“Apple should end their prohibition on shapes in MacOS app icons”

There's a lot you can say about macOS, but one thing Apple used to be incredibly good at were making beautifully crafted, detailed icons. As with almost every other aspect of macOS, this deteriorated sharply over the years, with the recent macOS releases with Liquid Glass being an absolute low point. Not only have they become bland and featureless, Apple also started forcing every icons to have the exact same rounded-rectangle shape, making them even harder to distinguish from one another.

Rogue Amoeba, a company with a long history of developing applications with beautiful iconography, published a blog post pleading Apple to go back to proper icon design.

With last year's release of MacOS 26 (Tahoe), Apple made a mess of app icons. In the first betas of MacOS 27 (Golden Gate), however, there are signs of a turnaround. We're urging Apple to continue making improvements, by restoring the ability for MacOS app icons to have distinct shapes.

Paul Kafasis at the Rogue Amoeba blog

I really hope Apple will turn its icon ship around.