Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help
325 comments
·December 8, 2025Mikhail_Edoshin
Mikhail_Edoshin
So the rule of thumb is that: if the pictogram is always same, then as in Shannon's model, it conveys no information, and thus is decorative. Discard it.
One of first programs that put pictograms in menus was Microsoft Word. But the way Word did it was entirely different from what we do now. Microsoft Word had toolbars and their buttons, of course, were mostly pictorial. Toolbars could be turned on and off and users could assemble their own toolbars. Microsoft Word's menus displayed pictograms only for the commands that could also be called with currently visible toolbars. Have a toolbar visible? Its pictograms will appear in the menu. Closed that toolbar? The pictograms disappeared. The pictogram did not merely decorate a command, but also provided a hint that the user could call the command with a toolbar. This is informational. This is the right use.
20k
Pictograms let you parse a lot of information at a glance, because you can pattern match a group of differing symbols much faster than you can a block of text which all looks uniform. It lets you skip reading all the text when you're familiar with a dialogue, and you can short circuit what you need to click on without having to read
That's the reason why pictographic additions are so useful. Its the reason why we distinguish different kinds of UI elements at all, because colour and graphics are incredibly powerful shortcuts for parsing information
ACCount37
This. If I'm out looking for a "Save" button, I'm going to pattern match "ancient disk icon" without even thinking about it.
It's also the reason why some menu entries get icons and others don't.
If the icon doesn't convey information by itself (like a "move to top" icon example), then it's there as a visual anchor - and you don't really need to have 4 of the same "delete" icon if a menu has 4 different "delete" options next to each other. Just one is enough of an anchor to draw your attention to the "delete group", and having just one keeps the visual noise low.
Likewise, you don't need visual anchors for every single option - just the commonly used ones, the ones you expect people to be looking for, and the ones that already have established pictography.
icoder
What may be added is that some people have a hard time reading words by their 'total shape'. I can imagine that for them, the difference between pattern matching symbols and strings of letters is even more profound.
sevensor
So do I want the button with the three horizontal lines, three horizontal dots, three vertical dots, nine dots arranged in a grid, the point-down triangle, or the point-right chevron? Generally these convey no information and I have to try each one to find the option I want. If it exists.
rayiner
> Pictograms let you parse a lot of information at a glance, because you can pattern match a group of differing symbols much faster than you can a block of text which all looks uniform
No you can’t.
ragazzina
> if the pictogram is always same, then as in Shannon's model, it conveys no information, and thus is decorative. Discard it.
If the text on the button is always the same, then as in Shannon's model, it conveys no information, and thus is decorative. Discard it. Just use the position.
wartywhoa23
And if the position is always the same, it is decorative, and we'd pretty much rather discard it too and use time, which does not stay the same by definition, and make them stupids click anywhere spatially but on precise time: t % 2 == 0 => action 1, t % 3 == 0 => action 2 etc - but that would be too much of a disrespect towards users, however stupid - and we have no choice but randomize those iconless textless positions dynamically.
thiht
> thus is decorative. Discard it.
Or keep it since decoration makes interfaces feel more alive.
Not everything NEEDS to be useful
Mikhail_Edoshin
Classic Mac OS window headers had striped or dot patterns that were kind of similar to rugged parts of various physical tool handles. So they were both decorative in a way and informational: this is a part you can hold and drag around. A typical interface will have a lot of such parts that are both functional and decorative, so it will feel just right.
Purely decorative parts are also possible (and even desirable), but they should be personal. A set of colors chosen by the user, a background texture, a picture that the user keeps on the desktop and so on.
bigstrat2003
Everything in a UI needs to not hinder usefulness. Adding more information signals (icons) which don't actually convey meaning is clutter that makes the UI harder to parse. That factor is far more important than whether it feels "alive".
strogonoff
A decorative element can be fine in a design model, but 1) a good design tends to have no purely decorative elements, and 2) it becomes problematic when the decorative element looks like a meaningful element but does not actually carry meaning (or the intended meaning).
We all recognise an icon in a menu as a meaningful element. Treating it as a decorative element is wrong and adds mental overhead, as we tend to scan every one of those icons (putting it at the beginning of menu text, i.e., to the left for LTR languages, makes it worse). It is well-known we do tend to scan these icons because that is the reason icons work: repeated exposure creates intuition. If this intuition is not put to use, then all such icons are a waste of our attention.
For example, a bullet in a list: fine (differentiates where each list item starts), window shadow or the 3D effect on window close buttons: fine (meaningful in terms if differentiating areas in the GUI, not pretending to do more); whitespace to set apart one thing more from another thing than from the third thing: fine (if that reflects the relationship between those things).
This is all somewhat simplified.
Y_Y
You remind me of my favourite bit of Windows software ever[0]. It made the desktop feel really alive with things like can-can girls and humanoid fish flying around your "living wallpaper".
Then again it was named Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time, so maybe it's not such a good idea for the default environment of a general-purpose operating system.
[0] https://www.mobygames.com/game/1975/monty-pythons-complete-w...
BaudouinVH
I tend to follow the "no form without function" design philosophy. Your comment makes me rethink that. thanks
nottorp
> Not everything NEEDS to be useful
... until the not-useful becomes distracting and/or causes information overload.
In the case of Apple, I've been a user of the Accessibility menu ever since they introduced the stupid parallax wiggling of the icons. Right now i use: reduce motion, bold text and reduce transparency. Because I want to see what I'm looking for when using the phone and not squint through pointless effects.
incrudible
Menus should not feel alive. Because they are menus, at any given point they mostly contain things the user does not want to interact with right now. Menu icons that serve as visual anchors are good, they help the task of finding the desired action, as well as building a visual memory. Icons everywhere achieve the opposite, for the spurious benefit of visual consistency. Menu items are not consistent affordances, they perform very different actions that are at best related, but oftentimes they are there because they need to be somewhere.
antran22
in that case, they should make it optional. What some might find as eye candy, other finds as nuisance (case in point, animation).
Perepiska
JetBrains products had colorful and useful pictograms on menu items and panels. One day they replaced them by B&W versions and it was fail. Few years later they introduced purple icons. For promoting some internal AI companion.
scoofy
The pictogram is there for people who can't read English, to help them get by.
It's the same reason why Ikea's instruction manuals typically have no words.
eviks
> Their purpose is to convey information in limited space.
No, that's only one of their purposes. Another one is faster visual parsing of shape recognition instead of reading even if space is not an issue (just like with all of these menus, they waste so much space on padding they could fit command names 3 more times)
JeremyNT
Yes, and as much as I hate to defend modern UI designers, I believe the icons in the menus here are actually extremely helpful (even when duplicated).
In the first example, when I want to find the option to add or delete a row in this massive menu, the icons clearly convey the purpose. I can instantly filter a huge list of possibilities down to a few relevant entries.
kldg
yes; I think it depends a lot on how accepted the icon is. Every few months when I have to open ST's CubeProgrammer, my brain substantially deteriorates because they don't use text and the icons for their main tabs are not always understandable to me. (and the thing's otherwise a relic from 20+ years ago)
X, volume & mute icon, disk icon, upload/download icon -- these are all fine and good; you don't need to spell those out for me because their use is so widespread that even if I didn't know what they meant, it'd be very useful to learn. I have no idea what a generic "integrated circuit" icon means, though, and I doubt anyone will use it elsewhere to mean the same thing, so I just click around randomly until I find what I'm looking for, like I'd do with the previously-unlabeled 6-switch panel in my living room where the positioning of the switches have no obvious relation to the physical placement of the ceiling lights.
I think Apple's menu actually shows exactly what I want and expect; show icons if it'll help me, don't show them if they wouldn't; though in come cases, I think Apple could apply some more icons (like for "Stop", there are a few good choices for that).
Mikhail_Edoshin
Right; but this is also information. The Civilization game used little pictures of wheat and shields, I think, to indicate the production levels. Here the pictures are better than numbers because they feel more like actual things and allow to express all the details we need. We understand smaller numbers differently, three vs five is not just arithmetical for us, it is more substantial to actually see three vs five items than a different shape of a digit.
alansaber
Nothing more addictive than adding more padding
vasco
I disagree, pictures are easier to remember than words and I'm much faster (several hundred miliseconds) at quickly spotting an icon in the 12th place down a list and clicking it because I memorized it visually than reading the actual words.
So icons make power users faster. It's not "clutter". Your argument about "don't use it for aesthetics" is ironic because you're making it because of aesthetics. For me it's about user speed.
alternatex
>I'm much faster at quickly spotting an icon
Using the label-less example in the article with the 10x10 monochrome icons I doubt many other people feel the same.
stanac
> 10x10 monochrome icons
I don't mind the size, but lack of colors is annoying. If common icons where color-coded, like green to save, blue to download/print/export, red to delete, UI would be friendlier to use.
vasco
Monochrome is a strange complaint, the text is also monochrome. Regarding what most people think I don't know, I'm definitely faster at spotting a specific pictogram in the start of a line than having to read multiple lower information-density pictograms (alphabet characters) in order (reading a full word or sentence). This seems obvious to me, 1 thing is faster to parse than multiple things.
hypercube33
The monotone ones in Windows 11 that jump around in order or menu position (I think both of these have been addressed in 24h2 or something?) where they hop to the top or bottom of the menu or dont show so the order is wrong if they are disabled for some object are insanely bad UX.
I say this because I agree, the pictogram icon is much easier for me to find. I also like having a word there though, if they change the picture on me. If its not color, almost all bets are off, since I dont even look at the icon, just look for a color and go for it if thats available.
SmarsJerry
There was a point where a significant amount of menus in windows and office used only icons. It made it basically unusable for anyone over 60.
__del__
an icon for "save" will suffice to help me find the portion of the menu with "save as", "save a copy", and "export". when all four have the same icon, or slight variations, i'm back to reading each one to discern the difference.
Propelloni
Speak for yourself. I remember words. That disk icon stands for "Save". "Save" is what I remember. I also remember location, but the spatial component applies independent from icons or words.
vasco
> Speak for yourself
>> I'm much faster
hypercube33
I hate the monotone ones - I get it, its easy to tick the box that they are colorblind safe or whatever, and its modern design, but man the colors really help me identify what the hell I'm going at in the menu. Brown thingy (clipboard) is copy, black square is save. I'm a simple creature.
mopsi
Same. Most people identify a blob of color far earlier than they distinguish one monochrome shape from another.
illiac786
> the motto is: do not make it original, make it right.)
Agreed. It just doesn’t sell.
j45
Limited space seems like a surprising thing to lean on, especially when put next to a text label, with the increase pixel count/resolution on devices over the last 5-10-15 years.
Words create better beginners than icons alone.
UI/UX can evolve as the baseline digital literacy of users evolves usually very slowly, to remain maximally inclusive.
One thing that I'd consider is start with text labels, and the more they are used, start showing an icon. Just hold a left bar for them to start appearing so that learning can happen.
The screenshot where there was only some menu items with icons feels more memorable for that reason.
0manrho
From an accessibility/localization stand point, icons+text everywhere seems to be ideal.
Also, I disagree with:
> This posture lends itself to a practice where designers have an attitude of “I need an icon to fill up this space”
Sure, that does technically happen, but is in no way preventative or mutually exclusive with the follow on thought:
> Does ... the cognitive load of parsing and understanding it, help or hurt how someone would use this menu system?
That still happens, because if they mismatch an icon with text, that can result in far worse cognitive load/misunderstanding than if no icon was present at all. This becomes readily apparent in his follow on thought experiment where you show someone a menu with icons+text, but "censor" the text. Icons+text is also superior to [occasionally icons]+text in the same thought experiment. From my perspective, the author just argued against their own preference there.
I'd argue that the thought process behind determining an appropriate icon is even more important and relevant when being consistent and enforcing icon+text everywhere, not diminished. It also has the broadest possible appeal (to the visual/graphically focused, to the literary focused, to those who either may not speak the language, and/or to those who are viewing the menu with a condensed/restrictive viewport that doesn't have room for the full text). Now, if the argument is predicated on "We aren't willing to pay a designer for this" then yeah, they have a point. Except they used Apple as an example so, doubt that was the premise.
dmayle
I used to manage a team working on the news feed at Facebook (main page).
We did extensive experimentation, and later user studies to find out that there are roughly three classes of people:
1) Those that use interface items with text 2) Those that use interface items with icons 3) Those that use interface items with both text and icons.
I forget details on the user research, but the mental model I walked away with this that these items increase "legibility" for people, and by leaving either off, you make that element harder to use.
If you want an interface that is truly usable, you should strive to use both wherever possible, and ideally when not, try to save in ways that reduce the mental load less (e.g. grouping interface by theme, and cutting elements from only some of the elements in that theme, to so that some of the extra "legibility" carries over from other elements in the group)
tvbusy
Sounds like me: 1. For new UI/tool, I depend on text to navigate. 2. Once I'm more familiar, I scan using icons first then text to confirm. 3. With enough time, I use just icons. 4. Why the ** do they keep moving it/changing the icons?
stronglikedan
> Those that use interface items with icons
This is the bane of my existence since icons aren't standardized* and the vast majority of people suck at designing intuitive ones. (*there are ISO standard symbols but most designers are too "good" to use them)
specialist
Cite cliché about the only intuitive user interface is the nipple; everything else is learned.
Having done my share of UI work, my value system transitioned from esthetics to practicalities. Such as "can you describe it?" Because siloed UI, independent of docs, training and tech supp, is awful.
All validated by usability testing, natch. It's hard to maintain strong opinions UI after users shred your best efforts. Humilitating.
Having said all that... If stock icons work (with target user base), I'm all for using them.
PS I do have one strong opinion: less is more.
virgil_disgr4ce
Hooray, actual user research and data!! This is what I tell all my clients: "We can speculate all day long, but we don't have to. The users will tell us the correct answer in about 5 minutes."
It's amazing that even in a space like this, of ostensibly highly analytical folks, people still get caught up arguing over things that can be settled immediately with just a little evidence.
drdeadringer
After my stroke 3 years ago, I find myself in a place meeting accessibility. So the icons are helpful. I cannot necessarily read the text.
trollbridge
What isn't so helpful though is the classic Google Sheets example where it has three different options (Delete Row, Delete Column, etc.) but all with an identical "trashcan" icon.
TiredOfLife
I immediately see that block as something to do with deleting stuff. If I don't need deleting is ski if i need i look closer
jasonvorhe
Can you associate the symbols shown in the post with the text blurred out to their individual meaning?
petesergeant
Genuinely curious if the item types in as shown in the article are that helpful though. They seem small, fiddly, hard to distinguish between, and not especially intuitive.
breppp
did not undergo a stroke, but I find myself often navigating menu by memorizing the location in the menu, I also use the icons for memorizing and then I can speed up by not reading.
The first time I noticed that is the time I needed to operate a Finnish Windows machine and I could get it working pretty good by sheer memory
quamserena
Yes, I agree. Maybe if you’re a fast reader icons don’t do much, but for people who are illiterate (20% of America) they figure out how to use tech by memorizing the icons and locations of buttons.
inejge
There's illiteracy, and there's functional illiteracy. They're not the same, and people often confuse the two. A literally illiterate person (ha!) wouldn't make headway with almost any realistic computer interface, icons or not.
The 20% statistic is about people who have great trouble reading and comprehending simple sentences, not discerning individual words. It's tragic and debilitating, but such people could muddle through a simple interface with textual labels. A truly illiterate person couldn't.
sbarre
Is this just your belief presented as fact, or do you have some data to back this up?
(Not the literacy stat but the fact that illiterate people "figure out how to use tech by memorizing the icons and locations of buttons").
Arch485
Well, if you're unable to read, you're not going to figure out what the buttons do by reading the textual labels :p
Further, if you have difficulty reading, it's easier to parse the meaning of an abstract symbol, so you'd use that instead of a textual label when available. (I say this as someone who is a really slow reader. I use icons when I can)
mercury4063
Watch a small child use a computer.
lopis
But also from an accessibility stand point, providing users with affordances to remove distractions (animations, transitions, and yes, icons) should be an option. But I disagree with the author that the default should be less icons.
echelon
I feel like icons subconsciously turn O(n*m) into O(log n).
Without icons, you have to read many or most of the words.
Without text labels, icons are difficult or even impossible to interpret.
But with both icons and text, you have quick visual search and filtering that involves the whole brain.
ndespres
I agree with the author. I understand many of the reasons others give here for why icons could be beneficial- localization, literacy, vision issues, etc. all are great reasons to supplement text with icons, theoretically. But I disagree that these icons, I mean those shown as examples in the Apple menu, Safari menu, or Google Docs menus- actually convey anything useful and really do prove the authors point that they’re poorly implemented.
I realize it may be generational and privilege based, as I can read English and have a good deal of computer literacy. To my eyes the icon trend of flat, minimal icons paradoxically ask a user to possess a higher degree of computer fluency to successfully parse the artistic intent of the icon and map it to its function. When these icons don’t accurately convey their function (the Paste icon is a blank clipboard. What’s that do?) and when the design language is inconsistent within the same application and OS (do cogs mean Preferences? Services? you’re building a very confusing world for most of the user group types you claim to be helping.
omnimus
It doesn't actually matter that much what the icon is. It's impossible to creat icons people would fully understand - otherwise you wouldn't need a label at all.
The function of the icon is to have distinct shape so you are able to visually distinguish menu items quickly in future (more you use the app).
There are other factors like consistent placement that can help. This icon approach is good especially if you have common shared menu items over the OS or they change their placement throughout the app.
busywaiting
> The function of the icon is to have distinct shape so you are able to visually distinguish menu items quickly in future (more you use the app).
In theory, yes. But if you look at the examples in the article, the shapes are basically all similarly-sized circles.
In the Apple example, "System Settings" is circle (A gear with barely discernible teeth.) "Recent Items" is a circle (a clock.) "Force Quit" is a circle (a rounded! octagon.) "Sleep" is...a circle with a line through the bottom third. "Log Out" is...a human silhouette in a circle! (Why?)
It doesn't matter what the icon is as long as the icons are distinct, and today's icons aren't.
VBprogrammer
The IKEA instructions are generally regarded as a triumph of simplicity. Yet on more than one occasion I've come across cases where a few words in a call out would have prevented having to redo some step after later realising that some features had to be oriented a particular way - the pictures not quite conveying their intention until it was obvious in hindsight.
ndespres
Others have brought up the Office 97 style for good reason. Everything has an icon, on an icon toolbar. Every command can also be on a file menu but most of them there don’t have an icon. The ones that do are special or intended to draw your attention.
And there’s a consistent metaphor: for example the web browser is represented by a globe for the world wide web. So the “hyperlink” function is a globe with a chain. This the “preview as web page” is a globe with a magnifying glass (whereas the print preview command is a sheet of paper with a magnifying glass.).
This icon language hints at function through its form and helps serve as a cue, a reminder, or a visual representation of its function.
And it all worked on 640x480 256 color screens. They are thoughtful and useful. These plain flat uninformative icons are just rude.
omnimus
Sure. There are also icons that are plain flat and don't use metaphor and work great. Play, share, hamburger, bluetooth, power... i am sure there are more. Icons are more about familiarity than anything.
I assume you were very familiar with Office 97. I can tell you people born in 97 are probably not. High chance they might not like and understand the icons because they aren't familiar with them.
It's like when everybody wants to design logo as unforgettable as Nike. But in reality anything people see 20 times a day people will remember.
troupo
> The function of the icon is to have distinct shape so you are able to visually distinguish menu items quickly in future (more you use the app).
I wrote it in a different comment elsewhere: this is exactly why you don't want icons on every menu item. When everything tries to be stand out, nothing does. It's much easier to distinguish groups and "it's the third item below the icon" than "out of these identical looking icons one of them points to a menu item that does what I want".
omnimus
Sure! I agree. My comment above probably seems like i think this new Apple design direction is good. I don't. Tahoe seems like amateur hour.
What i was mainly saying is that the icon does not have to describe the label for it to be effective. That doesn't mean that usage/quality of the icon suddenly doesn't matter.
pjot
Similar is the save icon, though for a different reason. It conveys its function well, but one first needs to know what a floppy disk even is!
qwertytyyuu
Nah, people especially younger ones associate the floppy disk with the save button
yokljo
A lot of apps people use these days are cloud-first and automatically save all the time, so there's not even a save button to have a floppy icon for! The icon to say that it's synced looks like a cloud, and if you're using a web browser it'll probably have a Download button with a download icon. No floppy disks in sight.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's computer users out there that wouldn't recognise the "save icon".
RIP in peace
mr_toad
My daughter understood what the Chrome icon was for before she could even spell ‘Chrome’.
scragz
they think it's a soda vending machine
dexwiz
I always thought menus had icons so they could be matched to the same functionality on the toolbar. If a menu lacks an icon, then it's probably not on the toolbar. This falls apart when there is no toolbar. But I have definitely found an action in the menu, looked at the icon, and matched it to a a button elsewhere.
linguae
I believe Microsoft Office 97 for Windows was the first time I saw icons next to menu items. Office 97 had highly customizable menus and toolbars. Each menu item and toolbar item could be thought of as an action with an icon and a label, and that action could be placed in either a menu or a toolbar. Not every menu item had an icon associated with it. Additionally, each icon was colored and was clearly distinct.
chungy
Office 97 went pretty overboard on customization. It could be awesome if you know what you're doing, but I saw countless examples of where somebody had accidentally changed something and got stuck. Deleted the file menu? tough luck!
jameshart
This is definitely where I would this pattern - MS Office 97’s customizable toolbars necessitated this model where every single thing you could do in the application had an icon.
It then got copied into Visual Studio, where making all of the thousands of things you could do and put into custom toolbars or menus have visually meaningful icons was clearly an impossible task, but it didn’t stop Microsoft trying.
I assume Adobe, with their toolbar-centric application suite, participated in the same UI cycle.
By the time of Office 2007 Microsoft were backing off the completely customizable toolbar model with their new ‘Ribbon’ model, which was icon-heavy, but much more deliberately so.
VBprogrammer
I still regard Office '97 as the best UI it ever had. I spent a lot of time inside it, including a couple of years at a bank reconciling corporate actions before I got my first programming job. The ribbon version was awful in comparison.
IcyWindows
I believe some programs used to let you even drag menu items to the toolbar.
garciansmith
Many KDE apps (Dolphin, Kate, Okular, etc.) let you configure their tool bars (or get rid of them entirely) and set them to show just icons, text, or both (with the text to the side or below). It's the kind of thing most people won't bother with, but for frequently used applications it's nice to be able to customize it to suit your needs. It's done via a config option though, not by dragging menu items to the toolbar (which strikes me as something you could initiate by mistake).
DaiPlusPlus
MS Office’s fully customisable toolbars, complete with built-in icon editor.
…ripped out when the Office Ribbon was introduced in 2007; the now-limited customisation is now considered an improvement because of the IT support problems caused by users messing up their own toolbars.
I mean, yes; but that’s what Group Policy is for! And the removal of the icon editor is just being downright mean to bored school kids.
HeavyStorm
You made me feel old by saying "I believe".
daemin
My biggest design peeve of the examples posted is the inconsistent indentation of each section of the menu. Where if any single item in the section has an icon it gets indented, but if none do it doesn't, and seeing them next to each other is jarring. I feel this is especially inconsistent design because if a menu item has a check mark it indents all menu items in the whole menu. I would have thought Apple would have the taste to keep things more consistent across the whole menu than that, as it seems sloppy.
hinkley
There was a comic artist I used to follow when I was doing more front end work, who would blog about his craft. One of the things he said that really hit me was talking about silhouettes. The visual noise in certain eras of comics make them very unapproachable. If you repainted your strip by flood filling everything with black, would people have any clue what's going on?
One of the things I'm seeing in some of these examples is icons with the same silhouette doing nothing or less than nothing for scannability. This is the same problem AWS has. Their dashboard is just noise, because the icons are neither visually distinct nor descriptive of the project.
I've also seen some of this same problem with card and board games as well. You can see that some designers care about accessibility. This type has both a distinct color AND shape so colorblind people can see it, all the icons are big enough that people can make them out sitting upside down in front of the person across the table from them, even if they're over 40.
His first example, Google Sheets, does well by this metric IMO, but the next few are kinda bad.
watersb
macOS Tahoe has declared war on app icons with distinctive shapes.
No silhouettes. If your icon isn't a squircle, it will be shrunk to fit inside a default shape. The penalty box.
https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2025/6/2.html
The loss of icon silhouettes is a big step down in usability. Erases decades of design guidelines.
https://pxlnv.com/blog/roundrect-dictator/
Frankly it's senseless.
https://www.flarup.email/p/through-the-liquid-glass
Insane but still working legacy workaround:
https://simonbs.dev/posts/how-to-bring-back-oddly-shaped-app...
…
macOS isn't fun anymore.
nntwozz
First we lost the pinstripes, then brushed aluminium; then we lost colors in the sidebar icons. Then they made everything flat.
Finally we lost the background and legibility.
Pepe prayge now than Alan is out that things will improve.
We need to get back to Dieter Rams 10 principles for good design.
lavataco
Surprised it took me this far down to see him mentioned.
deelowe
Never thought I'd say this, but I kinda miss Jobs.
anal_reactor
MacOS was never fun. I've been using MacOS at work for five years and it's never been fun nor intuitive. I always explained this to myself "that's because I grew up with Windows" but three months ago I switched to KDE on my private machine and it's miles ahead of MacOS. Just a week ago I got a new company Macbook and the UX is even clunkier than before. Shit just doesn't work.
trinix912
I feel like the older versions had much more of a personality. OS 8-9, OS X (10.0-10.9). Once they (and Windows) started with flat design (which was over 10 years ago!) everything just converged and now all UIs look very similar to each other. MacOS Big Sur and Tahoe look quite similar to various 3rd party KDE and Gnome skins that predate them.
antonvs
> macOS isn't fun anymore.
It was always closed source. That hasn’t changed. That should be a hint.
hinkley
Responding to myself to add: If AWS is bad at this, Atlassian is worse. I cannot scan the tab bar in my browser and find what tab I was in three minutes ago because they are all too uniform. They're more concerned that I know that a tab is an Atlassian Tab than whether I can get my work done.
sznio
> One of the things I'm seeing in some of these examples is icons with the same silhouette doing nothing or less than nothing for scannability.
I have this issue with Google apps on my phone. Once they decided that all icons should have the same four blurred colors with low contrast, you just can't tell which app you're looking at without the text label below. And I'm not visually impaired.
layer8
The trend towards monochrome, unhinted (blurry) icons certainly doesn’t help.
fainpul
> You can see that some designers care about accessibility. This type has both a distinct color AND shape so colorblind people can see it […]
This is something visual artists usually learn and are good at and it's not primarily for accessibility, it's simply good design. Accessibility improves as a side effect.
usaphp
I actually like the icons from his example of Google Docs, it makes it easy for me to locate an action type I’m looking for (add/delete etc) without reading the labels, then once I narrowed it down - I can read the label to find the precise action I want.
rozab
All of the Google Docs icons are really thoughtfully designed, with distinctive silhouettes. Instead of making 5 tiny illegible variations on inserting a row/column/etc, they just use the + symbol. Because the symbol is the same, your eye is then drawn to the differing text on the right.
Some of the Apple ones really are ridiculous, like the ones around window management and copy/pasting. Even blown up to fullscreen size, you wouldn't have a chance of guessing what they do. But at display size, they are just plain illegible. Having them there is just a visual distraction.
netsharc
But someone got lazy and all the "Delete" or "Add" icons are identical... There's probably a ticket somewhere to "improve the icons" being ignored..
crazygringo
But that's the point. The icons help you find the "delete" section.
Icons aren't large enough to then also distinguish between deleting a row or column or table. That's what the label is for.
It's not laziness, it's good design.
empiko
Agreed, compare that to Quit Safari and Force Quit Safari below. One is X in a square, the other is X in a circle. Very confusing.
troupo
No. It's laziness and bad design. It's the most generic trash icon from the most generic icon set.
Same with "add row above/below" or the completely distinct action Create Filter/Filter by cell value.
They can be trivially improved with about 1 millisecond of conscious thought. Especially given the fact that these actions have been around in office software for literal decades, and more often than not with their own distinct icons.
someguyiguess
Same here. I view the text labels as a more detailed description I can read if I don’t understand the icon at first glance. The icons help with decreasing time spent searching for the option I want. Not having to read every single menu item saves some number of milliseconds which adds up over time and reduces cognitive load.
Timwi
> Hey, unless you can articulate a really good reason to add this, maybe our default posture should be no icons in menus?
Challenge accepted. If a user (esp. one whose cognition generally prefers visual media) uses a menu item frequently, they can remember its icon and that makes it easier to find in the future.
(Doesn't apply to me personally though because I'll instead remember the underlined letter and press it next time. My pet peeve in menus is not icons, but missing or clashing hotkeys.)
abustamam
I think icons aren't a bad idea, if they are visually distinct and make sense. For the longest time, the icon for "link" and "attachment" in Gmail looked almost identical.
They changed it recently for attachment to look like a paperclip on a document which is much better. But before, I almost always clicked on one when I wanted the other (or hovered my mouse over it for longer than I'd care to admit).
alextingle
Flat, monochrome icons might look nice, but they are only useful if used sparingly.
If you're going to use many icons, then they need to be visually distinctive. That means ditching the flat designs, and embracing colour again.
wolpoli
Color icons needs to done twice - once for light mode and again for dark mode.
It is the reason for removing colors and shadings from all icons.
eldaisfish
Think about what was lost in the quest for dark mode versus the benefits.
I would argue that menu icons are more useful than dark mode in several situations.
immibis
We don't need light mode and dark mode if we just set our monitor brightness correctly.
It seems some monitors now assume dark mode - only the very lowest brightness setting isn't blinding.
alextingle
So in your opinion, monochrome icons are a sign of laziness, rather than an aesthetic choice. Got it.
mikepurvis
Almost 30 years ago MS Office 97 was putting toolbar icons in their menus, and I think it served the useful function of helping users discover when functionality was available another way.
ndespres
Those icons were well-designed for the newly computerized office employee of the day. The new school of icons are made by graphic designers for other graphic designers.
eviks
How can you remember the underlined "i" when it's so tiny and also positioned in random places? These should be in their own column just like a checkmark or an icon (but yes, no single key navigation is way worse than bad icons)
ifh-hn
I think visual signs are an amazing way to impart immediate information at a glance. Take road signs for example, at speed I can know what to expect around the corner.
However it is another language to learn and as such needs standardisation to be useful. If I go to another country and start driving the road symbols mean something else.
Its the same in the GUI. The symbols should allow me to move quicker around the interface, even if I've not used the software before.
The issues I see are each OS/App can, and does, use their own symbols for the same functionality (sure there are some universals like cut/copy/paste). And like the article these symbols now appear to be getting used as bullet points, so each item needs it's bullet points.
In my opinion, and like the greyed out keyboard shortcuts over to the right of some menu items, these symbols should only be there when they denote actions that can be done by clicking a button. They should be imparting the mouse equivalent or those keyboard shortcuts, a way to navigate and do actions; not as some decoration. Imparting the language of the GUI.
So yeah I agree with the article. Function over design aesthetic every time.
graemep
> However it is another language to learn and as such needs standardisation to be useful. If I go to another country and start driving the road symbols mean something else.
A lot of countries seem to standardise on similar signs. I have not had a difficulty driving in different countries and visiting more.
Cars are even more standardised. The controls vary very little.
There is a definitely problem with GUIs and the problem seems to be aesthetics and branding trump function.
albert_e
Even cut copy paste are not used consistently.
In many AI chatbots ..i see the "paste" icon used for the function of "copy"
mrcino
The UI/UX design is not about standards and guidelines but about what the manager currently likes. There is no discipline because senior managers don't care until Excel cells turn red.
Steve Jobs was forcing design discipline across Apple products with furious determination because he actually cared.
That's how it ends, everything becomes an unmanageable, constantly changing mess because every manager likes something else and big firms are rotating their personnel every 3 years.
Because the above products of the same company are losing cohesion and consistency even if they are in the same product line which results in bad UX.
Design departments are not disciplined enough...
c-linkage
The Mythical Man-Month calls for a single person to be responsible for the design of a system. Steve Jobs was that guy for Apple. But once he left, there was no one strong enough to define the system across the whole company.
michaelevensen
Designer here. I agree that sometimes there is an over-emphasis of sticking to the rule of icon - title (if it's already been defined) and finding icons for features that are very hard to describe through a simple pictogram, thus leading to non-helpful visual cues for menus and menu items. But, icons to me has never been about being a perfect encapsulation of the meaning of the feature, it's more of a visual anchor, eg even the examples in this article without icons require me a couple more milliseconds to scan just to find the menu item I'm looking for. It's a visual anchor first, a descriptor second.
kvirani
I do like how in some MacOS examples we see icons for some of the more important or commonly used menu items, but not the others in the same list. The absence of icons has meaning ("it's likely not what you want")
yakshaving_jgt
I've heard this kind of reasoning from a number of designers, and it strikes me as post hoc justification for aesthetic self-indulgence.
So, with the greatest of respect, I don't believe you. It does not take you "a couple more milliseconds to scan", since a couple of milliseconds is well below human perceptible thresholds for almost every sense.
There is no accessibility improvement here — you just like the consistency.
immibis
If you have an icon next to every entry and they all look the same on first glance, you don't have visual anchors.
socalgal2
Not sure I agree. It's much easier for me to find the link icon than "Insert Link" in the Google Docs example. It's seem pretty close to a standard icon so, for me at least, it's helpful to find it. Same wit some of the others like increase indent, decrease indent, left, right, center justification, and lots of others.
I can also be helpful for non-English (or non-language of your choice) when you haven't had time to localize or don't have perfect localization. Let's assume the user has Japanese as their second language. It's much easier to find the option you want with icons than without
cs02rm0
With apologies to our American friends, Jeremy Clarkson had a take on this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7kXUbwngB4
Somewhere in there, I think he does have a point.
Pictograms in the interface are not decoration. Their purpose is to convey information in limited space. (The information should be that could be conveyed this way.) Currently they are often used as decorations or these two uses are mixed up. This is a mistake.
(It is interesting and saddening to see how years of UI research just went down the drain after Apple "resurrection". In my impression Apple was the first that started to lose their carefully collected UI expertise and replace it something that was original for the time, but that was all. E.g. I remember the very first ads after Jobs' comeback. They still had the beige Macintoshes, but their ads changed. Instead of a typical computer ad that showed a computer with a turned on screen and some desktop picture Apple's ads pictured turned off computers photographed from unusual angles or in unusual positions, like keyboard standing on its side leaning on the box, mouse hanging on its wire and so on. It was different, indeed, it stood out. Thing is, to always strive for that is harmful. Especially for user interface, where the motto is: do not make it original, make it right.)