System Preferences Reimagined on macOS

System Preferences has been around from the earliest days of Mac OS X. A side-by-side comparison of the System Preferences from over two decades ago to the System Preferences of macOS Monterey will instantly create the reaction that the two look shockingly alike. Many of the same categories - from General to Sharing, Network to Startup Disk - are faithfully preserved in macOS Monterey much like they were in Mac OS X 10.0 back in 2000. It's actually quite remarkable that a program in the modern era can survive for so long in such a preserved state.

What's Wrong with that?

To argue that System Preferences needs to be changed suggests something wrong with it in the first place. And for an app as critical to the operating system as System Preferences, there is risk in overhauling the application. While things are periodically added to the preference pane, it functions and looks very much as it did decades ago, and generally speaking, that works fine enough.

My Beef With System Preferences

But my frustrations with System Preferences are that features are continuously being crammed into a format that has outgrown its utility, and that the current System Preferences continue to diverge significantly from Settings on iOS.

As features have continued being added to macOS, Apple has opted to force new preferences inside existing ones to avoid icon overcrowding. Focus Mode on iOS is crammed into the new 'Notifications & Focus' tab on macOS, Night Shift is a tiny button on the bottom right under the Display settings, and the Control Centre is managed behind the 'Dock & Menu Bar' icon through a process of having the user individually click-through 15+ different tabs to customize their Menu Bar.

And while some settings are crammed together, others feel needlessly scattered. AppleID, Family Sharing, Internet Accounts, & Users & Groups are four different preference icons, while on iOS they are essentially all managed under a single tab. Showing the Bluetooth icon in the Menu Bar is done through the 'Bluetooth' settings, while changing the clock is done in the 'Dock & Menu Bar' settings, not the 'Date & Time' option.

My other main gripe with System Preferences is how differently it operates and looks relative to iOS. Yes... yes... I know iOS and the Mac are different, but whereas many apps have tried to create coherence between platforms, System Preferences stubbornly resists. Not only is there a significant icon mismatch between the two platforms at a time where macOS is adopting the design language of iOS, but similarly named items contain radically different things. For example, General on macOS houses everything from accent colours, light/dark mode appearance, and setting a default browser; whereas General on iOS houses software updates, AirDrop controls, iPhone storage, Date & Time, and more.

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