Titlebars<\/h4>\n
These days, most window managers have traded in proper titlebars for something called headerbars. These headerbars are a combination of titlebar and toolbar, and they CAN save a few pixels of screen space. However, for those of us with monitors, we’ve got screenspace to spare, and the trade-offs are just not worth it. Titlebars have been an integral part of window management for 40 years now. The titlebar gives you a clear area to<\/p>\n
- \n
- See the window’s title<\/li>\n
- Drag to position or resize the window on your screen<\/li>\n
- Provide a place for the ‘stoplights’ to live<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
And the biggest part is that this is consistent for\u00a0almost<\/em> every window drawn by the OS. That consistency is great for usability and muscle memory.<\/p>\n
To bring back these essential UI elements, I’ve (with help from my lovely AI assistant) written an Ammonia Tweak called Classic Titlebar.<\/a> You can see the comparison in the screenshots below. Without a titlebar, you have to hunt for a drag surface that could potentially be a button. It looks like there’s some space above the sidebar to drag, but where are the bounds? It’s like its a<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/camb.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Screenshot-2026-11-02-at-14.49.41-1024x699.png\")
Apple Notes with my tweak loaded<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/camb.io\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Screenshot-2026-11-02-at-14.54.34-1024x664.png\")
Apple Notes with default headerbar<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
No Liquid Glass<\/h4>\n
I understand the forces at play, and I see why Liquid Glass exists. Apple is trying to create a common design language that works across all of their platforms. And Liquid Glass DOES do this. However, the trade off here is that despite being the same as iOS, its a definite downgrade for MacOS usability. All of the transparency and giant buttons. It’s clearly optimized for a touch interface, but I’m using a mouse. When you have the accuracy of a mouse, Liquid Glass feels like a kiddie cartoon interface.<\/p>\n
Here is the liquid_glass_off repo<\/a>. It started as a fork of GoAwayLiquidGlass<\/a>, but I’ve since added quite a few fixes.<\/p>\n
Firefox Titlebar<\/h4>\n
If you didn’t know, one amazing thing about Firefox is that you are still able to give it a classic titlebar. If you click on an empty space in the bookmarks bar, and select ‘Customize Toolbar…’ you’ll see a tiny little checkbox in the lower left corner that says Title Bar. Check it, and you’ll have a real honest native titlebar back. However, Liquid Glass is still doing it’s work and making the title left justified.<\/p>\n
If that is fine with you, then you’re done. If you want uniformity, and want the title centered in the titlebar, I’ve created a suuuper tiny ammonia tweak just for Firefox<\/a>. All it does is center the text, nothing more. No Liquid Glass would do the same thing, but it injects a much larger-than-required library into the running app. I’m trying to keep things as minimal and stock as possible with these tweaks, so Firefox Titlebar is dead simple.<\/p>\n
Window Radii<\/h4>\n
Last but not least. As part of the iOS-ification of MacOS, Liquid Glass introduced these extreme rounded window corners. They look at home on an iPhone or if you’re using a new Macbook without a monitor. But for those of us with square cornered monitors, it’s very annoying as well as ugly. Luckily, (due to angry feedback) Apple has announced a built-in method to change these. This one doesn’t even require Ammonia tweaks!<\/p>\n
Just run in a terminal:<\/p>\n
defaults write -g NSConvolutionOverride1 -float 5 # regular windows\r\ndefaults write -g NSConvolutionOverride2 -float 5 # utility and inspector panels\r\ndefaults write -g NSSplitViewItemSidebarDefaultsToFloatingAppearance -bool false<\/pre>\n
Or to rollback<\/p>\n
defaults delete -g NSConvolutionOverride1 \r\ndefaults delete -g NSConvolutionOverride2\r\ndefaults write -g NSSplitViewItemSidebarDefaultsToFloatingAppearance -bool true<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In my last post, I talked about the reversal of influence between iOS and MacOS. Originally, MacOS was the primary focus for UI development, but in recent years, iOS has been the focus, and those are being retrofitted to MacOS. (This impact MacOS usability in… Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-cambio-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/camb.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/camb.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/camb.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camb.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camb.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/camb.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1739,"href":"https:\/\/camb.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions\/1739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/camb.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camb.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camb.io\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}