Historical archive

This page records a dated plan, audit, or research context, not a current product contract. Project status distinguishes current source behavior, published releases, and unfinished acceptance gates.

macOS GUI design research (2026-10-18)

Four parallel research passes, run after the first Summon Activity window was judged "looks like shit" on a real Mac. The goal: raise the bar for every plugin's menu bar item, panel and window, and feed the results into the MacUX skill. Each report cites its sources; claims marked (observed) or [obs] / [inferred] / [Ours] were not fetched from a page and need checking before they become law.

Report	What it covers	Became
01-menubar-apps.md	Stats, CodexBar, Itsycal, Ice (code read), iStat Menus, Dato, Lungo, Fantastical, 1Password, Things, Raycast, CleanShot, Tailscale	MacUX/MenuBarItem.md
02-hig-tahoe-golden-gate.md	Current HIG text, Liquid Glass two-layer model, macOS 26 Tahoe and macOS 27 Golden Gate changes, type scale, SF Symbols 7, app icons	MacUX/Windows.md, Principles.md
03-menubar-and-window-mechanics.md	MenuBarExtra limits, NSStatusItem + NSPanel, live status item, bringing a window to the front from an accessory app, Settings, chrome APIs, glass gating, upside-down text	MacUX/MenuBarItem.md, Windows.md, Gotchas
04-activity-and-agent-ui.md	Console, Activity Monitor, Xcode reports, Linear, Things, Raycast, Superhuman, Tower, Warp, Cursor, Claude desktop, Codex, Conductor	MacUX/ActivityFeeds.md

The five findings that matter most

1. Status lives in the chrome, not in cards. Native windows show state in the toolbar, subtitle or a bottom strip, and show problems only when there are any. A grid of rounded tiles reads as a web dashboard (04 §1, §3).
2. Glass is the control layer only. Never on rows, cards or detail. Use system containers (NavigationSplitView, toolbar, List, Form) and get Tahoe and Golden Gate right for free; hand-drawn glass breaks when Apple changes the look, as it did between 26 and 27 (02 §1, §2).
3. An accessory app's window opens behind other apps by design (macOS 14+ cooperative activation). Switch to .regular, activate, open, then raise the window from viewDidMoveToWindow; fall back to the deprecated activate(ignoringOtherApps:) (03 §3).
4. MenuBarExtra(.window) stops early. No programmatic open, no right-click menu, no live label, no animated resize. A menu bar app that needs any of these uses NSStatusItem + a nonactivating NSPanel (03 §1, §2).
5. A feed is a worklist, not a log. Every row has a verb-first title, one primary action on ↵, a context menu and a ⌘K entry; undo scales from instant ⌘Z to a preview sheet that says what it cannot restore (04 §3).