For all of these, you can optionally add or remove their icons from the Menu Bar, and some have additional options that will show or hide those Menu Bar items all the time or just when they're active. Here are the controls that are required to appear in Control Center. The worst ones, like Automator or Chess or Disk Utility or System Information or any number of others, just superimpose some element of the old icon over the top of a new one and call it a day. The best of these, like Preview or TextEdit, use an object that references the app’s purpose. And still others retain their Mac-ness by superimposing an object over a rounded square. Others, like Calendar or Notes, use icons that are essentially indistinguishable from their iOS counterparts. Some apps, like Messages and the App Store, move to an iOS-style icon design with stronger shading and texture, conveying a sense that these are the apps you know from iOS, but different. Some of these new icons are more successful than others. Even now-obscure apps like the DVD Player or Screen Sharing have gotten redesigned rounded-square icons. These icon types could sometimes have some other object superimposed over top of them, like Preview’s inkwell or TextEdit’s pen.īig Sur strives for consistency in its default app icons, transitioning across the board to iOS-style rounded squares. Post-Yosemite app icons for the default macOS apps fell into four broad categories: round ones like Photos or Safari square ones like Terminal or System Preferences squares at jaunty diagonal angles like Mail, Calendar, or Reminders and ones that were shaped like an object related to their function like Home’s house, Disk Utility’s disk-and-stethoscope, or Messages’ speech bubble.

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