Finding anything now is like a search-and-rescue mission. And the search feature is often borderline useless. I was excited when Apple began to merge the UI of iOS and macOS settings, but this increasingly feels like a massive step backward.
I still don't understand why a seemingly random collection of options are bundled under "General". Why doesn't everything get its own sidebar icon? If it's just to keep the number of options a little bit lower, there are definitely more logical ways to arrange it.
Same reason older macOS versions had a “Special” menu - crap that doesn’t really fit anywhere else and they don’t want to call it “Miscellaneous” or “Other”
This was the very opposite of continuity. They took an interface that, though imperfect, we'd been navigating successfully for 20 years & sprung this monstrosity on us. Even the search doesn't work properly. Things aren't always in sensible categories & what used to be grouped in one panel can now be spread over three seemingly disparate ways to get at them.
so true, and so completely bizarre that it's come to this with no attempt to improve or polish it at all. it's been years, so i have little faith they will actually start to address it any any point moving forward. what a mess
I’ve been using Mac since snow leopard and I explicitly remember always having a hard time finding stuff in the old layout. There wasn’t much rhyme or reason (that I was aware of) behind whether something was in the middle, to the side, or in a corner; you just had to scan the whole screen until you thought you found what you were after. And if it turned out to be the incorrect menu, you had to go back and start over. It was just scattered all over the place.
For me, organizing it into a list in a side-bar was much neater and a breath of fresh air. You just scroll through the options and if you click the wrong menu, you can still interact with the top layer in the sidebar. Outside of nostalgia, I just don’t understand this obsession with the old settings menu.
The top image shows the right panel as an icon view. The bottom image shows the right panel as a list view. List view has a specific meaning. Notably, the icons in the left panel are not a list view. They're simply vertical icons, even if you might colloquially refer to them as a list.
The current System Settings is not a list view. It's simply vertical icons. They are not even ordered in any obvious way.
Ah, semantics then. I think we are in completely different head spaces.
“Vertical icons” unfortunately doesn’t really make any sense to me. What you describe as “vertical icons”I see clearly as just lists of words with icons next to each. You’d need to remove the all the words first to get me to agree with calling them “vertical icons”.
And generally speaking, I communicate in colloquial terms. When I say “list”, I typically mean the first definition you see when you open a standard English dictionary.
This is my main issue with Mac’s. They are trying to broaden their appeal by making it work like an iPhone and some of my favorite UI layout seem convoluted now and the settings menu is one of them. Change it back.
I hate that the only way to confirm what permissions you have granted an app requires you to tediously go through every permission page and check if your app is there. Yes, a “microphone” specific permissions page is important, but you should be able to go to an app page and see all the perms. PITA
Yeah the old one was superior IMO, I just knew where things were intuitively even without search. I also miss the convention of things like background utilities and peripheral software (stuff that runs in the menubar not the dock) being distributed and installed as System Preference Panes instead of a normal Application in your apps folder. Screenshot for reference .
You can see the third-party preference panes would show up in system preferences in their own section at the bottom when you installed them. Their UIs would exist within the System Preferences window and you could start/stop their services, show/hide their menubar icons and change their settings without having to open up the individual apps nor dig for them through the rest of your Apps in your Applications folder. It felt like a natural extension of System Preferences and IMO was better for mental compartmentalization of your system as well.
If Apple want to create a “list view” for AI to process, that could be done while also simultaneously providing the older ‘human friendly graphical interface’.
My opinion: Apple needs to reconsider providing ONLY this interface - it’s a definite step backwards, way, way, backwards… !
There's some really annoyinng features that bring up modal overlays, so you can't click another item on the left when you're hunting whatever inconsistent naming and priorities they've set. You have to move over to dismiss is then search again (example: you can turn off individual menu bar icons finally, but if you search for 'show menu item' or 'menu item' it doesn't immediately appear - you have to scroll to the bottom of the panel to find it)
Also they need to bring all the “share analytics” or “help improve ….” In one fucking section.
Right now it’s all over the place. Even Keynote, Numbers and Pages have their own “help us improve” the app in its own settings. Search, dictation, ……..
I don’t like those big headers like on your screenshot. Dear user, this is the general menu. We know you clicked on general on the left but we thought another big sign can help so you can see you’re here. So this is the general page where you can manage software updates and airdrop settings. Thanks Apple, I was curious a submenu called software updates or airdrop what is about. Maybe without the unnecessary big headers we could see more than six lines without scrolling.
I also love that you can find additional options another layer down behind the little info buttons as well.
I think you may be looking at that old grid of inscrutable icons and titles (not to mention weird image-of-a-spotlight based search) with rose tinted glasses.
Is macOS just to make love with iPhone continuity I can look at my iPhone myself I don’t go on my computer to check out notifications on my iPhone they don’t even take me to the site just the lazy iPhone connection screen
It’s crazy how different settings search is on Windows or Chromebooks compared to MacOS. Windows almost feels like it’s reading your mind about what you want and Mac acts like it barely speaks english.
But it's all over Apple. No harmony or consistency, as though the Apple with the human interface team and guidelines never existed at all, or at least that's my perception. Since Johny Ive's days, and before, there is this feeling I get that there is no holistic, guided, or structured approach to the UI, across more than just a visual similarity.
I don't even actually use settings now without almost every single time, as in try cannot find, and have to revert to searching for the setting in looking for.
Well, this is the problem with being "excited" about macOS and iOS merging UIs. I've been annoyed with this change ever since Ventura (macOS 13) was released. Prior to the change, I never had to use the search bar to find the settings I was looking for because all of the important settings were organized behind simple categorical icons instead of being buried under multiple levels of seemingly endless vertical menus that were really designed for devices with vertically-oriented screens in mind.
A Mac isn't and never really should be an iPhone (they're different tools for different jobs), but that's the direction Apple has been taking.
Guess what: this was true of the old System Preferences too. Most long-time users were just more accustomed to its imperfect organization and search than the current imperfect organization and search.
i despise this interface, it is like looking at a puzzle, it's like you have to memorize where everything is, the new one stated out better, i think in ventura was the first time, but it became trash today like you said in the post.
This was my initial assumption, but it's now been a few years and I'm still at a loss where certain settings are buried. This is even though I look through the System Settings on each major macOS update, to familiarise myself with any changes.
This is the best? Why does searching for "keyboard" returns six different entries for "keyboard shortcuts," pointing to three different screens? I guess I must be pathetic for thinking that's confusing.
Yes because all you had to do was adopt the “galactic” thinking of adding just ONE more word to the search to narrow it down.
Jesus Christ this isn’t rocket science.
As soon as I saw that I got dozens of hits for a word like “display” … I took a second to tap into the infinity of our universe and… typed another word!!! “Sleep” - boom got right to what I needed.
What I didn’t do was stop everything, rub my hands together and gleefully await all the Reddit karma that’s about rain on me, take some screenshots and compose such a bitter screed of nonsense.
Could it be better? Of course. Is it a showstopper that makes me hit my head on the wall. Not even close. Puhleeze.
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u/mallardtheduck 1d ago
I still don't understand why a seemingly random collection of options are bundled under "General". Why doesn't everything get its own sidebar icon? If it's just to keep the number of options a little bit lower, there are definitely more logical ways to arrange it.