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

Tahoe is a macOS mis-step on par with Windows 8 or Windows Vista. If you’re from Apple and reading this, my feedback is pretty succinct: “I don’t recommend others upgrade. I wish I didn’t.”

Luckily for Apple, Windows 11 is not exactly in a position to attract switchers.

Let’s see if Apple can turn things around. iOS 8+ did improve on iOS 7’s worst bits.

I swear, this reign of visual artists as dictators has to stop.

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.

I've been at companies were you get severely punished... sometimes fired for subordination for fixing an obviously broken spec by a designer emperor.

It's normal to be "I guess 2+2=5 here, whatever" as if the designer went in a tiny room, had a seance with the divine...

Yo, newsflash, everyone makes mistakes. Failure is when you force them to stay uncorrected.

Compare to Aqua and Platinum where every resizable window/pane had a big square drag target clearly labeled as such with some diagonal lines:

https://guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/system/managers/filema...

https://guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/system/managers/filema...

This post is very well presented and it highlights how absolutely bizarre the latest update was. The video demonstration was also very well done.

I remember a few years ago, people complained when Apple merely made the entire operating system uglier. (Something about a gradient on the battery?) A lot of people would talk hyperbolically ("apple KILLED macos!"), and that's indistinguishable to an outsider when an update like this brings other people out of the woodwork to say, "Hey, these changes are genuinely bizarre and absurd, what happened?"

What's jarring is not even that macOS Tahoe has such weird shapes of windows. What really astonishes me is that nobody seems to have anticipated how users would try to resize windows, and did not reshape the corner drag area (which I would expect to be a quarter-circle, or a quarter-ring along the rounded edge). This can't be a mistake, this can only be deliberate cutting corners by management in order to ship ASAP. And then nobody cared to issue an update.

Verily, the last UI redesign that was based on honest research and watching real users act was WinXP.

This feels like a surprisingly good moment for Linux desktops to position themselves as real alternatives and actually gain ground.

MacOS Tahoe has been heavily criticized for its UI decisions, especially Liquid Glass, which many people feel actively hurts usability rather than improving it. On the other side, Windows keeps piling on user-hostile features, dark patterns, and friction that increasingly frustrate power users and regular users alike.

Distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, and others have mature desktops, solid performance, and fewer design decisions that get in the user’s way.

I honestly cannot remember another moment where both major desktop platforms were being questioned this openly at the same time. If Linux is ever going to take advantage of dissatisfaction at scale, this feels like it.

Does anyone know if Stephen Lemay replacing Dye will potentially "save" the increasing mess that is OSX, at least UX wise, or is it more of a meaningless figurehead swap in a big org?

Tahoe is tragically bad by almost every UX measure, and following various Apple subreddits i wonder if they just don't care anymore - since the majority of people are shocked by the amateurishness of both bugs and design choices in the latest update - this comes on top of literally every major bug being ignored from the alpha to releasing anyway then continuing to ignore feedback.

The old linux/X11 method of meta+dragging to move or resize windows from anywhere in the window, not having to hunt for the edges of the window, is so obviously superior to Windows and MacOS it's downright silly. They both should have swallowed their pride and implemented this 30 years ago.

This behavior is similar to Windows 11. You have to position the mouse just outside the window. It is non-intuitive and awful.

These are problems humanity solved over 35 years ago (see NeXTSTEP). Why are these designers breaking basic features that worked for over 35 years?

I love how this information is produced. Succinct, excellent and simple visuals, clear argument, and a solid amount of sarcasm and cynicism to keep us entertained and to provide an air of senior technical person.

As much as I like to hate on a new OS like the next person, I think it's worth pointing out we're probably not seeing the full picture here:

When trying to reproduce the problem as shown in the article by resizing the Safari window currently displaying the article, the drag cursor changes shape at the visible border of the window, not the shadow and consequently, dragging works as expected.

https://youtu.be/kNovjjvYP8g

This might be an application- or driver specific issue, not necessarily a common Tahoe issue.

I noticed Apple’s software quality decline the moment they committed to 1-year release cycles. Because an x.0 release inevitably has issues, it offers less than a year of stability (sometimes only a few months if it takes until x.4 to be fully stable) before things get broken again in y.0. And because Apple stops signing old versions pretty quickly, you’re often stuck on an unstable new version if you take the risk and upgrade.

Additionally, it is hard on all developers (Apple included) to release updates for all of its many platforms on the same day, which IMO reduces software quality across the ecosystem.

(Apple also has the luxury of only supporting the latest OS versions with its software. Customers often expect third-party developers to support a wider range of OS versions and devices than Apple does.)

Why does the UI have to change all the time? Can't they just keep it the same?

If cars were like computers, the steering wheel would be in a different place after every maintenance check.

Anyway, I'm on Linux, using Gnome Classic as my WM, and I don't have these stupid "everything is suddenly different now" issues.

I usually find these apple design nitpick articles tiresome but the gif of the guy grabbing at the plate was hilarious and also accurate about user expectations

I’ve noticed a gradual increase in my annoyance with technology over the last couple of years. A lot of things now just feel irritating and not-quite-right.

Eg on my iPhone filling in a password sometime is kinda blanks the screen while I’m trying to fill the password in.

My keyboard is absolutely terrible.

Lots of other little annoyances I can’t remember right now.

This window thing is another good example of just not enough thought being put into things.

My biggest peeve with macOS Tahoe is the App Launcher redesign.

It seems like a clear regression in usability. By moving from a high-density, full-screen experience to a constrained, scrolling window, they’ve increased the interaction cost for launching apps via the mouse. It feels like a 'unification tax. Sacrificing desktop utility to align with non-Desktop modalilties. Does anyone see a functional upside here, or is this purely aesthetic consistency?

Tahoe is proof is that UX for desktop has finally jumped the shark.

In all my years using computers I have never been so disappointed so profoundly by a 36 gigabyte operating system upgrade.

Something that baffles me about macOS: the pointer bug. I’ve been aware of this for ages—as far as I can recall, since Snow Leopard; maybe others have insight—and it still hasn't been fixed.

Simply put: the pointer doesn't always switch context properly. So, you'll have it hovered over a resize control and it will refuse to change from the default pointer. Or you'll be working, and suddenly notice the pointer is a 'drag' one, even though nothing's being dragged and nothing draggable is active.

I would love anyone with any knowledge, especially an (ex-)insider, to shed light on this issue.

I find it very ironic that Apple's Mac hardware is the best it's ever been, and some of the best (if not the best) in the entire industry, yet their software team seems intent on burning down their entire reputation. Maybe they think that's better than getting fired over the laughingstock that is Apple Intelligence

Rounded corners are ironically symbolic of the dumbing-down that's affected the software industry. Instead of the sharp precision of 90-degree corners, we get vague curves that don't make sense anymore as though the corners have been worn away.

Well prepared article, and the window resizing pisses me off also!

For practical reasons I am stuck inside Apple’s macOS garden, but I wanted to share a few things that at least make me feel content using macOS:

First, I have at least two VPS systems so via mosh/ssh/tmux I always have Linux dev environments, the ability to use throwaway VPS for sandboxing, etc.

Second, when actually working on macOS I stick with tools that make me happy: Emacs and terminal windows, a uv-based Python enviroment and tuned-up Common Lisp, Haskel, and Clojure dev environments.

Anyway, I am just sharing my ‘macOS therapy’ - hope it helps someone here.

I think it is really telling of the quality of the UI when the best way to use it is after enabling a bunch of accessibility settings. I found the Liquid Glass color background effect make some websites unusable on Safari due to the background becoming the same color as the text.

I know most wont care but to me the biggest red flag was when they changed the cursor stem to be like the windows cursor stem, it's angled geometrically correct but when you actually stare at it then it looks wonky and wrong. It's one of those things an amateur designer would assume is correct because theoretically it is but a talented designer knows the angle has to be off to feel correct.

Should we crowdfund some billboards in Cupertino expressing how big a misstep we collectively think Tahoe/iOS 26/Liquid glAss was?

Apple is at the point where they need a Jobs-ian correction again.

Steve Jobs would have had a fit over this product line. As '97 era Jobs put it, "The products suck! There's no sex in them anymore!"

My modest proposal for Apple diehards (especially employees) is to feed all the data that exists on Jobs into a multi-modal model so that Apple can hear just how much their shit sucks from Jobs' digital ghost.

A good starting point would be the https://stevejobsarchive.com/

That egg scramble plate GIF is pure gold.

I use easy-move-resize [1] to resize windows from anywhere inside the area of the window, using a modifier key. In my case I like using cmd + middle mouse button + drag.

This is standard in Gnome and a must for me back when I switch to MacOS for work.

[1] https://github.com/dmarcotte/easy-move-resize

I downgraded back to Sequoia after 1 day.

I have no idea what Apple were thinking, this OS is basically unusable, and extremely ugly.

I hope I won't somehow be forced to upgrade at some point.

Apple needs to start thinking about their users again instead of shareholders.

Ugh, this caught me as well.

And it's not just Tahoe. The various iOS/WatchOS updates from the fall are all broken in one way or another.

For example, WatchOS's music app can't play more than 2-3 songs from a downloaded playlist without crashing.

The WatchOS Outlook app won't launch (which also means the watch face complication is broken).

iOS Safari's search bar/address bar periodically freezes after you enter a search term. If you click the bar, the search term disappears, so you have re-type it.

When resizing, I expect to drag from the edge of a window. This is exactly how it works in macOS Tahoe, with a sufficient drag zone on the both sides. The only "strangeness" is that the drag zone extends further outside the window in the corner zone. IMO this is nice.

All that said, I REALLY would love to have a hotkey combo I can beep pressed down to resize anywhere over the window. Just like in many Unix/Linux window managers.

Liquid glass is a piece of crap from Apple. I didn’t update my iPhone, nor my Mac. I will hold for as long as possible, and will consider switching away from the apple ecosystem if they do not address this fiasco of an update.

This is very well presented and I hope Apple sees it. And this is the kind of thing that I don’t think would fly with Steve Jobs, most likely with very harsh reaction. Attention to the details was a big part of Apple’s DNA much because of him, and it’s a bit sad to see that eroding.

The whole article is tongue in cheek. And I struggle to find any comment here that would actually verify and confirm (or not) the results of the author.

So here I am, random hacker news links verifier.

Scrolling to the image below "So, for example, grabbing it here does not work:" text and reproducing the issue with a small caveat: just moving cursor 1 (ONE) pixel right turns the cursor into the "diagonal resizing mode" cursor. Overall, the resizing area of the window corner is comfortably bigger than the author draws. Dragging empty space outside the rounded corner is weird but what isn't in today's user interface designs?

All in all have never experienced difficulties resizing windows in macos.

Miss the times of windows 95/98 and macos 9 (as some other commenters here) when OS UI was designed by humans and for humans and everything was explicitly clear including the area for window resizing.

FWIW: option double click sny corner to make any window full-screen without going into full screen mode.

Double click any side or corner to move it to the edge of the screen, and hold down option to make the effect symmetric.

I've used every release of macOS since the Mac OS X Public Beta in late 2000. Until now. I'm skipping 26 altogether and hoping 27 tones down the worst excesses of the Alan Dye era.

That's genuine 2000s Linux experience there. Ironic that these days Linux provides a more refined and consistent UX than both MacOS and Windows.

Great first blog post! The corner highlighting in the gifs and images was very clear. Also, I really like the formatting of how you inserted the gifs inline with border radius and shadow effect: I haven't seen blogs with your styling and it was refreshing.

Great article.

I put a Teams meeting on my second monitor. I put Teams on my first monitor. I minimize Teams to look at something in a browser on the first monitor. The Teams meeting on the second monitor minimizes, too.

Mac window management UX is dogshit in a lot of different ways. There are a lot of problems that I either have to just deal with, or try to find some third party app to solve in lieu of Apple actually caring about UX again.

The little video seems really weird to me, the author is clearly trying to resize outside of the border?? I just tried it myself and the resize zone feels more than reasonable: https://imgur.com/iip8DIL there's like 5mm on each side of the actual border to grab and resize!

This controversy could have been avoided if the GUI changes in Tahoe had been opt-in only. In other words, the Sequoia GUI should have remained the default, with the option of choosing to switch to Liquid Glass.

Never noticed this change, but unlike the blogger I never try to grab the window inside the corner. I tend to aim for the edge itself.

That's funny. I perceive resizing windows as easier now, because the cursor change is more dramatic when it gets in the resizing area. Pre-Tahoe, the diagonal one in particular looked almost the same, except with an arrow end in the bottom. Now it splits into two triangles.

I still operate off muscle memory, so it's not actually easier or harder, of course.

I don’t have this issue at all. I have a very generous amount of space to grab the corner with and it changes mouse pointer to the diagonal arrow.

Edit: despite all the negative feedback, I’m quite happy with Tahoe and I enjoy the visual changes. I think some of the subtler changes is more intuitive and Spotlight’s improvement is quite nice.

I have a few computers. Win, MacOS, Fedora, and iOS for mobile.

Out of all the things, the UX I cannot forgive is:

1. Hold Siri button

2. say "Create appointment at 3PM tomorrow."

The result is that no alert/notification/warning of this appointment occurs, unless I open the appointment and create the alert manually, at least at time of event. I cannot imagine any use case where one would create an appointment that required no reminder.

If I had created this appointment via Gmail or even Outlook, and synced... then there are notifications.

My point here is that the UX rot at Apple is not new. I am curious as to how this rot begins at BigOrg, and how it can be cured, if it can be addressed. I have never worked at BigOrg, so I really don't get it. Is there some missing UX role in the c-suite? How does my gripe, or Tahoe... ever happen? I understand how it happens at MSFT, but is this just what happens at all BigOrgs, eventually?

Modern interfaces are digging a bigger and bigger gap between UI and UX, while UI-UX is actually a balancing act.

Let's face it, new glass UI is stunning - not for everyone's taste, like everything in art - but it has the Wow effect. Fresh look, transparency, new colors, wow! Same goes to many, not all, web sites, apps, etc.

On the UX side, with some exceptions, it is a disaster, though. Why on Earth would I want an ill-readable text behind a semi-transparent panel? Windows that only use 90% of my OLED screen I paid for? Do I want every web app invent its own navigation? Not in my worst dreams.

I like the new UIs, designers do an excellent job. Now, we must also bring back the UX people! Real user-oriented UX, not dark patterns UX that trick users to sign up for services they don't need. Its a pity, the latter actually killed the UX domain I think.

I recently learned about a shortcut you can enable for moving windows, is something similar around for resizing? On linux I do this via alt + left click and alt + right click

`NSWindowShouldDragOnGesture` setting allows you to drag windows at any point if you hold ⌃⌘

`defaults write -g NSWindowShouldDragOnGesture -bool YES`

After using Tahoe for a week, I've found I leave it in my bag. Window operations are painful and it feels like a bad try at a tablet os without a stylus or touch screen. Fortunately, my Mac is now the auxiliary laptop and I can do everything I need to do with my linux laptop.

Thank God this is not just me. I thought I was going insane.

Has text selection also changed? When I drag a block and copy it, I often find I've missed the first character. It's happening almost every time and I swear this wasn't happening to me before.

From "Safari 15 on Mac OS, a user interface mess" https://morrick.me/archives/9368 from 5 years ago:

--- start quote ---

The utter user-interface butchery happening to Safari on the Mac is once again the work of people who put iOS first. People who by now think in iOS terms. People who view the venerable Mac OS user interface as an older person whose traits must be experimented upon, plastic surgery after plastic surgery, until this person looks younger. Unfortunately the effect is more like this person ends up looking… weird.

These people look at the Mac’s UI and (that’s the impression, at least) don’t really understand it. Its foundations come from a past that almost seems inscrutable to them. Usability cues and features are all wrinkles to them. iOS and iPadOS don’t have these strange wrinkles, they muse. We must hide them. We’ll make this spectacular facelift and we’ll hide them, one by one. Mac OS will look as young (and foolish, cough) as iOS!

--- end quote ---

At the time it was only Safari that they wanted to "modernize". Now it's the full OS.

Wow, this was so well presented! I almost didn't click on the article since I assumed it would be a meandering explanation about awkward edge cases or something. But this is so clearly and succinctly demonstrated! Amazing work by the author.

Not upgrading my personal iphone/macbook and I wish I didn’t upgrade my work iphone/macbook (unfortunately I had to)

For the first time in 15 years I am considering to not buy apple as my next phone/laptop regardless of the specs.

I highly recommend Moves, which makes it possible to resize with a modifier key drag within any part of the window: https://mikkelmalmberg.com/moves

The rounded corners are stupid to begin with. They are also there in a maximised window, meaning you now always have a slight visible border around your app and see the background in the corners.

Absolutely stupid design

I don't really care if it's because of bizarro designer hegemony, device unification, cost cutting, bad developers or something else, but it's astonoshing how far the desktop paradigm has fallen (and not just in MacOS). What baffles me the most about things like this isn't that crap slips through, it's that crap accumulates in an alarming rate and that apparently tech-savvy people aren't just seemingly fine with stuff like this, but will happily step up and defend it.

Often on HN the comments are a better read than the original article.

This time the article is so good -- clear, funny, succinct, accurate -- that it's a better read than the comments.

Been using this for a few years, works like a charm: https://rectangleapp.com/

I have realized that I only need 3 window sizes: maximized, minimized, or half-of-the-screen vertically. Rectangle [1] is a great way to get key combinations for resizing and moving my windows around. It works well across multiple monitors and it's free. I didn't even notice this issue, but I see how it could be problematic for people.

https://rectangleapp.com/

A lot of the design changes over the last decade seem largely Jobs-ian marketing driven. The round corners and friendly surfaces were useful in bringing the mass market into computing. Now that computer use is ubiquitous, it will be interesting to see if we start migrating back to the way the original programmers envisioned things like always-visible scrollbars and obvious click targets.

We've spent billions. Are UIs a lot better off than Windows 3.1?

Maybe I'm too old and every modern computer is a marvel to me, but as someone switching between win/macos/linux all these complaints amuse me. While in windows I'm using powertoys and I can move/resize windows using any space inside a window. It's the same with linux/gnome - a couple of config settings. Then, when I started using macos I looked for a similar solution - found BetterSnapTool and just started using it.

I've upgraded because I wanted to have access to the latest OS features but I got to admit I'm not a fan of the UI either. I have an M3 Max with 128GB and sometimes my computer UI feels sluggish. What is even going on?

My biggest beef is there seems to be a lot of bugs in Safari. If I open Discord and switch tabs a few minutes later the tab is dead and a refresh doesn't work you need to retype the discord address again on the tab window.

On a full screen safari If I click on the share button by accident and don't pick any of the options the address bar for that tab becomes uneditable.

In IOS long pressing a video would show options such as opening on a new tab or downloading the file. Now for certain websites the options show for a split second before it switches to the full screen player.

There are many other annoying bugs but those are the most annoying ones.

BTW it's also amusing how not only iCloud doesn't flag a false Apple billing phishing message as junk but Apple """Inteligence""" will highlight it as priority. https://imgur.com/a/HaHxsUR

I always stay one major version behind so I only get security patches after an initial, yearly upgrade. Not experiencing Tahoe myself yet, I felt that perhaps the UI issues people are talking about were a tad overstated, but the example in the article states it very plainly.

I'm taken aback. Change the look, that's fair enough. But it should have some usability testing for this kind of thing before it goes out the door.

I have been using Moom for a long time for especially two things:

- moving windows without holding from any particular position

- resizing windows without grabbing a particular corner

Life changing small things.

Apple really screwed the pooch on this last set of UI upgrades. They have been known as UI experts for decades and then they produced this unusable mess. I’ve upgraded my iPhone and iPad, but I’ve been delaying upgrading MacOS, hoping that they will fix most of the mess before I switch. If I was Tim Cook, I’d be looking for a scalp. This is as bad as the butterfly keyboard mess in terms of usability, IMO.

Wow that's an insane bug and I'm hoping it is a bug.

I'm glad I saw this blog post. I'm not going to upgrade until stuff like this gets addressed.

Who asked for those rounded windows anyway? They create so many problems; every app has its own border-radius, and it wastes precious screen space...

Use rectangle and this will never be a problem for you.

https://rectangleapp.com/

Are we reaching the death of UI design? Feel like we're now at the point where being mid-bad makes something one of the best for many.

I miss Windows 7 and OS X.

Overlapping windows seem like a dated skeumorphic paradigm at this point. I almost never want to see just part of a window.

For a long time, I've found that either full screen or tiling (driven by keyboard shortcuts) is a far less frustrating a way to interact with windows, so I almost never use window-resizing. Window resizing is also horrendous when you try to do it with a touchpad.

I must be the minority that barely noticed any changes after upgrading to Tahoe.

Well, moving/dragging windows on windows 11 (earlier?) is no picnic either, with the scrollbar nazis having decided, that windows title bars must be the next to die. Apparently this is all intentional, and app developers are encouraged to leave tiny drag-concentration-camp areas somewhere in what used to be the titlebar, which today's presumably incredibly IT savvy users are then expected to decode with no problems whatsoever. Well paint me green and call me a dinosaur, because to me it looks like each app chooses to interpret those 'guidelines' in its own way, and often in a way I fail to decode reliably.

In my head, I can hear GPT laugh hysterically, while it explains to me that I can just continue to use alt-SPACE to bring up the MOVE system menu, if I am overwhelmed, while it gleefully assures me that MSFT has 'no current plans to get rid of that feature' (which we know is Kremlin-speak for 'the system menu is NEXT brother'.

Also the resize cursor is completely unreliable, the cursor often doesn't change to the resize one when the mouse is over the correct resize areg. So it's even harder to tell if your cursor is in the right place before clicking. If you click in the wrong place it can have frustrating consequences, like activating another window or even clicking something inside it.

Of all the Linux features to copy, they chose this.

This complaint is made with a level of consideration and effort that Apple should aspire to when they make the OS itself. Bravo!

Seems to me Apple is getting ready to make the black arrow mouse pointer obsolete.

In the next generation or two iPads and MacBooks are going to essentially merge as a product line.

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple abandons classic macOS (w/ Terminal and a filesystem) all together. To continue to support developers all they need is a tweaked Xcode for Apple dev and their version of WSL for everything else. All the parts are already in macOS/iPadOS (native virtualization and containerization).

iMac and Mac Pro are all but dead now too. Mac Mini and Mac Studio will be the only desktop options and will be bought by people who are Millenials and older or ML/AI praciticioners. We may even see a special AI/Local LLM Mac Studio that would be the equivalent of mac pro of the ai era.

Your fingers will need these big round edges to grab. They may let you use a bluetooth mouse but they aren't going to cater their UX to you.

They year of the Linux desktop has come as commercial desktop OS's die.

I have been using Rectangle and Spectacle before it. Wanting to resize windows like in this article isn't natural to me anymore.

What does it take for a megacorp to admit a mistake and correct it???

I think it all boils down to this one question. It’s not complicated.

I thought this was going to talk about the struggle of sizing windows to arbitrary widths. I often try to keep slack and my email windows side by side and Mac OS seems to go out of its way these days to frustrate my efforts and maximize the one window or the other.

The resize corners grab area is also very frustrating though.

Hopefully getting a true UX practitioner in as Head of Design will help avoid these incredibly obvious usability issues.

Ref: https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job

I have not had any problems resizing. Honestly, I think my resizing got more precise with Tahoe. In earlier versions I had sometimes wrongly clicked for horizontal and vertical resizing. It's better now for me at least.

And I do not get why people so upset with Tahoe. I really really love it.

tribunals

the cherry on top is the delay between the drag start and the window begining to resize

I just want to add that designers are usually bullied by upper management into designing beautiful things that make upper managers look good with their friends. No matter how impractical those beautiful things are.

Edit: Oh, and the "beauty" is in the eye of the managers.

Probably off topic question [coming from someone who spends 99.99% in i3+iOS+maximed windows in W11]: when do you need to have overlapping windows, or even windows that you resize by hand? Windows should take a zone in your screen. Punto. Even W11 has understood that by now.

The hand grabbing the plate made me audibly laugh

I've spent months building a proper window manager for macOS, and the fundamental problem isn't the UI — it's that macOS has no proper window management API.

Third-party apps have to use the Accessibility API, which was designed for screen readers, not window manipulation. Some windows simply refuse to be resized below certain thresholds, and there's no way to query the minimum size in advance. You request 500px width, get 800px back, no error.

The real question is: will Apple ever provide a proper public API, or will this remain a cat-and-mouse game with Accessibility permissions?

This is why Steve Jobs demoed software. Watch when he unveils Aqua, there’s a couple of slides of the lickable visuals and then he sits down and demos it. He clicks and taps and shows it working. Because that’s what you the user will do.

He’ll show boring things like resizing windows because those things matter to you trying and if he cares about resizing windows to this degree then imagine what else this product has.

Apple today hides behind slick motion graphics introductions that promise ideal software. That’s setting them up to fail because no one can live up to a fantasy. Steve showed working software that was good enough to demo and then got his team to ship it.

I would love to go back to more skeumorphic system interfaces. The layered panes of glass metaphor has been a pain in the ass from a usability perspective from the get go, enough so that I cheered to hear of Alan Dye leaving Apple.

I haven’t had to move the mouse near a window corner to resize it in years — I just hold down the Shift and Fn keys and the window under my mouse resizes as I move it. Strongly recommend getting BetterTouchTool for this - changed my life.

It's not just that I haven't upgraded my Mac, but also I'm actively avoiding buying a new or refurbished one until (if) they fix all this stuff, because there will be no way to downgrade to an earlier version…

The cursor changes when you get to resizing corners and edges, so I don't suffer from the problem pointed out in the original article. However, I do find something annoying: sometimes when I'm resizing (or maybe dragging) a window, it gets expanded to fill the whole screen.

I think that kind of behaviour ought to be controlled by the green dot at the top-left of windows, not by some particular mouse movements.

There was a time when the changes to the mac UI were quite good, or at least not annoying. Sometimes it seems as though they are changing stuff just to change stuff.

It’s a massive UI failure, design over function, something Jobs would have never tolerated.

I’m glad other people are pointing this out. At first I thought my eyes were going. It’s especially bad with the magic mouse for some reason.

Apple's window management has always sucked, with the absurdly crippled resizing being a longstanding embarrassment.

Into the 2000s, the only way you could resize a window on the Mac was to drag its lower-right corner. That is it. NO other corner, and no edge. So if the lower-right corner happened to be off-screen because the window was bigger than the screen, you were kind of screwed. You had to fiddle with the maximize & restore gumdrops to trick the OS into resizing the window to make that ONE corner accessible. Then you had to move the corner, then roll all the way up to the title bar and move the window, then roll back down to the corner... until you had the window sized and positioned as you wanted.

When Apple grudgingly added proper window-resizing, it made it as obscure as possible. Since Apple remains ignorant of the value of window FRAMES, there is no obvious zone within which the resizing cursor should take effect. There is no visual target for the user. This has always made an important and fundamental part of a windowed GUI a ridiculous pain in the ass on Macs.

And as the author here notes, it has gotten even worse. Not only will the window often refuse to resize, but you'll wind up activating whatever app lies behind the window you're trying to resize... hiding the one you were dealing with.

Wait I literally thought the ChatGPT desktop app has been broken for months (both dragging and resizing the window has been super inconsistent).

Could it be that I just need to drag the window outside of the pane..?

I agree it makes using my computer worse, but I'd like to see how far Apple is willing to go here.

They won't do perfectly circular windows, that would be crazy— but I think we all know they can go further than this.

The era of Apple design with great care to little details is long gone.

I don't have this problem, and I can't seem to reproduce it.

I'm hoping something like this takes off on FreeBSD: https://github.com/gershwin-desktop/gershwin-desktop

I've only owned macbook laptops but have run Linux at work since 2002. The lack of cohesion and non-stop changes in Linux is just as tiring and this MacOS Tahoe stuff. Gnome 3 cared just as little for users. FreeBSD + KDE Plasma is pretty good now, but lacks feeling and design.

No one serious ever talks about "upgrading" to Tahoe without the quotes. I hope Apple are seriously embarrassed about this and determined to mend their ways.

I've noticed the occasional momentary failure to resize a window, and this probably explains it, but it's worth noting that the cursor changes to a "resize arrows" cursor when it enters the resizing zone, so as long as I'm paying attention I know exactly when I can or can't click and drag to resize. It is preposterous that much of the zone actually lies outside of the visible bounds of the window.

Good point. I'm not on Mac anymore but this would really tick me off too.

In fact I am not on Mac anymore because with every release there were more features I didn't use (because they only work within the Apple ecosystem) and more and more things that ticked me off. Eventually I decided it wasn't for me anymore, after being on the platform for more than 15 years. Oh well. I am very happy on KDE now.

It's bad but not as bad as Windows 11. I swear I have a 2x2 pixel grid on my 4k monitor where I can grab the window resize handle, and it doesn't align to where the window's actual corner is at all.

Even worse: because the min/max/close buttons are all shunted into the top right corner, if you're trying to resize from the top right and you miss, you close the window.

All that 'glass' eye candy is a sheer sign that looks is more important to Apple than usability. And I don't even care for how it looks.

IMO: There should be 2 update channels, Security updates(MANDATORY), <ALL OTHER UPDATES>(no reason to be mandatory). end of discussion.

If you pay attention to the cursor, instead of aiming at the corner of the window, the UI gives you great feedback of where you should click: when the cursor changes to 2 arrowheads pointing diagonally or orthagonally to the window, resizing is available. Why aim for inside the window? I do think the expanded corner radius of Tahoe sucks badly.

This is the sort of thing that apple (used to?) take pride in doing well. e.g. new hires in orientation would be asked if there was anything 'special' about their offer letter and it was a thicker more premium kind of paper. Emphasizing the magical 'feel' that differentiated apple products.

Tahoe is a nightmare. I’m Literally not buying a new Mac because of it.

Dye destroyed macOS. I don’t know what they do, but they have to backtrack.

This is the first UX issue I have seen since moving to MacOS 26 that I have been able to reliably recreate and haven’t been able to just attribute to a subjective opinion. I never knew about before this post mainly because any window resizing I do is via rectangle. It’s definitely a flaw they need to address.

IMHO, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was the pinnacle of Mac OS X. When I "upgraded" to 10.7, they lost me. It was then that I switched to Linux full time, and I haven't looked back. Every now and then I do pull out my Wallstreet with Mac OS 9 on it so I can relive the heyday of old school computing.

Those big radius borders are a waste of space just for the sake of fashion. Form follows function not the other way around.

Normally bug reports should include the exact version and machine.

I personally don't see this behavour on Tahoe 26.2 and an M2 MBP.

Its not a great update and hopefully with Dye out they will make some changes, but personally I don't have this issue.

What's going on at Apple? I don't own any Apple devices but the intuitive UI is their biggest selling point (even if a colleague had to explain that I have to drag the program to some window to install it).

This seems like a very strange thing to release for a company that's supposed to care about the details.

I am glad that I restrained myself from buying a macbook and went for a thinkpad. I think I saw icon issue on Tahoe not long ago on HN.

I know that macbook has been crushing laptop market with their M chip. Macbook is amazing for sure. I very much enjoy using it at work. But for personal computing, I need Linux setup.

Is this a monitor resolution or custom HiDPI scaling issue or something? I genuinely do not have their issue with resizing windows, nor do my tolerances seem anything as odd as they claim to have.

Seems like most the attention this is getting is people wanting to grave dance Apple at any chance given.

This is a fake issue. You should just be using window snapping which finally is included directly in the os

I started with an Apple Lisa. I’ve never enjoyed Apple products less than I do right now. And there were some rough days in the 90s! I switched from a AW Ultra 3 to a Garmin. Considering an S26 because of the semi-matte screen. The Mac, though, I probably can’t replace, but man Tahoe/Liquid Glass sucks.

It all started with a dumb move to replace input language icon flags with text.

Apple keeps being a hardware company unfortunately.

Their software is not nearly as good as it could and should be if they had real competition.

Windows/linux is not a competition since they dropped bootcamp. Because that implies switching to a subpar hardware.

Steve Jobs would never have let this ship.

Tahoe’s UI is a disaster. Giant buggy controls. Sad to see where macOS has ended up. Apple used to have so much attention to detail in their UI design - now it looks like it’s “anything goes”.

It's not unusable, but this whole update cycle hasn't offered much in the way of improvements. It's basically a bad UI, Safari updates (which shouldn't be coupled to the OS), a phone app and additions to system apps I don't touch.

When performing the resize action on any windows, the cursor changes to the resize cursor. The only time it doesn't change to the resize cursor is when you're not focused on that specific window. I don't really see the frustration this article is trying to portray.

I can't remember the last time I resized a window. Does everyone not already install Magnet or an alternative first-thing to emulate the impeccable DWM?

https://dwm.suckless.org/

It's obvious, the new Apple UI (and Liquid Glass) is optimized for visionOS, not macOS or iOS.

I game on windows because of anti cheat software requirements. Windows is garbage. The windows + tab order is never consistent. Not having a good built in shell and don't get me started if you ever have to edit the registry for anything. Super poor experience.

Question for people who have installed Tahoe. Of the regions in the article, which bring window focus / key window? Is it area clipped to the round rect? Or is it similarly weird?

If there was a background window in that area outside the corner, would it receive the click event?

Window-resize radii seem to be a fixable problem (make it a user setting!) on many OS's. I can only -wish- that my Linux distro's resize radius wasn't -painfully- small. I've probably wasted HOURS fishing around until the red icon popped up.

So… it’s a good thing that the design emperor is poached by Meta, yeah?

Funny enough, I never suffered this because my mouse pointer has always been configured to be comically large. So I had adapt with inaccurate click area for many many years due to my own cause.

Let’s also not forget the introduction of unnecessary and confusing icons: https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/

OSx updates have turned into a "lottery". Typically your machine goes down 50% in performance, and starts acting like a Commodore from 1982.

They keep on asking me to upgrade to some new OS, I consistently keep on telling it to sodd off!

See: [shipping the org chart](https://betterthanrandom.substack.com/p/shipping-the-org-cha...)

The share buttons on iOS seem to fail like 15% of the time as well. Randomly.

I don't know what you have, it works on my machine. Just tried it. I can grab the rounded corner (+- few px inside/outside). I can't grab the corner like shown in the gif. I am on Tahoe 26.2 (25C56)

This 100%

Please please please make this better Apple. Or just give us an option for square windows.

Result of UI people work on UX. As an industry we need to de-hyphenate UI and UX.

I just remember all the people who will tell you that Apple (and Google, and Microsoft) have teams of people testing this stuff therefore it's great and your opinion that there is a problem is wrong. >:(

If I would be running this company I would imagine a person, or the entire group of persons, who implemented this were nothing else but saboteurs sent by a competitor. I would fire the whole team immediately.

I wonder if it's because there's a hidden agenda of introducing a touch friendly interface where pixel perfection doesn't matter. Maybe the rumors are true about a touchscreen MacBook.

Apple is completely lost, exhibit #3281.

Also, years after reporting, you still need to pause typing for one second after switching keyboard language via keyboard shortcut, otherwise the original language stays selected.

These are the sorts of small details that I remember Apple being known for and putting a lot of thought into, often times a little obsessive.

Not to say this isn't the case anymore but

Not updating to Tahoe and hoping they make a major change for whatever is next. My M1 is getting a bit long in the tooth, and was thinking about upgrading to an M5, but not if it comes with Tahoe.

I would highly recommend Magnets to anyone users who prefer shortcuts anyway: https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/

Seems very clear now that we are going to see touch screen MacBooks. Which is a very silly idea. But explains why the UI "snaps" like an iPad, and everything is designed for touch.

Flipping things around as I see it as a desktop Linux user: "OMG this one thing doesn't work in macOS, looks like 2026 wont be the year of the macOS desktop!"

Apple does not want you to resize windows. They want to set the window size for you so don't need to re-adjust it. Apple always knows what's best for the customer.

Omg, I though I could only just grab that super tiny edge. Turns out can grab the "air" around it. Thanks for the heads up, makes life a lot easier!

This app I found to fix the problem on my system: https://mikkelmalmberg.com/moves

I'm on macOS 15.4 on a 2021 M1 Max. I haven't rebooted for months.

Is it possible for me to update to whatever was released just before "Tahoe", or will it just put me on that now?

I’ve updated my phone and now it can’t talk to MacOS and I don’t want to upgrade. I can’t imagine much about sharing internet or whatever has changed between these OS versions…

I tried to resize my already mostly fullscreen window now, and I cant, as it always triggers the hot corner for notes. I guess I have to have full sized windows then.

I tried this resizing (also on Tahoe) and I can't reproduce this. It has a fairly well sized area around that corner in which I can click and drag to resize.

Just this week it also dawned on me the impracticality of the large corners after twice in a row failing to grab the corner of a window. Tahoe is absolute amateur hour.

i am positive there's a bug in tahoe where the login screen passsword text input is waiting for something to settle in the background, either with my weird unicomp keyboard, a remap i do, or even the external monitors.

my password is always incorrect unless i count to about 20 or 30 seconds. once i have 'redocked' for the day, unlocking it subsequently doesnt have the requirement. but every dock insertion, it comes back.

That looks so ridiculous that it has me wondering how hard of a technical change it would’ve been to change that drag target, and if they just punted on it.

Unrelated but iOS 26 is so bad and janky that I've finally decided to switch to an android phone. I hate it so much. Thank god I haven't upgraded to Tahoe.

At least it is not as bad as on Windows 11. There the resize area is inside or outside the visible frame depending on which side and which corner of the window.

Tahoe is the first macOS I'm planning to skip if I can

I started using aerospace, a window tiling manager a long time ago and will never look back. Once you get used to the keybindings there's nothing better.

There is no option to simply decrease the corner radius?!

I noticed this and modified the .car to just make window corners sharp. It looks a bit jarring, but functionally speaking, it feels like a big improvement.

The OS which requires you to click in order to update also makes it, uh, challenging to resize windows. Sublime. A tiling manager would never.

I'm shocked this update was pushed by the same company that created the HIG. I guess companies really do keep growing to the point of mediocrity.

First failing autocorrect on iOS, now this... Love how it is solved in Omarchy Linux - Super Key + Right Mouse Button anywhere on the window.

Made a decision on not to upgrade midway installation. Feels like it payed off. And I am on M2 256 GBs so it would have been worst for me.

My first reaction was that it never bothered me, but now I realize I also didn't update to Tahoe yet. I'll wait a bit longer...

It is case of Corporate Memphis induced design, SF people increasingly detachment from common sense, and general sign of societal decline.

I've had the same struggle whenever I tried some Linux distro in my life. I don't know why but resizing windows is so fiddly.

I'm on Tahoe and really not seeing this issue.

I'm one of those who instinctively click OUTSIDE the windows. I guess your instincts depend how long have you worked on a Mac.

Interesting, in the era of productivity tools I just realised I don't re-size windows anymore. I just use Swish or Spectacle.

Again it’s becoming painfully clear that people at Apple do not use their own systems in any meaningful way.

Windows is following the same path. In both it’s getting harder and harder to tell the window boundary and where to drag it resize.

I’ve been more and more confused by Apple’s product positioning for MacOS. They still have a sizeable “pro” (emphasis not sarcasm) market that spans across a very aspirational set of careers: Film, YouTubers, developers, photographers, artists, musicians, etc.

Considering how many people only buy a MacBook PRO no matter what they plan on doing with it, they really need to keep the actual salary-earning pros happy with it or else it’ll lose all credibility. A Mac in a recording booth has a look to it that sells well, but that aesthetic won’t last if you stop seeing them. Being an effective tool for the pro minority should honestly be the priority for MacOS, even at the cost of making it incongruous from iPadOS/iOS. *

* disclaimer: what do I know honestly haha, I’m sure they’ll print money anyway.

Apples products are still the best on the market, but if they keep this up; they will sooner or later become irrelevant.

I'm so glad I'm still on sequoia!

I just saw the upgrade notification and thought to myself "no, thank you".

Still running Sonoma on my MBP and iOS17 on my phone.

I have a multitude of complaints about Tahoe, many of which others have already pointed out. One more thing that doesn't get mentioned as often but probably should is their new placement of the volume / brightness level UI which pops up when you change those two.

It used to be in the middle of the screen and worked just fine. But then someone thoughts of putting it exactly where browser tabs usually are and I _constantly_ find myself in a situation where I change the volume and try to click on a tab that this UI is on top of. Then I need to move my mouse outside the UI otherwise it stays there, and wait for it to disappear before I can change tabs. It's infuriating.

I never had this problem for ages. As I use hammerspoon with hotkeys to resize and move the apps between displays.

And the HiDPi/retina issues with 32” Dell monitors for example especially when using rdp is super annoying.

> Since upgrading to macOS Tahoe, I’ve noticed that quite often my attempts to resize a window are failing.

That should nudge users away from this rather primitive method of window resizing using tiny 19px corners and instead set up a productivity app where your can use the full 33% of the window size (so conveniently huge! and of course customizable) to resize via an extra trigger (for example, using a modifier key)

(nice plate picture joke!)

This is clearly an issue, and it isn't even the biggest issue on macOS Tahoe UI.

one of my biggest fears is to upgrade my mb air by mistake will stay on sequoia as longer I can

I had a failing work laptop that had bad battery power and finally just said fine, give me a Mac. The battery and build quality is the only good thing I can say about it. I absolutely hate the OS, despite using MacOS in the past and felt only mildly inconvenienced. It is still amazing to me how unwieldy it is to make keyboard shortcuts, have tiling that isn't embarrassingly bad, and something that is visually consistent. Now I know most people aren't using this tool like I do and Linux has been historically bad at this, but lately, I'm not so sure. KDE and COSMIC seem to handle these cases flawlessly, and even GNOME, which is divisive in the DE discussion seems to get these things right. MacOS/Windows have officially crossed over to being more cumbersome rather than less than your bog standard Linux distro. Have you ever tried to do anything other than adjust volume for your sound settings on Windows 11? It's absurd. You can see the remnants of the Windows 10 attempt at simplifying it with a new flavor of 11 nonsense, and to really do anything meaningful you STILL end up with the old school Control Panel style settings window. A company worth billions couldn't come up with something better for decades. Tahoe is a similar stumble. How does one take these companies serious as a consumer product anymore if you're anything but a casual browser user?

That pic/movie of trying to grab the corner(?!) of the plate full of food...

priceless

Also Finder can never remember to start the new window size as I last left it.

Idk. I don’t resize windows with the mouse at all. I use the key bindings to move to a tile position or fill screen.

I almost always never use a mouse for more than maybe moving a tab to another window.

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

They took our scroll bars and now they are coming for our resize controls.

Aerospace is the answer :)

I laughed for a solid 5 minutes at the video of grabbing a plate.

Might be the best problem TLI5'ing GIF I've seen :)

Surprisingly, this is an issue on Windows and Linux too -- macOS has just joined the sad party.

The location of the drag region is either the 10px-or-so just outside the window (GTK apps), or just inside the window (I see this in Electron apps). On GNOME, anyway.

On Windows this is caused by the removal of the thick window border with Win10. It wasn't really removed, it was just made transparent instead, thus the drag region moved outside the visible window to avoid the content size changing (for backwards compatibility). Apps often end up in a broken state too, because if you eschew system decoration, you lose the invisible border (which you don't even know you have), and it's easy to end up with a 1px drag region.

It's infuriating, because of the issue the author highlights -- you try and grab the window corner and fail.

It's a sad state of affairs, and a great example of how the basics are going backwards on desktop.

Inside the window is where the content is. It makes sense for most of the resize hitbox to be outside that. They could make it bigger though for sure, or add an accessibility option for it.

I just tested and didn't have any issue.

Yeah, I'll be on Sequoia until it's unbearable (probably 4 more years), and then I'll either put Linux on that machine or I'll just buy a non-Mac. Been using Macs since Snow Leopard but between ios 26 or whatever it is and this shit, I'm done.

>Living on this planet for quite a few decades, I have learned that it rarely works to grab things if you don’t actually touch them:

Yes, but that is skeuomorphic design, which is old and ugly. We live in the era of anti-skeuomorphic design, where nothing makes any sense but it looks sleek.

That omelette does look delicious though.

It makes me really happy when companies continue to fuck up and enshitify their software because it adds more ppl to the Linux/FOSS evosystem. I have a MBP and I love it dearly (the hardware, macOS is fine), but Apple has been disappointing me with each software update on macOS and iOS. The quality of their software is degrading so badly. I know Asahi linux is around, but Im at the point ill just go full Framework and make my ecosystem Linux based (with GrapheneOS on my nee pixel). Just so tired of companies doing such a bad job with billions and billions of dollars. It’s truly unbelievable.

And what to do about the slow mouse?

Weird. I have no such trouble.

> Living on this planet for quite a few decades, I have learned that it rarely works to grab things if you don’t actually touch them.

Hilarious. Is Apple attempting to defy the laws of physics?

MacOS 26 is an UI disaster!

MacOS 26 is an UI-disaster!

The curves are a lie, the window is still square, can we stop putting lipstick on the pig, I just want my computers to work not look like some computer in a sci-fi movie.

I’ve been an Apple user since before there was such thing as Mac, OS X or macOS has been my daily driver for over 20 years. The SIP bullshit, buried dark pattern allow buttons to download programs. The totally out of control background processes and snooping and remote online checks for every program execution nanny state bullshit. I’m 100% done with iOS macOS all of it.

New Desktop is FreeBSD+MATE. Config is a pain initially but idc.

I think another problem is the tiny resize cursor, on windows (at least on mine) it is a lot bigger and more distinct compared to regular cursor and when your cursor changes to resize arrow it is more apparent.

I don't really see/care where my mouse exactly is. If it is outside or inside the window. Once my cursor turns to resize cursor, I just start dragging.

That's like xfce!

did downgrade because of stuff like this. never look back.

it’s like windows and iOS teamed up to upset everyone

the macOS window manager has been awful for many years

Crazy how all the mainstream desktop OSes became shit all at the same time. If I was crazy enough, I might think that the government is giving us a message that we all need to move to Lennox because the state-mandated back doors are being co-opted by a foreign entity to spy on us.

Stop using MacOS?

i went to Sonoma from Tahoe. it felt like an upgrade rather than a downgrade. why Sonoma? it was the version appeared in Recovery mode.

but its size still makes me use scientific notation to write it in kilobyte unit.

i am calling everyone(apple google..) here to switch their mindset to: "how can we reduce code size?", "what can we get rid of?", "how small can my product be?"...

set rules to measure everything in kilobytes and make your employees realize how big the number you are typing.

if every company thinks like that and stop the madness for a year or two, we might be able to solve the main issue: obesity.

I will never update to tahoe. if it becomes forced I'll switch to linux idgaf

It is comical how far apple has fallen with its UI overall.

They were praised for their human interface guidelines, and yet they now break almost every rule. I appreciate things change but those guidelines haven’t even evolved they have just been ignored.

Have they truly innovated in the last 10 years? What capitalist reason is for them to actually invest the manpower in the enshittification of the product experience? It feels counterintuitive. Maybe they are just too big to communicate internally?

use rectangle, it's OP

I find MacOS terrible (any version) and wish my employer would not force Mac upon me. I hope one day we will be able to use Linux on Mac hardware (in enterprise setting).

This is why I’m always wait as long as possible to update major versions, seems like there is fuckups big and small in every single major macOS update.

I've noticed this as well and it's infuriating. It's extremely unintuitive and I constantly find myself missing the resize zone.

The idiotic rounded corners of Tahoe are so ugly I just wish I didn't upgrade. I hope Apple will make the radius configurable.

Darkest before the dawn

Let's be honest, everything windows on macOS is and always has been an utter cluster fuck.

Another thing to add to the list of reasons why I'm not upgrading.

I'm surprised you can even see the border of each window lol

Volume bar now blocks access to the latest tabs in the browser

This is so simple.

This makes me angry.

Imagine Steve Jobs allowing this to happen.

Going to stay on Sonoma for another year

Meanwhile, window management in linux is Superior.

lmao mac.

They want you to do the pinch in/out gesture /s

i haven't resized a window with a mouse in almost a decade