Macos mojave vs catalina install#
Macos mojave vs catalina windows#

One aspect of preferences that has been quite controversial (on Twitter at least) is the new icons. It’s a shame that this sidebar hasn’t yet made it to other parts of the preferences UI with Network and Notifications still using a very old looking sidebar. It uses a nicely integrated sidebar to manage different categories. The Dock preferences pane has become “Dock and Menu Bar” and now integrates controls for the new macOS control center. Preferences sees quite a lot of change in some areas. I can guarantee this will result in fewer people discovering Finder’s Spotlight search goodness. This change seems a little inconsistent as it’s not made it to Preview. One final thing to note is that in Finder the search bar at the top right has been replaced with a search icon that expands when clicked.

To me, it seems like the design team have not yet been able to find a way to elegantly integrate these elements into the iOS inspired UI. The bottom screenshot shows Finder with a Path Bar, Status Bar and multiple tabs. One thing that struck me at this point is that Finder looks a mess with many of the more advanced features enabled. Overall the default size of Finder seems to be bigger in macOS Big Sur. Of all the places I think Apple needs to get the new UI spot on, is Finder. Finder and Previewįinder sees some significant changes. Could this be the first hint that macOS is preparing for touch support in the future? One interesting tidbit, is that even though the icons are based around the capsule shape, many of them (like Contacts, or Preview) have elements which protrude from them giving an extra feeling of depth.

Everything is more rounded and it feels like everything has gotten a little bigger. First impressionsĪt first glance macOS is a lot more colourful with, and the biggest obvious change is the bright, slightly more cartoonish iOS shaped icons.

I haven’t captured everything, but it is a good taste of the changes so far.

Macos mojave vs catalina windows#

I made a conscious effort not to resize any windows or change any default settings.

Macos mojave vs catalina install#

I decided to carry out a quick catalogue of the UI changes as this may be helpful to other people getting ready for macOS Big Sur.Īll of the screenshots below are taken on a default install of macOS and the Catalina version is always on the left. I found myself taking lots of screenshots to try and track the changes and thought this might be worth sharing. I wanted to make sure my team was ahead of any coming changes as we were burned by changes in last year’s release of Catalina. Why did I end up doing this? Well, this week I installed the developer beta of macOS Big Sur as I was curious what impact the new UI would have on the app I currently design. This post is an attempt to provide a visual comparison of pretty dramatic UI changes between macOS Catalina and Big Sur.