That About Wraps It Up for Stock Mac UI
That About Wraps It Up for Stock Mac UI
Mac 原生 UI 的时代终结了
22 Sep 2026 2026年9月22日
The latest macOS is a nice step toward a good-looking Mac UI, but I do wish it had gone farther. I am in particular not a fan of how Mac toolbars look. I don’t like the full-height sidebars and I especially don’t like the Liquid Glass buttons. 最新的 macOS 在打造美观的 Mac UI 方面迈出了不错的一步，但我确实希望它能走得更远。我尤其不喜欢 Mac 工具栏现在的样子。我不喜欢全高度的侧边栏，更不喜欢“液态玻璃”（Liquid Glass）风格的按钮。
I looked around at what other Mac apps are doing. I asked on my microblog which gets syndicated to Mastodon and I also looked at replies to Isaiah’s similar question from a few days ago. What I found should be no surprise: many of the apps people think look good are not using stock UI. You already know this. I don’t think I need to prove it. 我观察了其他 Mac 应用的做法。我在我的微博客（同步到了 Mastodon）上进行了询问，也查看了几天前 Isaiah 提出类似问题后的回复。我的发现并不令人意外：许多被人们认为美观的应用并没有使用原生 UI。这一点你早已知晓，我想我无需证明。
But one app may serve as an illustration: Things. Things is a perennial callout for its design and for its Mac-like-ness. But it is not really a stock Mac app at all. The toolbar is not at the top of the window (not an NSToolbar) and it’s not customizable. There is no hint of Liquid Glass style translucency anywhere in their main UI. The content doesn’t slide under the sidebar, for instance. (The one place I can find anything obviously Liquid Glass is the toolbar buttons in the settings window.) 但有一个应用可以作为例证：Things。Things 因其设计和“类 Mac”的特性而常被提及。但它实际上根本不是一个原生 Mac 应用。它的工具栏不在窗口顶部（不是 NSToolbar），也不支持自定义。在它的主界面中，没有任何“液态玻璃”风格半透明效果的痕迹。例如，内容不会滑到侧边栏下方。（我唯一能找到明显“液态玻璃”痕迹的地方，是设置窗口中的工具栏按钮。）
I’ve long been a devoted proponent of using stock Mac UI for, I always thought, good reasons: users are already familiar with that UI and it’s less work to create and update every year. Plot twist: I think those reasons (user familiarity and developer effort) may not stand up entirely. At least not these days. 长期以来，我一直是使用原生 Mac UI 的坚定支持者，我一直认为理由很充分：用户已经熟悉该 UI，且每年创建和更新的工作量较小。剧情反转了：我认为这些理由（用户熟悉度和开发者工作量）可能并不完全站得住脚。至少在今天看来是这样。
Users have shown — again, I don’t need to prove this — that they don’t think about a stock Mac app vs. custom. Do they dislike Things for not having a toolbar at the top of the window that they can customize in the usual way? No. (The only people who think that way are longtime Mac developers like me.) Are users able to understand the UI to popular Mac apps — to Things, Slack, Craft, OmniFocus, NotePlan, Bear, Reeder, Telegram, Acorn, Tapestry, Obsidian, Audio Hijack, etc. — without much trouble, no matter how stock or not-stock they are? Yes. 用户已经证明——再说一次，我无需证明这一点——他们根本不会去区分什么是原生 Mac 应用，什么是自定义应用。他们会因为 Things 的工具栏不在窗口顶部且无法按常规方式自定义而讨厌它吗？不会。（只有像我这样的资深 Mac 开发者才会这么想。）用户能够毫无困难地理解那些热门 Mac 应用（如 Things、Slack、Craft、OmniFocus、NotePlan、Bear、Reeder、Telegram、Acorn、Tapestry、Obsidian、Audio Hijack 等）的 UI 吗？无论它们是否原生，答案都是肯定的。
Do they know when an app is an Electron app? Nope: they don’t even have a concept of Electron apps and they wouldn’t care if you explained it to them. (Why should they?) Users may be already familiar with stock Mac UI (and maybe not, actually, depending on what apps they use) — but I don’t think that matters at all anymore. 他们知道什么是 Electron 应用吗？不知道：他们甚至没有 Electron 应用的概念，就算你向他们解释，他们也不会在意。（他们为什么要关心呢？）用户或许确实熟悉原生 Mac UI（实际上也未必，这取决于他们使用什么应用）——但我认为这已经完全不重要了。
So what about developer effort? The idea was that by using stock Mac UI you the developer would be carried along — you’d get most of the macOS changes every year mostly for free or with not that much work, since you’d kept up every year. But my app NetNewsWire has a very stock Mac UI, and Liquid Glass adoption last year was a lot of work. Using stock Mac UI didn’t save us much — in fact, we had more work to do compared to the apps with more custom UI. 那么开发者工作量呢？原本的想法是，通过使用原生 Mac UI，开发者可以“搭便车”——每年都能几乎免费或以极小的工作量获得 macOS 的大部分更新，前提是你每年都跟进。但我的应用 NetNewsWire 使用的是非常原生的 Mac UI，去年适配“液态玻璃”却花费了大量精力。使用原生 UI 并没有节省多少工作——事实上，与那些自定义程度更高的应用相比，我们反而做了更多工作。
I’ll go back to Things. I’m not picking on them, to be clear. Quite the opposite! I very much respect their work, even though I have in the past wished it were more Mac-like (again, in the way only a longtime Mac developer would). Here’s their blog post from a year ago on adopting Liquid Glass. They did some work, for sure, at their usual high level of quality. And I’m not denigrating that. But it looks like a lot less work than we had to do on NetNewsWire. And that’s my point: the level of developer effort was higher for the stock Mac app. 回到 Things。声明一下，我不是在针对他们。恰恰相反！我非常尊重他们的工作，尽管我过去曾希望它能更“Mac 化”（再次强调，这是只有资深 Mac 开发者才会有的想法）。这是他们一年前关于适配“液态玻璃”的博客文章。他们确实做了一些工作，并保持了他们一贯的高质量水准。我并不是在贬低这一点。但看起来这比我们在 NetNewsWire 上所做的工作要少得多。这就是我的观点：原生 Mac 应用的开发工作量反而更高。
The secret third reason for using stock Mac UI: To recap: the reasons for using stock Mac UI are 1) user familiarity, which we’ve known for a while just isn’t a thing, and 2) hoping to be able to expend less developer effort, which we’ve seen can work against you. But there’s another reason: the stock Mac UI is designed by Apple, the best designers in the world, and do you really think you can do better? Really? The app world is full of people who think they’re better and they’re really, really, really not. 使用原生 Mac UI 的第三个秘密理由：总结一下，使用原生 Mac UI 的理由是：1) 用户熟悉度，我们早就知道这根本不是回事；2) 希望减少开发工作量，但我们已经看到这反而可能适得其反。但还有另一个原因：原生 Mac UI 是由世界上最优秀的苹果设计师设计的，你真的认为你能做得更好吗？真的吗？应用界充满了自以为比苹果更强的人，但他们真的、真的、真的不是。
Well, I still think Apple has the best collection of UI designers in the world, but, for whatever reasons, the guidance from above on how the Mac UI should look is missing the mark. I’m not blaming the people doing the work — they’re doing great work with the direction they’re given. So this — bad direction — is where the secret third reason falls down. And we’re left with no real reason to stick with stock Mac UI (except for wanting approval from longtime Mac people like me, and you really shouldn’t care about that at all). 好吧，我仍然认为苹果拥有世界上最顶尖的 UI 设计师团队，但无论出于什么原因，高层对于 Mac UI 应该是什么样子的指导方针已经偏离了目标。我不是在责怪执行工作的人——他们在既定的方向下做得非常出色。所以，正是这种“糟糕的方向”导致了第三个秘密理由的失效。我们已经没有真正的理由去坚持使用原生 Mac UI 了（除非是为了获得像我这样的资深 Mac 用户的认可，而你根本不应该在意这一点）。
Messing around last night: With this in mind I wondered how far I could get in removing the parts of Liquid Glass I don’t like in NetNewsWire. Turns out I could get pretty far, though it comes at the expense of using NSToolbar (as predicted). Note: this stuff is just on a branch. One night of play, not real design or consideration. (But this is code, not mockups.) It’s not about to ship this way. But I’ll share anyway, because it does hint at some possible ideas for NetNewsWire’s future. 昨晚的折腾：带着这些想法，我尝试在 NetNewsWire 中移除我不喜欢的“液态玻璃”部分，看看能做到什么程度。结果发现我可以做得相当彻底，尽管正如预料的那样，代价是放弃使用 NSToolbar。注意：这些代码仅存在于一个分支中。这只是一个晚上的尝试，并非真正的设计或深思熟虑。（但这确实是代码，而不是模型。）它不会以这种方式发布。但我还是想分享一下，因为它确实暗示了 NetNewsWire 未来的一些可能方向。
Click the small version to get the big version. (Note that the column view in the second screenshot is going to ship in 7.2. That part’s already done, and it has nothing to do with Liquid-Glass-or-not. Also note: the article theme in use is part of the standard NetNewsWire app right now, not a new thing.) The obvious first best thing I could do to improve this is to add some color to the toolbar icons and spread them out better. Maybe add some ability to customize, even though it’s not a standard Mac toolbar. Of course you might look at this and think “Blech! Looks so old! Spare me!” Totally fair! But it felt cute. Might delete later. 点击小图查看大图。（请注意，第二张截图中的分栏视图将在 7.2 版本中发布。那部分已经完成，与是否使用“液态玻璃”无关。另外请注意：所使用的文章主题目前就是 NetNewsWire 标准应用的一部分，并非新事物。）我能做的最显而易见的改进，就是为工具栏图标添加一些颜色，并让它们分布得更合理。也许还可以增加一些自定义功能，即使它不是标准的 Mac 工具栏。当然，你看了可能会觉得：“呕！看起来太老土了！饶了我吧！”这完全合理！但我觉得它挺可爱的。以后可能会删掉。