Apple’s push to make app icons fit a uniform rounded-square shape is drawing a sharp complaint from longtime Mac developers and design writers, who say the rule makes apps harder to pick out and strips developers of one of the oldest tools in icon design: shape.
Paul Kafasis, co-founder of Rogue Amoeba, argued on the company’s blog that Apple should again allow app icons to use varied outlines. Kafasis said Apple’s current approach bars distinctive silhouettes without a technical need, and he framed the change as a usability and creativity problem rather than a matter of taste.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball amplified the criticism Monday, saying the rounded square itself is not the core issue. His objection is to Apple requiring one shape across the platform, whether that shape is the familiar iOS-style squircle or, in another context, the circular icons used in visionOS.
The complaint lands in the middle of Apple’s broader Liquid Glass redesign and OS 26-era visual changes. Kafasis pointed to Apple’s refinements to its own icons in Golden Gate and the addition of a Liquid Glass opacity slider as evidence that people inside Apple can revise design decisions after criticism. He said the icon-shape mandate should be next.
Developers say shape is part of recognition
John Siracusa, a longtime Mac reviewer and developer, called the squircle requirement one of Apple’s worst design moves toward Mac developers. Siracusa argued that if rounded-square icons are better, Apple should let developers and users prove that through adoption rather than enforcing the format.
Gruber agreed that the policy belongs on a short list of Apple design decisions that have harmed Mac developers. He said Apple’s own apps already influence the platform because they are numerous and prominent, but that extending the same shape constraint to third-party apps goes further by denying developers a way to make their software visually distinct.
The mechanism is not complicated. An app icon carries meaning through its illustration, color and outline. A uniform mask removes the outline as a signal. Gruber argued that this makes quick identification harder, because users lose the silhouette cues that once separated apps at a glance.
Designer Jim Nielsen made the same point with a traffic-sign comparison on Bluesky, showing stop, speed-limit and highway signs forced into the same diamond shape. His point was that consistency can erase useful information when the original shapes already help people identify what they are seeing.
Nielsen also compared older Apple app icon shapes with current squircle versions, including Keynote and Numbers. Gruber said the former Keynote silhouette was more recognizable than Apple’s current platform icons.
Color changes are part of the same fight
Gruber tied the shape dispute to Apple’s Clear and Tinted icon appearance options introduced with Liquid Glass and OS 26. He argued those modes reduce color as a distinguishing feature, leaving icons more like interchangeable buttons.
He cited TidBITS writer Adam Engst, who criticized the Clear and Tinted options and ran a reader poll on whether people used them. Gruber characterized the response as a rejection of those appearances.
Apple has not been quoted in these posts responding to the criticism. For now, the dispute is a familiar Mac fight with a very specific target: developers want Apple to stop treating uniformity as a substitute for legibility.
This story draws on original reporting from Daring Fireball.
