Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help • Hacker News Board

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#181

Post by Someone » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 8:38 AM UTC

mvdtnz wrote: post #83

His example of great icons from Finder is stolen directly from the Rectangle app. Looks like Apple shamelessly took Rectangle's icons.

Looking at https://rectangleapp.com/, they basically use the same idea, yes, but is there a reasonable alternative?

Also, IMO, Apple’s pictograms look a lot better and are clearer. In Rectangle, the “left half” icon almost is a dark gray rectangle alongside a bright gray one, with the _dark_ indicating where tryout window will go. In Apple’s version, there is only one rectangle and the screen border is much easier to spot.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#182

Post by netsharc » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 8:40 AM UTC

eviks wrote: post #160

netsharc wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine Steve Jobs would've asked to see whoever designed those menues, picked up their laptop and thrown it out the window...

That would indeed be the myth. The reality is what you see on the screen

Hard for Steve Jobs to have done this for the changes of the last ~14 years...

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#183

Post by 20k » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 8:41 AM UTC

Mikhail_Edoshin wrote: post #149

Mikhail_Edoshin wrote: post #143

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 tha…

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…

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

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#184

Post by eviks » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 8:43 AM UTC

netsharc wrote: post #182

eviks wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would indeed be the myth. The reality is what you see on the screen

Hard for Steve Jobs to have done this for the changes of the last ~14 years...

but trivial for all the similar changes before that while the laptops were still flying out

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#185

Post by ricardobeat » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 8:45 AM UTC

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #37

Somewhat tangential: > What I find really interesting about this change on Apple’s part is how it seemingly goes against their own previous human interface guidelines (as pointed out to me by Peter Gassner). > They have an entire section in their 2005 guidelines titled “Using Symbols in Menus” 2005?? Guidelines evolve.

Though styles and capabilities have changed, the same basic principles apply when using a mouse pointer and keyboard.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#186

Post by sznio » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 8:47 AM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #23

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…

> 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.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#187

Post by Someone » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 8:47 AM UTC

arcbyte wrote: post #2

This a really interesting and persuasive read for me. I've been thinking about this topic as part of brainstorming a simple design system and I had come to the conclusion that the inconsistency of not having icons for every menu item was a big annoyance. After seeing how descriptive the icons are in older menu examples compared to the abstract blobs in newer menus, I have to admit I might be wrong. At the very least,…

FWIW: Apple’s SF Symbols font doesn’t have an image of a floppy disk, nor does it have an icon meaning “save”.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#188

Post by nusl » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 8:48 AM UTC

I don't feel that this is clutter. It's actually helpful to quickly locate the spot you're looking for, or understand the purpose of something better without having to know exactly what it does. Listing text with separators and nothing else makes the experience worse unless it's already obvious where's-what.

In terms of accessibility, too, icons are a win. Colors on top of this also help with that.

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#189

Post by tobyhinloopen » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 8:48 AM UTC

iamcalledrob wrote: post #173

I'm bracing myself for losing ellipses in Apple's menus too. At least based on the trajectory of macOS's design decline. For those who might not be aware, a long-standing design pattern on macOS is for menu item labels to have a "..." at the end when a click will take you somewhere, rather than taking immediate action. So you can click more confidently. It's an example of the subtle quality and attention to detail yo…

I have never known! On my web apps, I _try_ to give buttons that perform an irreversible action a different color, like saving, updating, creating, deleting etc

Re: Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

#190

Post by bigstrat2003 » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 8:48 AM UTC

thiht wrote: post #174

Mikhail_Edoshin wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> thus is decorative. Discard it. Or keep it since decoration makes interfaces feel more alive. Not everything NEEDS to be useful

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".