A couple of days ago, after a bit of a delay due to work, I was prepared to continue with my Big Sur logbook entries, but meanwhile Apple released a new beta, so that further delayed me. Before installing it, I took screenshots of all the System Preferences panes — it seemed an important place to focus my attention on, a place where changes and updates are very likely to happen. I forgot to take screenshots of Finder windows, though; but, going from memory, there doesn’t seem to be any noticeable change in their UI between the first and the second public beta.
Or should I say between Beta 4 and Beta 5, since apparently the latest beta version I’ve downloaded is Beta 5:
It was another chunky update, at 7.15 GB, and the first time I downloaded it, the download aborted and I got an error. Since I was trying to download it as soon as I learnt there was an update available, I figured that maybe Apple servers were busy and slow, so I postponed the operation. The day after, the download was very fast and completed successfully. The installation, on the other hand, took longer than the previous beta — around 50–55 minutes. The stage that took very long to complete was the Preparing Mac OS Big Sur Beta 5… just after download and before restarting the Mac. The progress bar appeared stuck for a while. But in these cases I usually let the Mac be, and sure enough things went smoothly, eventually.
Finder windows
This was the entry I meant to write before updating to Beta 5. My initial observations remain unchanged.
Let’s take a standard Finder window. I’ve set my viewing preferences just like on my production Macs running High Sierra (Sidebar, Path bar, and Status bar are visible; Toolbar is in “Icon Only” view; and the only customisation to the standard Toolbar is the addition of the Path and Dropbox buttons).
Finder window in Big Sur
As a general observation, I’d say that, now that I’m seeing this new UI in person, it bothers me less than when I saw it revealed at the WWDC 2020. I’m not entirely okay with it either, but now that I’m looking at it more attentively on a Mac I have before me, there are also little details I can appreciate.
For starters, I like the use of this unified symbol library Apple is developing. The new sidebar icons appear slightly smaller than their counterparts in previous Mac OS versions, but they’re nonetheless recognisable. I also like the colour differentiation between the icons in the ‘drives and devices’ section (Locations) and the icons in the Favourites section. The former remain dark grey, while the latter take the colour you specified in System Preferences → General → Accent colour.
The new design of the upper part of the Finder window — with the loss of a proper title area, the semaphore buttons that now are visually part of the sidebar (1), and the title that is now part of the toolbar (2) — is a mixed bag. Like other parts of the redesigned Big Sur user interface, it’s not that bad if you just look at it or interact with it superficially. But the more you stare at it and ponder, the more you find annoyances.
The new toolbar (2), for example, suffers from the same spacing problems as the menu bar. There is simply too much padding between icons. If you look at the screenshot above, you’ll see that I chose a somewhat typical window width, at least for a 13-inch display. But the toolbar is not entirely visible. If I want to make all the buttons visible, and avoid too much title truncation, I have to stretch the window to a size that (again, on a 13-inch display) takes up 95% of the screen’s width, leaving just enough Desktop space on the right side to see the drive icons.
With the ‘old style’ (pre-Big Sur) of Finder windows UI, this kind of spacing issue is absent, of course. On my 11-inch MacBook Air, I can have a Finder window that is less than half the whole screen’s width, and still see all the toolbar buttons, including Search, which on previous Mac OS versions is a whole text field instead of an expandable control.
Finder window in High Sierra
Another peculiar thing worth mentioning is what happens when you choose to view the toolbar as “Icon and Text” (Finder → View → Customise Toolbar → Show: Icon and Text). In previous Mac OS versions (High Sierra in the picture below), since the toolbar extends across the whole window, when you choose to show icons and text for the toolbar buttons, the size of the buttons remains the same, and labels are placed beneath them. Finder windows become a little taller, but not wider, and you don’t lose anything usability-wise: no button disappears or gets reduced to accommodate the text beneath:
Toolbar: Icon Only view (High Sierra)
Toolbar: Icon and Text view (High Sierra)
In Big Sur, something interesting happens: to accommodate the labels beneath the buttons, the buttons become noticeably smaller, and one peculiar side-effect of this change is that you get to see more controls. In the picture below you can see that, after switching to Icon and Text view, the Action control becomes visible. While we’re here, also please note how unpleasantly crowded the left side becomes with the appearance of the “Back/Forward” text beneath the [<] and [>] buttons.
Toolbar: Icon Only view (Big Sur)
Toolbar: Icon and Text view (Big Sur)
I’m sure that, as you’re reading these notes, you may think I like splitting hairs and that I’m being unnecessarily fastidious. But making me aware of the finer details is something Apple itself has done over the years. This Finder window design, while superficially pretty, doesn’t feel completely thought out or optimised for different cases. It’s the same thing as the menu bar: there is a lot of wasted space between controls, and it seems designed to look good only in the best case scenario: relatively big retina screens (16-inch and above).
Look again at how smaller the toolbar controls become once we choose to display the labels beneath them. The targets become smaller too, and on a 13-inch retina screen you already have to pay attention whenever you want to click to select them. Imagine doing that on a 13-inch or an 11-inch non-retina screen. Add to this the poor contrast of the controls themselves, and you end up with quite a blurry and unpleasant interface. Finder window toolbars in Big Sur seems to be really optimised for an “Icon Only” setting.
And again, the new design of Finder windows in Big Sur seems to favour bigger screens with retina resolution even with regard to window management. To be able to see all your toolbar controls you have to widen each window to a considerable degree. On smaller screens windows end up taking more space than before, thus cluttering the Desktop unnecessarily and making simple drag & drop of files between windows more awkward.
Other minor details
Let’s get back to this figure:
Another change I’ve noticed is that, if you look at the sidebar, you can’t see other Macs with file sharing turned on that are present on the same network. In previous Mac OS versions they would usually appear in the area marked as (4). If you click on Network in the Locations section, then you can see them and connect to them; and once you’re connected to one or more of them and you mount one or more volumes, then you’ll be able to see the Mac’s name in Locations (3). I hope this is just temporary and that the old behaviour is restored, as it’s more efficient and practical (you see which Macs are available on the Network and you can connect to them with fewer clicks).
Another UI element I hope is just temporary is the big, dark handle to adjust icon size in Finder windows, located at the bottom right corner (5). It looks a bit cartoonish and I feel it attracts more attention than it should. Compare it with the more understated counterpart in previous Mac OS versions (see the High Sierra Finder windows screenshots above).
As a final note, I’d like to point out how small the difference between active and inactive windows has become under Big Sur. In contrast with previous Mac OS versions, now a window in active state (i.e. in focus) has a lighter appearance than an inactive window in the background. Overall, though, I think there’s enough differentiation to avoid confusion: the title bars/toolbars of inactive windows are very grey and low-contrast; the semaphore buttons in the top left corner lose their colour; and even the accented icons in the sidebar turn into a less vibrant hue compared with the active window’s sidebar icons.
Wrapping up
As I said above, the overall impression I’m having about Big Sur’s user interface is that it’s a mixed bag. From what I’ve seen so far, there are nice touches here and there, interspersed by oversights and even regressions (the largely inefficient use of space between controls and menus, both in the Mac’s menu bar and in the toolbar design within Finder windows). It seems that now how it looks (to stubbornly achieve a unified Mac OS/iPadOS interface) is more important than how it works.