Acorn 8.3 is out and the big new feature is that it supports Liquid Glass for folks who are running macOS Tahoe (which is over 50% of Acorn 8 users at this point!).
Actually, Acorn 8.3 came out a few weeks ago and the current release1 at the time of this writing is 8.3.2. I wanted to sit on an announcement a bit because I knew the refinements were going to be coming fast and I was really hoping macOS 26.1 would be released soon (it had some bugs that hurt Acorn in a number of ways). Also, you really shouldn’t be running macOS Tahoe unless you’ve updated to 26.1 (the initial release was very bumpy).
At any rate, what’s new? Basically the UI. That’s it. The full release notes are available as usual (and it includes some minor changes and bug fixes).
But the UI was a ton of work! And I made it extra difficult on myself by making Liquid Glass optional. Why the heck would I do that?
There were a couple of reasons (besides some people really, really not liking Liquid Glass).
First of all, Acorn still supports macOS 14 and 15. And if you recall, Liquid Glass is only available on macOS 26. So any changes I’d make to Acorn would also have to work fine on previous OS releases. So in a sense, you could choose to use LG or not based on what version of macOS you’re running.
But I didn’t want to completely keep folks on pre-Tahoe from joining in on the fun. So I actually broke the setting up into two different preferences.
The first option in Acorn’s new Appearance settings is a checkbox for “Liquid Glass palettes”. This does the obvious thing on macOS Tahoe, and on previous versions of macOS this checkbox is disabled.
The second option is “Display images edge-to-edge”. This one works on all versions of macOS that Acorn 8.3 runs on. This is the fancy look where the toolbar floats above the content as if it was a delicate and beautifully manicured piece of glass. It also removes the bottom toolbar, so there’s maximal room for your pixels to shine.
I also reworked the tool palette so that it no longer takes up the whole left side of the window and instead floats above the canvas and gives more space for your image to be viewed. (And every time I look at it, it makes me think of MacPaint and its tool palette. What a great app that was!)
Acorn 8.3 is a free update for anyone who’s already purchased Acorn 8, and we also provide a 14 day free trial from its website. You should check it out and give it a try.
So what’s next? I plan on spending the next couple of months refining Acorn 8’s UI even more. Some things are missing from the edge to edge window look, and I’d really like to see those come back. And it’s also nice seeing how other apps adopt the new UI in Tahoe, and I’m gathering inspiration from that. I’m wanting to see what the developer community coalesces around when it comes to Liquid Glass. So expect Acorn’s UI to change a bit more as time goes on.
* Acorn 8.3.2 is out for folks who have purchased it directly from our store. If you purchased via the App Store, it’s currently waiting for review and should be out shortly.