macOS 27 to Feature Biggest Design Overhaul in Years as Apple Prepares for WWDC

Liquid Glass critics, your prayers have been partially answered, though perhaps not in the way you might have hoped. Apple is not scrapping its controversial design language for macOS 27. Instead, the company is preparing what is being described by one Apple insider as a "slight redesign" that aims to sand down the roughest edges of the Liquid Glass interface that debuted with macOS Tahoe.

In his Power On newsletter, Mark Gurman reports that macOS 27 will specifically target the aggressive shadows and transparency effects that have frustrated Mac users over the past year. These visual hurdles stem largely from Liquid Glass being optimized for the high-contrast ratios of OLED displays. However, with a significant portion of the Mac lineup still utilizing IPS LCD panels, with high-end models featuring mini-LED backlighting, these translucency and reflective glass effects do not always render cleanly. The result has been a series of menus, sidebars, and Control Center panels that many users found significantly harder to read than previous iterations.

Sources describe the upcoming changes as a cleanup and refinement effort. This echoes Apple’s historical strategy with iOS 8; following the "flat design" overhaul of iOS 7, Apple spent the subsequent year polishing the experience without abandoning the underlying principles. Crucially, Gurman frames the incoming fixes not as a course correction, but as the design team finally achieving their original intent. The initial friction is being attributed to a "not-completely-baked implementation" from the software engineering team.
It is worth noting that Apple has already begun laying the groundwork for these fixes. macOS 26.1 previously introduced a "frosted interface" toggle that boosted opacity and contrast, a direct response to accessibility complaints.

Alongside the visual cleanup, macOS 27 is set to lean heavily into Apple Intelligence. It was also revealed there will be an AI-powered Safari feature designed to automatically organize browser tabs into contextually relevant groups. In internal builds, a center-top button allows for seamless navigation between these groups. This "Organize Tabs" feature is expected to be a pillar of the unified experience across macOS 27, iOS 27, and iPadOS 27.

Looking further ahead, Apple is reportedly preparing macOS for the long-rumored transition to touch input. While we don't expect touch-optimized UI to appear in the initial public betas, the underlying architecture is being laid down to support OLED MacBook Pros with touch capabilities expected in late 2026 or early 2027, according to rumors.

Apple is set to officially unveil all the changes coming with macOS 27 during the WWDC 2026 keynote on Monday, June 8. We expect developer betas to drop the same day, with a public beta following in July and a wide release in September.