6 ms·

macOS Icon History

255 points by ksec 1y ago

prymitive 1y ago
I find the 2025 versions to be a nicer looking than pre-2025 variants, so it’s overall an improvement. But I also find the 2014 to be usually a lot better (clearer and more obvious). So incrementally it’s an improvement, but historically still worse.
- mrweasel 1y ago
  Game Center is probably the only one I can honestly say is worse. Generally speaking most the other examples are iterations done to keep up with design trends, but Game Center have lost meaning after the first iteration. Without context it's impossible to tell what the four bubbles are suppose to be.
  - hnlmorg 1y ago
    > Generally speaking most the other examples are iterations done to keep up with design trends And that is what I believe to be the crux of the problem. The trends have been regressions rather than improvements. I have a few theories as to why this happens too but none of them are particularly complimentary towards Apple, et al. And to be clear, Apple are far from the worst offenders here. Pretty much every company that releases new software or hardware feels the need to change things so it looks “fresh” and people keep buying their stuff. It doesn’t matter if it results in design regressions because by the time people realise they don’t like it, they’ve already bought that shiny new thing.
  - cyberax 1y ago
    "Notes" are now indistinguishable from the "Calendar" at the first glance. "Game Center" is ridiculous, I have no idea what it even symbolizes. "Dictionary" looks more like spell checking settings? And "Photo Booth" looks like a mouth with a strange tongue sticking out.
- ashvardanian 1y ago
  Yes, macOS/iOS aesthetics reached their peak around 2013-14. Hardware-wise, the story is similar; the 2012 MacBook Pro was the most marvelous piece of hardware I've ever bought. I miss that feeling. No part of me would agree that Apple is a more impressive company today than it was 13 years ago, despite its market cap.
  - rekenaut 1y ago
    Perhaps it’s just nostalgia on my part, but I really don’t understand imposing the constraint of making every Mac app look like the rounded iPhone app buttons. To me, it makes it harder at a glance to distinguish one app from another compared to the older designs.
  - microtonal 1y ago
    I started using MacBooks in 2007. The generations from around that time until 2012 or so we're marvelous. - With some models you could open the battery with a simple handle. - Some models had a small LED bar that you could check the battery status with, without opening the lid. - Replaceable RAM and disk. In one Pro I replaced the hard drive with an SSD (almost nobody had an SSD yet) and it would fly. I could open all Creative Suite apps (which were still optimized for spinning rust) in three seconds. After that started the dark ages. Soldered RAM, soldered SSD, no more MagSafe, only USB-C ports, keyboards that could be destroyed with specs of dust. And the overheating Intel CPUs. In 2019-2021 there was a rebound. First the scissor keyboard returned, then Apple Silicon, and good amounts of ports again. It was really hard to be a Mac user ~2016-2020.
    - mikestew 1y ago
      Some models had a small LED bar that you could check the battery status with, without opening the lid. On older Mac’s (2009-10?), the LEDs were built into the battery. Very handy to quickly check if your spare has more charge than the one you’re using.
      - p_ing 1y ago
        PowerBook G4 (and iBook, I think) has LED-in-battery.
- jug 1y ago
  Yes, I like how they're striking a balance between minimalism and skeumorphism. They often try to do more with less. The Photo Booth one is a good example. Away with that camera: Let's focus on the strip from a photo booth (and don't use actual photos because that's too messy at smaller sizes). It looks like sometimes this approach has led to more details or an entirely different design, and sometimes less details. Almost like a normalization of sorts to better standardize around a level of details and amount of contrast and brightness.
  - Kwpolska 1y ago
    It was weird to have a real person’s photo as an icon. But the new versions are much less clear. The 2025 icon is especially difficult if you don’t know the macOS camera application is called Photo Booth.
- sheepybloke 1y ago
  I agree. Honestly, looking at the most recent icons, they look like what I remember the icons from 2024 looking like. I weas surprised to see that they were not the icons I remembered.
Maskawanian 1y ago
I would assert that iChat evolved into messages. There are a few more icons that could be added in that category.
- bapak 1y ago
  It most definitely did.
- cmiller1 1y ago
  I agree, I also would argue that this counts as an earlier incarnation of the System Settings icon: https://i.imgur.com/cqtpKhI.png https://i.imgur.com/cqtpKhI.png
danillonunes 1y ago
I understand free-shaped icons can sometimes be really bad designed and look really shitty, but one of Apple's distinguished features was their high-quality icons. It was even transmitted to other software companies that target Apple devices. You could tell with high confidence when a software was made specifically for Mac and when it was ported just looking at the icon. Now everything is this sad rounded cornered square.
- ericmay 1y ago
  > Now everything is this sad rounded cornered square. You see this a lot in the absurd “modernist” design of clean lines, sharp edges, and lack of texture and depth across all industries. Whether that’s your Thuma furniture where the price is high and your marketed to be told that the design is good, but it’s not at all - devoid of meaning and a sense of place, never mind that the quality of the materials are low and have no specific origin, or your run of the mill drone light show where we are fooling ourselves into thinking that drawing pictures of things like the Statue of Liberty (oh after the drones do the ads, brought to you by your local auto dealer) are good and should be appreciated instead of the vibrancy and brilliance of fireworks instead. Apple has begun to transition this way too. There aren’t any designers working there. Look at the Calculator app as a great example. They say perfection is not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. But there is a point where you take away more and more and more and your left with creations devoid of meaning or purpose. Once you start seeing this in your day to day life you can’t unsee it. Sorry ahead of time for those who read this comment and become more attune to this phenomenon.
  - gyomu 1y ago
    > Apple has begun to transition this way too. There aren’t any designers working there This is a dumb “no true Scotsman” argument, there are undoubtedly designers working there by any stretch of the imagination. The more interesting discussion to have is why the field of software design has come to the point it’s at today, and why many designers think that work like the kind Apple is doing is good design.
alberth 1y ago
I find the 2025+ icon style difficult to discern. Something about the lower contrast and fuzzier/blurs - makes the icons too muted for my liking.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  Not just muted--I look at them and I genuinely feel like my vision is getting worse. I have this giant, beautiful high DPI display, but the icons don't look sharp anymore--they look like someone downsampled then upsampled them with a gaussian blur. Very weird choice for a company that used to pride themselves on the "retina" resolution of their display technology. I feel like peak Apple icon design was around 2014, where they were high-resolution and clearly depicted what the application was. Since then, they are all moving towards these indistinct, abstract hieroglyphics.
- 65 1y ago
  What if they took a page out of Microsoft's icon playbook, where all their icons look the same? To this day I still accidentally click the wrong Office icon on my work computer because they all look so similar.
- dagmx 1y ago
  In actual use, the icons are layered and have more visual separation than is shown when flattened down. Still might not address your concerns, but I also don’t think the site currently shows them accurately
nntwozz 1y ago
Nice, but quite the short list (iTunes, Safari would be nice). A lot of experimentation went on with the iTunes icon in particular (and iTunes in general). It was the UI playground for new ideas before they would release in the next OS version. https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/itunes-app https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/itunes-app As you can see the icon changed multiple times even within the same year or same OS version.
- phillco 1y ago
  Most people think of the brushed metal, but I've always liked the iTunes 10 dalliance with vertical window controls as a good example of this.
fainpul 1y ago
macOS has a history of app icons which are highly detailed and almost photo-realistic. I think this trend started with OS X and the skeuomorphism hype. In my opinion, this is exactly the opposite of what a good icon should be like (reduced, stylized, simplified to the extreme). Some bad examples you can see in the latest version of macOS: - Xcode (photorealistic hammer) - TextEdit (photorealistic pen) - Automator (rendered robot) - System Settings (gearwheels with tiny details) - Preview (literally a photo, with a photorealistic "loupe" in front) - Trash bin in the dock (photorealistic bin)
- vintagedave 1y ago
  > this is exactly the opposite of what a good icon should be like (reduced, stylized, simplified to the extreme) Why do you believe that? Is an icon a pictogram or ideogram?
- 65 1y ago
  There is no reason why an icon can't be skeuomorphic. Flat design was inspired by Swiss design, which really only existed because of technical constraints of graphic design in the 50s and 60s. An icon should indicate what the program does, and with higher quality displays, there's no reason why more detail in the icon would be worse. Icons aren't logos in the sense they have to be adapted for every possible use case (where those use cases may have technical limitations), e.g. on a huge box truck, embroidered on a shirt, or as a favicon.
- vjvjvjvjghv 1y ago
  "In my opinion, this is exactly the opposite of what a good icon should be like (reduced, stylized, simplified to the extreme)." Now we have icons where you basically can't tell what this is about and more and more icons look extremely similar. Not sure this is better.
- wpm 1y ago
  A good icon should telegraph to the user as soon and as swiftly as possible the identification and purpose of the app/folder/thing it represents. Photorealism is pretty good at that, since objects tend to look like themselves and nothing else, meaning they are unambiguous, and afford familiarity because even if your trash can at your desk looks nothing like the old photorealistic silver mesh trash can from Macs of yore, you can still probably figure out what it is really fast. I am sick and tired of overwrought artsy fartsy mimmimulizsm hierogplyhic “icons” instead of something I can actually fucking see and recognize.
gffrd 1y ago
Squint/blur your eyes as you skim the list of icons. Think of this as an approximation of peripheral / partial vision. Some new icons fare well, other are a muddy mess. The glass metaphor seems inconsistently used in iconography, and semi-transparent gears are just plain silly, even if it’s in keeping with the aesthetic standard.
burnt-resistor 1y ago
I miss the Finder plugsins pre-SIP that overrode built-in and added custom icons for special folders not based on resource forks.
joshdavham 1y ago
It's interesting how each of these icons looked new to us at one point. Now most of these icons seem quite old-looking.
dsego 1y ago
At least the system preferences icon has improved, the 2020 one looks like it's AI generated.
- pavlov 1y ago
  Honestly the 2001 one looks the best. It’s clean and obvious with no fussy gear detail. But designers don’t get paid to keep things the same.
  - kccqzy 1y ago
    They can still keep the 2001 aesthetic while giving themselves more work: we have higher resolution screens now so a 1024x1024 icon is probably in order; we have pervasive OS-level dark mode support now so they can create dark and light versions of the icon; as UI fashions change they can add or reduce the amount of shadow and glass effect.
rhet0rica 1y ago
Tragically missing the NeXT and Rhapsody versions that preceded many of these programs. Rhapsody DR2 has its own Stickies icon that got skipped, along with the checkmark-monitor Preferences from NeXTSTEP 4.0PR1 Mecca. I have a big dump of 48x48 NeXT icons here if anyone craves them: http://rhetori.ca/next/ http://rhetori.ca/next/ (but holy shit you better not tell ClaudeBot about it or i'll scream)
- NetOpWibby 1y ago
  This is dope, thanks for sharing!
russellbeattie 1y ago
The evolution of the App Store icon from drawing utensils (pencil, brush and ruler) to transparent popsicle sticks is definitely the most interesting. Ask someone today what the A icon represents, and they would probably have no idea, or think something like building blocks. Game Center is definitely the worst. The bubbles have never represented anything remotely intelligible. Multi-colored blobs equals games? If you say so, Apple.
- jonhohle 1y ago
  I never liked that the App Store icon took the blueprint portion of the Xcode icon, but at the same time it made sense - designing and building apps in Xcode and the finished product in the App Store. Now Xcode uses the same lame elongated capsules.
- culopatin 1y ago
  I think it’s supposed to be an easel.
josh64 1y ago
I tried to find a site with more examples than the linked post, and I think https://guis.org/macos/icons/ https://guis.org/macos/icons/ is a pretty good overview for those who may be interested.
inatreecrown2 1y ago
from all of these examples, the only new icons I prefer are PhotoBooth and Podcasts.
idk1 1y ago
2014-2020 was the best in every category. That calculator icon was perfect.
rezmason 1y ago
Nicely executed. The website, I mean. It's like a memorial to principle. If y'all like icons, I'm not above plugging my free Mac screensaver, Iconic, an "Aqua Icons" screensaver remake which attempts to showcase the icons you didn't know you have, and highlight some noteworthy icons of Mac history: https://github.com/Rezmason/iconic https://github.com/Rezmason/iconic
user3939382 1y ago
I loved and love the look of macOS 9. I like how the menu interactions work, everything. I’ve been thinking about going back to it as my primary for personal/non dev computing. I anticipate some challenges with the browser, etc though and not sure if all can be overcome. Modern macOS brings me no joy. I had a similar love for the BeOS UI, happy to see Haiku humming along.
mberning 1y ago
I think photo booth had the most depressing “evolution”.
DavidPiper 1y ago
Man, that 2012-2014 Game Center Icon. Love it in retrospect. Also please bring back the green, that 2025- icon looks so stale compared to the others. The entire catalog just prior to 2015 was so good. I know that's an unpopular opinion these days.
- jonhohle 1y ago
  I don’t think it’s unpopular for normal humans who just want to find the app they’re looking for. It’s only unpopular to designers who are chasing fashion trends.
dagmx 1y ago
One thing to note that isn’t captured by the graphics on the site, is that the new 2025 icons are layered and have material effects. So they look flatter on the site than they do in use. I recommend folks watch the introduction to icon composer video they put up https://youtu.be/4usD1hP1nYY?si=XRKba9Png6Gju12_ https://youtu.be/4usD1hP1nYY?si=XRKba9Png6Gju12_
igtztorrero 1y ago
Notes 2012 icon, the best !
l_j_w 1y ago
I used to love the CandyBar app by Panic. It was fun to customize my Mac and people shared such amazing icons and themes. Miss those days.
kiriberty 1y ago
Is it me or do others find that always 2020-2025 category icons were the best looking compared to 2025- except for podcasts icon? (And I do not give a damn for podcasts :D )
kuon 1y ago
I really like the 2010-2015 era. Something seems lost after that.
Waterluvian 1y ago
I’d be very interested in a survey that presents each group in random (non-chronological) order, asking to pick a favourite for each. I went through and I have favourites that are all over, and not just a specific era.
petesergeant 1y ago
I miss 2014.
projektfu 1y ago
I miss the design language of OS X where things were supposed to have the perspective of being viewed from above resting on a flat surface, but with some depth. Most things looked beautiful like that, the things that didn't (Internet Explorer) stuck out. iPhoto, Stickies, Mail, had beautiful icons.
cynicalsecurity 1y ago
It's progressively got worse.
tempodox 1y ago
No doubt about it, the icons from the early 2000s up until 2012 are the ones I generally still like best, especially in this direct comparison with the later ones. The later ones are not exactly bad, but they just lack the panache.
smusamashah 1y ago
Unrelated but I wish Mac one day releases 'all new' classic old mac style UI. When they do that, everyone as usual will copy them and some sanity in modern UI world will be restored.
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5350-uiop-1130 1y ago
design by committee: icon version the older ones are much nicer. they have more character and charm. it feels like the work of a human. the new ones are bland, samey, flat, corporate, soulless.
rbanffy 1y ago
My favorite will always be the TextEdit icon with the Think Different text.
akmittal 1y ago
Mac seem to have maintained consistency with most of icons. Windows icons on the other side are all over the place. https://www.howtogeek.com/733912/a-visual-history-of-windows-icons-from-windows-1-to-11/ https://www.howtogeek.com/733912/a-visual-history-of-windows...
ThouYS 1y ago
The Chronicles of Enshittificarnia
joduplessis 1y ago
Almost every one of the 2025 icons look worse. EDIT: And most of them seem to have adopted this bloom effect which just makes them look blurry.
pier25 1y ago
Icons should be first and foremost about usability. It's like the only thing that matters now is following a particular aesthetic (which I personally find ugly but that's besides the point). Most of the new icons are incomprehensible at smaller sizes. Heck some are even incomprehensible at a large size. How are a bunch of color bubbles related to games?
pmontra 1y ago
As a non Mac and non iOS user: Reminders and Games are puzzling (colored dots and bubbles?), Notes was maybe better one iteration ago of not the second oldest one, everything else makes sense. Maps is maybe a definite improvement, at least the last two iterations.
jeberle 1y ago
If BasicAppleGuy is taking requests, I'd love (OK, hate) to see the progression of the XCode hammer icon. It tells a story unto itself. Once a legit carpenter's hammer, now something out of a Fisher-Price toy box. Likewise, similar dismay over the box of Crayolas in the Color Picker. How can someone do that to a UI!?
vlucas 1y ago
Anyone else think the new 2025 icons look... blurry? Not nearly as crisp as the variants just before it.

255 points by ksec 1y ago

I find the 2025 versions to be a nicer looking than pre-2025 variants, so it’s overall an improvement. But I also find the 2014 to be usually a lot better (clearer and more obvious). So incrementally it’s an improvement, but historically still worse.

mrweasel 1y ago
Game Center is probably the only one I can honestly say is worse. Generally speaking most the other examples are iterations done to keep up with design trends, but Game Center have lost meaning after the first iteration. Without context it's impossible to tell what the four bubbles are suppose to be.
- hnlmorg 1y ago
  > Generally speaking most the other examples are iterations done to keep up with design trends And that is what I believe to be the crux of the problem. The trends have been regressions rather than improvements. I have a few theories as to why this happens too but none of them are particularly complimentary towards Apple, et al. And to be clear, Apple are far from the worst offenders here. Pretty much every company that releases new software or hardware feels the need to change things so it looks “fresh” and people keep buying their stuff. It doesn’t matter if it results in design regressions because by the time people realise they don’t like it, they’ve already bought that shiny new thing.
- cyberax 1y ago
  "Notes" are now indistinguishable from the "Calendar" at the first glance. "Game Center" is ridiculous, I have no idea what it even symbolizes. "Dictionary" looks more like spell checking settings? And "Photo Booth" looks like a mouth with a strange tongue sticking out.
ashvardanian 1y ago
Yes, macOS/iOS aesthetics reached their peak around 2013-14. Hardware-wise, the story is similar; the 2012 MacBook Pro was the most marvelous piece of hardware I've ever bought. I miss that feeling. No part of me would agree that Apple is a more impressive company today than it was 13 years ago, despite its market cap.
- rekenaut 1y ago
  Perhaps it’s just nostalgia on my part, but I really don’t understand imposing the constraint of making every Mac app look like the rounded iPhone app buttons. To me, it makes it harder at a glance to distinguish one app from another compared to the older designs.
- microtonal 1y ago
  I started using MacBooks in 2007. The generations from around that time until 2012 or so we're marvelous. - With some models you could open the battery with a simple handle. - Some models had a small LED bar that you could check the battery status with, without opening the lid. - Replaceable RAM and disk. In one Pro I replaced the hard drive with an SSD (almost nobody had an SSD yet) and it would fly. I could open all Creative Suite apps (which were still optimized for spinning rust) in three seconds. After that started the dark ages. Soldered RAM, soldered SSD, no more MagSafe, only USB-C ports, keyboards that could be destroyed with specs of dust. And the overheating Intel CPUs. In 2019-2021 there was a rebound. First the scissor keyboard returned, then Apple Silicon, and good amounts of ports again. It was really hard to be a Mac user ~2016-2020.
  - mikestew 1y ago
    Some models had a small LED bar that you could check the battery status with, without opening the lid. On older Mac’s (2009-10?), the LEDs were built into the battery. Very handy to quickly check if your spare has more charge than the one you’re using.
    - p_ing 1y ago
      PowerBook G4 (and iBook, I think) has LED-in-battery.
jug 1y ago
Yes, I like how they're striking a balance between minimalism and skeumorphism. They often try to do more with less. The Photo Booth one is a good example. Away with that camera: Let's focus on the strip from a photo booth (and don't use actual photos because that's too messy at smaller sizes). It looks like sometimes this approach has led to more details or an entirely different design, and sometimes less details. Almost like a normalization of sorts to better standardize around a level of details and amount of contrast and brightness.
- Kwpolska 1y ago
  It was weird to have a real person’s photo as an icon. But the new versions are much less clear. The 2025 icon is especially difficult if you don’t know the macOS camera application is called Photo Booth.
sheepybloke 1y ago
I agree. Honestly, looking at the most recent icons, they look like what I remember the icons from 2024 looking like. I weas surprised to see that they were not the icons I remembered.

Maskawanian 1y ago

I would assert that iChat evolved into messages. There are a few more icons that could be added in that category.

bapak 1y ago
It most definitely did.
cmiller1 1y ago
I agree, I also would argue that this counts as an earlier incarnation of the System Settings icon: https://i.imgur.com/cqtpKhI.png https://i.imgur.com/cqtpKhI.png

danillonunes 1y ago

I understand free-shaped icons can sometimes be really bad designed and look really shitty, but one of Apple's distinguished features was their high-quality icons. It was even transmitted to other software companies that target Apple devices. You could tell with high confidence when a software was made specifically for Mac and when it was ported just looking at the icon. Now everything is this sad rounded cornered square.

ericmay 1y ago
> Now everything is this sad rounded cornered square. You see this a lot in the absurd “modernist” design of clean lines, sharp edges, and lack of texture and depth across all industries. Whether that’s your Thuma furniture where the price is high and your marketed to be told that the design is good, but it’s not at all - devoid of meaning and a sense of place, never mind that the quality of the materials are low and have no specific origin, or your run of the mill drone light show where we are fooling ourselves into thinking that drawing pictures of things like the Statue of Liberty (oh after the drones do the ads, brought to you by your local auto dealer) are good and should be appreciated instead of the vibrancy and brilliance of fireworks instead. Apple has begun to transition this way too. There aren’t any designers working there. Look at the Calculator app as a great example. They say perfection is not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. But there is a point where you take away more and more and more and your left with creations devoid of meaning or purpose. Once you start seeing this in your day to day life you can’t unsee it. Sorry ahead of time for those who read this comment and become more attune to this phenomenon.
- gyomu 1y ago
  > Apple has begun to transition this way too. There aren’t any designers working there This is a dumb “no true Scotsman” argument, there are undoubtedly designers working there by any stretch of the imagination. The more interesting discussion to have is why the field of software design has come to the point it’s at today, and why many designers think that work like the kind Apple is doing is good design.

alberth 1y ago

I find the 2025+ icon style difficult to discern. Something about the lower contrast and fuzzier/blurs - makes the icons too muted for my liking.

ryandrake 1y ago
Not just muted--I look at them and I genuinely feel like my vision is getting worse. I have this giant, beautiful high DPI display, but the icons don't look sharp anymore--they look like someone downsampled then upsampled them with a gaussian blur. Very weird choice for a company that used to pride themselves on the "retina" resolution of their display technology. I feel like peak Apple icon design was around 2014, where they were high-resolution and clearly depicted what the application was. Since then, they are all moving towards these indistinct, abstract hieroglyphics.
65 1y ago
What if they took a page out of Microsoft's icon playbook, where all their icons look the same? To this day I still accidentally click the wrong Office icon on my work computer because they all look so similar.
dagmx 1y ago
In actual use, the icons are layered and have more visual separation than is shown when flattened down. Still might not address your concerns, but I also don’t think the site currently shows them accurately

nntwozz 1y ago

Nice, but quite the short list (iTunes, Safari would be nice). A lot of experimentation went on with the iTunes icon in particular (and iTunes in general). It was the UI playground for new ideas before they would release in the next OS version. https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/itunes-app https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/itunes-app As you can see the icon changed multiple times even within the same year or same OS version.

phillco 1y ago
Most people think of the brushed metal, but I've always liked the iTunes 10 dalliance with vertical window controls as a good example of this.

fainpul 1y ago

macOS has a history of app icons which are highly detailed and almost photo-realistic. I think this trend started with OS X and the skeuomorphism hype. In my opinion, this is exactly the opposite of what a good icon should be like (reduced, stylized, simplified to the extreme). Some bad examples you can see in the latest version of macOS: - Xcode (photorealistic hammer) - TextEdit (photorealistic pen) - Automator (rendered robot) - System Settings (gearwheels with tiny details) - Preview (literally a photo, with a photorealistic "loupe" in front) - Trash bin in the dock (photorealistic bin)

vintagedave 1y ago
> this is exactly the opposite of what a good icon should be like (reduced, stylized, simplified to the extreme) Why do you believe that? Is an icon a pictogram or ideogram?
65 1y ago
There is no reason why an icon can't be skeuomorphic. Flat design was inspired by Swiss design, which really only existed because of technical constraints of graphic design in the 50s and 60s. An icon should indicate what the program does, and with higher quality displays, there's no reason why more detail in the icon would be worse. Icons aren't logos in the sense they have to be adapted for every possible use case (where those use cases may have technical limitations), e.g. on a huge box truck, embroidered on a shirt, or as a favicon.
vjvjvjvjghv 1y ago
"In my opinion, this is exactly the opposite of what a good icon should be like (reduced, stylized, simplified to the extreme)." Now we have icons where you basically can't tell what this is about and more and more icons look extremely similar. Not sure this is better.
wpm 1y ago
A good icon should telegraph to the user as soon and as swiftly as possible the identification and purpose of the app/folder/thing it represents. Photorealism is pretty good at that, since objects tend to look like themselves and nothing else, meaning they are unambiguous, and afford familiarity because even if your trash can at your desk looks nothing like the old photorealistic silver mesh trash can from Macs of yore, you can still probably figure out what it is really fast. I am sick and tired of overwrought artsy fartsy mimmimulizsm hierogplyhic “icons” instead of something I can actually fucking see and recognize.

gffrd 1y ago

Squint/blur your eyes as you skim the list of icons. Think of this as an approximation of peripheral / partial vision. Some new icons fare well, other are a muddy mess. The glass metaphor seems inconsistently used in iconography, and semi-transparent gears are just plain silly, even if it’s in keeping with the aesthetic standard.

burnt-resistor 1y ago

I miss the Finder plugsins pre-SIP that overrode built-in and added custom icons for special folders not based on resource forks.

joshdavham 1y ago

It's interesting how each of these icons looked new to us at one point. Now most of these icons seem quite old-looking.

dsego 1y ago

At least the system preferences icon has improved, the 2020 one looks like it's AI generated.

pavlov 1y ago
Honestly the 2001 one looks the best. It’s clean and obvious with no fussy gear detail. But designers don’t get paid to keep things the same.
- kccqzy 1y ago
  They can still keep the 2001 aesthetic while giving themselves more work: we have higher resolution screens now so a 1024x1024 icon is probably in order; we have pervasive OS-level dark mode support now so they can create dark and light versions of the icon; as UI fashions change they can add or reduce the amount of shadow and glass effect.

rhet0rica 1y ago

Tragically missing the NeXT and Rhapsody versions that preceded many of these programs. Rhapsody DR2 has its own Stickies icon that got skipped, along with the checkmark-monitor Preferences from NeXTSTEP 4.0PR1 Mecca. I have a big dump of 48x48 NeXT icons here if anyone craves them: http://rhetori.ca/next/ http://rhetori.ca/next/ (but holy shit you better not tell ClaudeBot about it or i'll scream)

NetOpWibby 1y ago
This is dope, thanks for sharing!

russellbeattie 1y ago

The evolution of the App Store icon from drawing utensils (pencil, brush and ruler) to transparent popsicle sticks is definitely the most interesting. Ask someone today what the A icon represents, and they would probably have no idea, or think something like building blocks. Game Center is definitely the worst. The bubbles have never represented anything remotely intelligible. Multi-colored blobs equals games? If you say so, Apple.

jonhohle 1y ago
I never liked that the App Store icon took the blueprint portion of the Xcode icon, but at the same time it made sense - designing and building apps in Xcode and the finished product in the App Store. Now Xcode uses the same lame elongated capsules.
culopatin 1y ago
I think it’s supposed to be an easel.

josh64 1y ago

I tried to find a site with more examples than the linked post, and I think https://guis.org/macos/icons/ https://guis.org/macos/icons/ is a pretty good overview for those who may be interested.

inatreecrown2 1y ago

from all of these examples, the only new icons I prefer are PhotoBooth and Podcasts.

idk1 1y ago

2014-2020 was the best in every category. That calculator icon was perfect.

rezmason 1y ago

Nicely executed. The website, I mean. It's like a memorial to principle. If y'all like icons, I'm not above plugging my free Mac screensaver, Iconic, an "Aqua Icons" screensaver remake which attempts to showcase the icons you didn't know you have, and highlight some noteworthy icons of Mac history: https://github.com/Rezmason/iconic https://github.com/Rezmason/iconic

user3939382 1y ago

I loved and love the look of macOS 9. I like how the menu interactions work, everything. I’ve been thinking about going back to it as my primary for personal/non dev computing. I anticipate some challenges with the browser, etc though and not sure if all can be overcome. Modern macOS brings me no joy. I had a similar love for the BeOS UI, happy to see Haiku humming along.

mberning 1y ago

I think photo booth had the most depressing “evolution”.

DavidPiper 1y ago

Man, that 2012-2014 Game Center Icon. Love it in retrospect. Also please bring back the green, that 2025- icon looks so stale compared to the others. The entire catalog just prior to 2015 was so good. I know that's an unpopular opinion these days.

jonhohle 1y ago
I don’t think it’s unpopular for normal humans who just want to find the app they’re looking for. It’s only unpopular to designers who are chasing fashion trends.

dagmx 1y ago

One thing to note that isn’t captured by the graphics on the site, is that the new 2025 icons are layered and have material effects. So they look flatter on the site than they do in use. I recommend folks watch the introduction to icon composer video they put up https://youtu.be/4usD1hP1nYY?si=XRKba9Png6Gju12_ https://youtu.be/4usD1hP1nYY?si=XRKba9Png6Gju12_

igtztorrero 1y ago

Notes 2012 icon, the best !

l_j_w 1y ago

I used to love the CandyBar app by Panic. It was fun to customize my Mac and people shared such amazing icons and themes. Miss those days.

kiriberty 1y ago

Is it me or do others find that always 2020-2025 category icons were the best looking compared to 2025- except for podcasts icon? (And I do not give a damn for podcasts :D )

kuon 1y ago

I really like the 2010-2015 era. Something seems lost after that.

Waterluvian 1y ago

I’d be very interested in a survey that presents each group in random (non-chronological) order, asking to pick a favourite for each. I went through and I have favourites that are all over, and not just a specific era.

petesergeant 1y ago

I miss 2014.

projektfu 1y ago

I miss the design language of OS X where things were supposed to have the perspective of being viewed from above resting on a flat surface, but with some depth. Most things looked beautiful like that, the things that didn't (Internet Explorer) stuck out. iPhoto, Stickies, Mail, had beautiful icons.

cynicalsecurity 1y ago

It's progressively got worse.

tempodox 1y ago

No doubt about it, the icons from the early 2000s up until 2012 are the ones I generally still like best, especially in this direct comparison with the later ones. The later ones are not exactly bad, but they just lack the panache.

smusamashah 1y ago

Unrelated but I wish Mac one day releases 'all new' classic old mac style UI. When they do that, everyone as usual will copy them and some sanity in modern UI world will be restored.

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5350-uiop-1130 1y ago

design by committee: icon version the older ones are much nicer. they have more character and charm. it feels like the work of a human. the new ones are bland, samey, flat, corporate, soulless.

rbanffy 1y ago

My favorite will always be the TextEdit icon with the Think Different text.

akmittal 1y ago

Mac seem to have maintained consistency with most of icons. Windows icons on the other side are all over the place. https://www.howtogeek.com/733912/a-visual-history-of-windows-icons-from-windows-1-to-11/ https://www.howtogeek.com/733912/a-visual-history-of-windows...

ThouYS 1y ago

The Chronicles of Enshittificarnia

joduplessis 1y ago

Almost every one of the 2025 icons look worse. EDIT: And most of them seem to have adopted this bloom effect which just makes them look blurry.

pier25 1y ago

Icons should be first and foremost about usability. It's like the only thing that matters now is following a particular aesthetic (which I personally find ugly but that's besides the point). Most of the new icons are incomprehensible at smaller sizes. Heck some are even incomprehensible at a large size. How are a bunch of color bubbles related to games?

pmontra 1y ago

As a non Mac and non iOS user: Reminders and Games are puzzling (colored dots and bubbles?), Notes was maybe better one iteration ago of not the second oldest one, everything else makes sense. Maps is maybe a definite improvement, at least the last two iterations.

jeberle 1y ago

If BasicAppleGuy is taking requests, I'd love (OK, hate) to see the progression of the XCode hammer icon. It tells a story unto itself. Once a legit carpenter's hammer, now something out of a Fisher-Price toy box. Likewise, similar dismay over the box of Crayolas in the Color Picker. How can someone do that to a UI!?

vlucas 1y ago

Anyone else think the new 2025 icons look... blurry? Not nearly as crisp as the variants just before it.