It's alright. But a bit of a mess from a ux point of view. Linux always was messy on that front. But it works reasonably well.

The point with the distributions that you mention is that they each do things slightly differently, and I would argue in ways that are mostly very superficial. Nobody seems to be able to agree on anything in the Linux world so all you get is a lot of opinionated takes on how stuff should behave and which side of the screen things should live. This package manager over that one.

I've been using Linux on and off for a few decades, so I mostly ignore all the window dressing and attempts to create the ultimate package manager UI, file managers and what not and just use the command line. These things come and go.

It seems many distros are mostly just exercises in creating some theme for Gnome or whatever and imitating whatever the creator liked (Windows 95, Beos, Early versions of OSX, CDE, etc.). There's a few decades of nostalgia to pick from here.

The UX group would present work to Steve J. every Thursday and Steve quickly passed judgement often harshly and without a lot of feedback, leading to even longer meetings afterward to try and determine course corrections. Steve J. and Bas were on the same wavelength and a lot of what Bas would show had been worked on directly with Steve before hand. Other things would be presented for the first time, and Steve could be pretty harsh. Don, Greg, Scott, Kevin would push back and get abused, but they took the abuse and could make in-roads.

Here is my snapshot of Stephen from the time. He presented the UI ideas for the intial tabbed window interface in Safari. He had multiple design ideas and Steve dismissed them quickly and harshly. Me recollection was that Steve said something like No, next, worse, next, even worse, next, no. Why don't you come back next week with something better. Stephen didn't push back, say much, just went ok and that was that. I think Greg was the team manager at the time and pushed Steve for more input and maybe got some. This was my general observation of how Stephen was over 20 years ago.

I am skeptical and doubtful about Stephen's ability to make a change unless he is facilitated greatly by someone else or has somehow changed drastically. The fact that he has been on the team while the general opinion of Apple UX quality has degraded to the current point of the Tahoe disaster is telling. Several team members paid dearly in emotional abuse under Steve and decided to leave rather than deal with the environment post Steve's death. Stephen is a SJ-era original and should have been able to push hard against what many of us perceive as very poor decisons. He either agreed with those decisions, or did not, and choose to go with the flow and enjoy the benefits of working at Apple. This is fine I guess. Many people are just fine going with the flow and not rocking the boat. It may be even easier when you have Apple-level comp and benefits.

My opinon; unless Stephen gets a very strong push from other forces, I don't see that he has the will or fortitude to make the changes that he himself has approved in one way or another. Who will push him? Tim Cook, Craig Federighi, Eddy Cue, Phil Schiller? The perceived mess of Tahoe happened on the watch of all of these Apple leaders.

I think this is just what happens to companies as they get older. Most of the people who pioneered the Human Interface Guidelines aren't at the company anymore, and management doesn't see much financial growth in Mac sales compared to AI and services.

Steve's brain fell out when he got back his throne at Apple. Aqua was a mistake.

Designers probably have perverse incentives. Showy new designs get promotions. Even when they hurt usability, it's often only in insidious ways.

On the back of my mind I think part of this was the move to fit scaling to large resolution monitors (i.e. 4k+) work better, as a graphical border of a fixed pixel width will shrink proportionally compared to a border that is as thin as it can be. For a while I've felt that it's a missed opportunity on high res displays to not use more detailed art for window chrome as pixel wide will only get smaller and more difficult to distinguish, such as the minimize/maximize/close icons which remain pixel wide line art even at big scaling.

If the anchor point for window resizing was more inside the window, then you encounter an annoying problem where youre trying to click or drag content, but you end up just resizing your window instead.

The obvious solution is to just keep the old bezel that separate the content from the scroll wheels / resizing handles and make it visually obvious what you're doing, but apparently they think that's too ugly.

All the Apple engineers and other visual designers get quite defensive really quick when we mention that Tahoe really screwed things up, because it's more than just a transition into glass design, but a complete dismissal of design principles, to the point that the entire system is slowly becoming user hostile.

Every critique of the 26 series can be explained like this article with really in depth design principles, which is already engraved in Apple design guidelines, but Apple itself just dismissed it all. Everything from being able to clearly distinguish UI elements, to general accessibility, to discoverability, everything got worse.

Operating Systems are one of the most complicated systems we created, not because they're a collection of processes and thread, but because everything is built on top of them and creating something that's well thought out and stable, and intuitive is really hard. Designers just randomly creating visual elements just because it looks cool and not paying attention how people are going to use it is simply half assing the whole thing.

That's still one of the reasons I believe Alan Dye was let go, fired in a sense, he had power over the company, but with that power he screwed things so much that we need to rediscover all the things related to usability in very high detail as if we're rediscovering the wheel, just so that we can get back to square one.

Still bitter that my 2006 Core Duo MacBook only had support up to 10.6 Snow Leopard but back then that was over 4 years of being able to use the latest OS, so comparable to four releases with the current cycles.

Because if they kept it the same, then there would be no need to continue to employ all those UI designers. Therefore, to be assured of their continued employment, the UI designers have to make constant changes to justify their existence. Meanwhile, we get to suffer with their changes.

It's also an issue on Linux, to an extent. GNOME has a tendency of forcing UIs on users, and Ubuntu with Unity, now GNOME again, etc. Though, thankfully, since the user is free to choose their own desktop environment and window manager, it's not as pressing of an issue.

I realized many years ago that simpler UIs deliver the best UX. This is a large reason why I love the command line so much. Most programs have a fixed and stable interface, and can be composed to do what I want. For graphical programs I prefer using a simple window manager like bspwm on X, and niri on Wayland. These don't draw window decorations, and are primarily keyboard-driven, so I don't need superfluous graphics. I only need a simple status bar that shows my workspaces, active window, and some system information. I recently configured it with Quickshell[1], and couldn't be happier. I plan to use this setup for years to come, and it gives me great peace of mind knowing that no company can take that away from me. I will have to maintain it myself, but there shouldn't be any changes in the programs I use to break this in a major way.

[1]: https://github.com/imiric/quickshell-niri/tree/main/fancy-ba...

What bothers me about Linux is that realistically your entire DE will change at some point if/when the one you're staying on becomes too unsupported. They did this kinda recently at work, not cause IT wanted a fresh new look but because of some compatibility issue.

Why would I want my dev tools, audio apps, 3-D-modeling apps, and office apps all jumbled together?

It's as if Apple is trying to catch up to Microsoft in the race to regress.

I complained about it to a team mate and he thought it was fine and I was weird for using the app launcher and not cmd-space. Although on Windows I always use win-r to run stuff.

Tahoe UI changes and LG are such a mistake and Apple being Apple will probably just double down on it.

I much prefer the new app launcher in Tahoe, but it was created at the expense of Launchpad, which some people actually relied on. I don't know why they couldn't have kept both options.

You get worse icon pop-in if you add your app folder with grid view to the dock. These aren't stored on the network, so it's baffling they take so long to load the icons.

No. Launchpad is just the iOS springboard brought to Mac, with big icons and folders and pages. When it was added people complained of "iOS-ification".

This time they made a proper, unique Mac equivalent, integrated in Spotlight and built around the keyboard. It's not as good, the window was too small in 26.0, doesn't support uninstallation like Launchpad, but it's definitely less iOS-like.

(I say "maximised", even though that isn't the right term, because there is no right term. I don't mean 'full screen', since the borders are actually squared off properly in that mode, thank the lord; I mean 'full screen except for the global menu bar')

"Hi, I'm a Mac."

"And I'm a PC. Wow, you suck, Mac. What the hell happened?"

"Yo momma, PC."

<wild gesticulating and arguing ensues for 20-30 seconds>

"Hi, I'm Linux. Neither of these people care anything about you. You see, you're not their customer anymore. When you're ready to make computing personal again, check us out."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46191194

Windows is going down a strange path, where it's productivity is suffering because Microsoft is measuring success in terms of CoPilot adoption. Apple is stuck trying to invent the next iPhone, but in the meantime they are trying to make the iPhone sexy by slapping on a new skin. Then they forgot about macOS and quickly moves over some stuff from iPhone. Neither of the products apparent have UX designers anymore and QA is meeeh.

I don't understand either company. Both use to have talented UI/UX teams and actually listened to them. Is it really just short term stock price thinking that make them both forget that their operating systems should be about productivity and user ergonomics?

Enter "Lickable Pixels" -- the phrase that stuck to describe the Aqua era.

Introducing Mac OS X's Aqua interface, Jobs said at Macworld in January 2000: "We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_(user_interface)

Then there was the red hot irresistibly sexy and well designed IBM Thinkpad TrackPoint -AKA- Keyboard Clitoris -AKA- Joy Button, and IBM's explicitly lascivious "So Hot, We Had To Make It Red" ad.

https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/hodidb/so_hot_we_...

Ted Selker, the inventor of the TrackPoint, told me the story of how that ad got written and refined by focus groups: He slyly suggested the slogan, and IBM's ad designers begrudgingly put it on the page in small text in the corner, below the photo and ad copy. Then they A/B tested it with the text a little bigger, then a bit bolder, then even higher, and it finally worked its way up to the top of the page in BIG HUGE BOLD TEXT!

More about Ted's work:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34425576

Ted Selker fondly reminds me of "Mr. Lossoff" the "Button Man" in "A Nero Wolfe Mystery” episode “The Mother Hunt”, where Archie drops in on "Mister Lossoff’s Distinguished Buttons” in the garment district of New York:

https://youtu.be/h-QgWOSVKm4?t=724

He's totally THAT enthusiastic, a distinguished expert fiendishly obsessed with buttons! He even carries around a big bag of replacement Joy Buttons that he hands out for free like candy to anyone who’s worn theirs out.

I know this from personal experience: Ted and his wife Ellen once ran into me working on my Thinkpad at some coffee shop in Mountain View, and Ted noticed my worn out Joy Button. He excused himself to run out to his car to fetch his Button Bag, while Ellen smiled at me and rolled her eyes up into her head and shrugged, and we hung out and talked until he got back. I really appreciated a nice new crisp one with fresh bumpy texture, because mine was totally worn down, and it made his day to get rid of a few. (I imagine their house has hoards of boxes and piles of bags full of them!)

The common thread: design that makes you come. Back for more, that is. Buttons to lick till they click. Nubs to rub till they're bald. Products you touched obsessively until they're worn smooth. Tahoe gives us clownish corners we can't even grab. Apple dropped the ball -- and frankly, it's a kick in the nuts.

cmd+option+f = maximize to fill entire screen

cmd+option+ctrl+left/right = move window to other monitor on left/right

I occasionally use cmd+option+left/right if I need to have two windows side-by-side on the same monitor.

MacOS window sizes have always felt weird to me - no easy way to maximize without making it go into full screen mode.

As I was writing this, I just realized that hovering on the green traffic light shows a menu to choose some window placement options.... not sure how I never realized this before, but even the "maximize" option there doesn't go all the way to the edges - weird.

I rarely use windows anymore, but just like you installed a tool to get this behavior.

This UI feature saves approx 3 seconds on average for resizing windows. Plus, more importantly it more predictably works, and is an easier target to hit than a 2-10 wide pixel line or square region.

So I agree it's strange that the drag zone extends so far beyond, but that's not really something to complain about...? Everywhere inside the corner where it feels reasonable to resize, it resizes. The article is expecting an absurd level of a drag zone on the inside.

Again, the large drag zone outside the corner is kinda weird. But honestly that's more just an understandable artifact of the corner drag zone being a square. If it were me, I probably wouldn't bother to round off one corner of the drag zone either.

There's a lot of stuff to criticize about Tahoe, but this would be about last on my list...

defaults write −g NSWindowShouldDragOnGesture −bool true

This only supports moving around windows, not resizing.

I just found out today that hovering over the green traffic light icon shows an arrange menu... but the "maximize" option there leaves some padding on all sides of the window - weird.

I swear by https://rectangleapp.com/ - same outcome but with keyboard shortcuts instead of the mouse.

Also, for anyone reading this who hates the general aesthetic, go into Accessibility and hit "reduce transparency". This has been a desirable setting for last few OSX versions.

I updated, carried on enjoying the best desktop experience (IMHO). It's not perfect, but was and remains better than the alternatives for me. Very little "struggle".

I can't recall them all right off the top of my head, but I waited til 26.2 to update because of all the comments I saw about glitziness, and this resizing issue is just one of the quirks I have noticed are still not resolved; not to mention that my M4 Mac has not crawled and locked up as often as it has since I updated to 26.2. But again, to put it in perspective, that's only been very little hassle compared to what seems to be nothing but misery, suffering, and existential questions suffered by the wretched souls condemned to Windows.

Edit: another issue I have noticed in iOS is that now things like saving bookmarks in Safari is no longer a two step/tap process using long-press, it's a three step/tap process....WHY?? Same with "add to home screen". Also, the long press horizontal context menu (i.e., copy, paste) now does not slide left to reveal more options, it just changes mode to a vertical list. What is going on??? That's sickening...in my opinion. Horizontal, vertical? Pick one.

Second Edit: I just experienced another Tahoe glitch in at least Safari, where hyperlinks become un-clickable and the only way to resolve that is to seemingly restart safari. I don't find that acceptable in Safari of all places.

That's when I realized there's no default hotkey for moving an app to an external monitor. That is absolutely wild. (Happy to be wrong)

https://youtu.be/1fZTOjd_bOQ?si=BVOxUPjoULhwiclE

The tl;dw is that copying UX lets others invest energy in identifying the paradigm. Linux, which tends to be starved for resources, has historically been reasonably well served by letting Apple and Microsoft define UX, while Linux focuses on implementing it. However, those headlining companies haven't been investing in desktop UX excellence in recent years. It's time for open source projects to embrace experimentation and take the mantle of cutting edge UX, because Apple et. al. aren't paving the way anymore.

Apple could fix it, but instead they made overlapping windows for iPadOS, which is even dumber considering the smaller display area.

I think it doesn't matter what they do; part of their clientele is fully captive, another part is only there for the status, and the last part is just using it rudimentally, so anything is OK.

I have often felt like GNOME is the most Apple-y of desktop environments; they're very form over function. Not surprising to me at all that both would pick a design that seems beautiful until you try to use it.

Now I guess it's Apple's turn.

https://rectangleapp.com/

If you use something long enough, you'll get used to its idiosyncrasies. Jobs would have clicked and dragged 10px away from the rounded corner here instinctively. This is why the owner of an old car can turn it on and drive away in a blink while his son has trouble: hold the accelerator 10% down, giggle the key a little while turning, pull the wheel a bit, ... all comes natural to the owner.

Just did a quick test in a VM, and it seems all of them. I.e. if you could resize the window, clicking that space (even if empty) brings it into focus. But then I also tested on Sequoia and the same happens.

It seems then that basically everything remained the same except for the visual presentation of the corner.

It'll present you the Tahoe upgrade but underneath in small print it'll show other updates, which you have to then open and manually select the 15.7.3 update

And you really should keep up on the point updates because there's been a ton of major security patches since 15.4

"You shouldn't need this."

> So I am wondering, are people fighting using a Mac in the most effective way simply because of old patterns and habit

"Most effective" doesn't mean "most intuitive". I don't want to learn keyboard shortcuts just to move or resize a window. That's the entire premise of graphical user interfaces.