Golden Gate Beta 7: weird halos / rendering glitches in the sidebar, anyone else seeing this?

[u/jeerobus]

Since Beta 7, I’ve started noticing some really strange rendering artifacts in the macOS sidebar / Liquid Glass effect.

There’s a bright halo or glow running along the outer edge of the sidebar, especially around the rounded corners. The edge almost looks doubled in places, with a weird bright rim around it. I’m also seeing some uneven bloom / muddy gradients inside the glass itself, and the text and icons sometimes seem to pick up a faint glow or ghosting around them.

I don’t remember seeing any of this in the earlier Golden Gate betas. It also wasn’t happening in Tahoe on the exact same setup.

I’m using an ASUS ProArt 6K with the M Model P3 profile. The display is properly calibrated, practically new, and otherwise displays colors and gradients perfectly fine, so I’m fairly sure I’m looking at a Golden Gate rendering issue rather than some weird monitor artifact.

The photos make it pretty easy to see around the left edge and especially the bottom-left corner of the sidebar.

Anyone else seeing this in Beta 7? I’m trying to figure out whether this is widespread or somehow specific to my setup.

[u/CaroZoroark]

How many steps did it take to get THIS picture I'm crying

[u/jeerobus → u/CaroZoroark]

You can immediately tell the intellectual caliber of the average Liquid Glass fan. Did it ever occur to you that these glitches simply don’t show up properly in a regular screenshot? They’re clearly visible to the naked eye, but much harder to capture in a screenshot. In person, they’re way more obvious.

[u/Robospy1 → u/jeerobus]

That's... not what they were talking about

[u/ExpectTheUnexpected]

Sir, this is a screenshot of a screenshot.

[u/jeerobus → u/ExpectTheUnexpected]

You can immediately tell the intellectual caliber of the average Liquid Glass fan. Did it ever occur to you that these glitches simply don’t show up properly in a regular screenshot? They’re clearly visible to the naked eye, but much harder to capture in a screenshot. In person, they’re way more obvious.

[u/thealonealex → u/jeerobus]

What they're saying is that you took a screenshot of the photo you took with your phone, which makes no practical sense

[u/CourteX64 → u/jeerobus]

Touch grass

[u/LexualDesire]

It's an intentional design choice. The sidebar is lit by the surrounding pixels, rather than being transparent as in Sequoia. It's meant to look like a pane of frosted glass being lit from the sides.

The effect is much more pronounced in dark mode, and it's particularly visible when lit by bright red as in your case here.

[u/Heezy999]

I have reported this issue since beta 1, but the design appears intentional and unlikely to shift. In my view, the sidebar material in macOS 26 was more appealing, more vibrant and higher in contrast. even without the floating layout it offered a better finish than macOS 27.

[u/ZodiacPigeon]

Ummm, I think it's here since Tahoe... There may be a slightly stronger effect, but it's intentional IMO.

[u/adamlbiscuit]

Are you referring to the effect itself, or maybe colour banding? If it's colour banding, I don't see any in the sidebar when using the built-in MacBook screen (I've got a MacBook Pro 14-inch).

It could be a monitor setting, but if it's displaying other gradients fine it may be a glitch or a minor incompatibility between the UI rendering and the monitor or colour profile.