Golden Gate not respecting Reduce Transparency

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Level 2

151 points

Golden Gate not respecting Reduce Transparency

Golden Gate appears to not respect Reduce Transparency on menus - both top and context - some or all system dialogs, and some or all notifications. These items were opaque in Tahoe and now they're not.

I have given feedback to Apple but wonder whether there is a fix.

Settings:

Reduce Transparency - on
Increase Contrast - on
Liquid Glass - all the way to the right

Steps with the above settings:

On my question composition page on this message board, place the pointer above and to the left of the Continue button.
Right-click the pointing device

Expected result: Context menu is opaque

Actual result: Context menu has a blue smudge translucently revealing where the Continue button is

I also tested for this issue in safe mode and with a new user, setting Reduce Motion, Increase Contrast, and Reduce Transparency during the onboarding sequence. I did not touch the Liquid Glass setting, which was already all the way to the right during the onboarding sequence.

[Edited by Moderator]

Mac mini, macOS 27.2

Posted on Oct 29, 2026 8:58 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

HWTech

Community+ 2026

Level 9

78,036 points

Oct 30, 2026 12:27 PM in response to Charles Belov

The "Reduce Transparency" setting and the "Liquid Glass" setting options are mutually exclusive....at least to some extent. See the note below the adjustment bar for Liquid Glass setting.

I saw an issue with Tahoe where modifying some of these new settings had my system in an odd state. There were three options involved for me and putting them back into their original state did not restore the look of my Mac. Changing those three settings caused even more odd havoc on visual appearance, until I finally got it back to where I started (or at least it seemed that way). I decided to see if I could reproduce the issue to report it as a bug, and I did not encounter it no matter how I clicked & toggled those three options. It is possible something similar is happening here.

I cannot find any .plist preference file for the Liquid Glass settings, but I did find the .plist for the "Reduce Transparency" setting (it isn't actually called "Reduce Transparency" in the .plist, but the file time stamp changed when I toggled the setting):

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.accessibility.plist

After deleting it, then try rebooting and seeing what happens. macOS will automatically recreate this file with default settings when you log back into your macOS user account. If the .plist configuration file for Liquid Glass could be found & deleted, then perhaps it could reset things so those adjustments may actually work.

FYI, I only adjusted the "Reduce Transparency" option in Accessibility System Settings. I believe I ultimately left the Liquid Glass options at their defaults once I got my system straightened out again. Even with Reduced Transparency there will be certain places in the macOS GUI interface where you will still see through some items (very annoying to me as I never understand the fascination with having everything transparent....I want to be able to clearly see what I'm viewing).

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Answer 2

Charles Belov Author

Level 2

151 points

Oct 30, 2026 2:02 PM in response to HWTech

Thank you for pointing me to examine the plists. Alas, it seems that a lot of the plist timestamps change on an ongoing basis, so it's hard to pin down exactly what is being changed by my actions. But it seems that:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.accessibility.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.universal.plist

both have settings for Reduce Transparency, while the hidden file:

~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist

has the glass preference. I just tried setting that preference to 0.5, the setting I see in my successful test user, and will restart and see what happens.

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Answer 3

Charles Belov Author

Level 2

151 points

Oct 31, 2026 11:53 AM in response to Charles Belov

Apple's support AI says to turn Reduce Transparency on then log out and in. I adjusted that to:

Under Appearance, move Liquid Glass to near the center (this turns Reduce Transparency off)
Under Accessibility, Display, turn Reduce Transparency back on
Log off
Log on

It hasn't worked yet on all users on my computer, but it seems to work on most of them and I plan to retry on the others in case there's something subtle with the timing.

The menu doesn't deliver 100% opacity, but I find it tolerable.

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Answer 4

Charles Belov Author

Level 2

151 points

Oct 29, 2026 9:22 PM in response to Charles Belov

If I onboard a new user without changing any of the vision or liquid glass settings during onboarding, and only set Reduce Transparency once onboarding is finished and I arrive at my desktop, then the menus are opaque. Unfortunately, that doesn't help me, an established user.

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Answer 5

Charles Belov Author

Level 2

151 points

Oct 30, 2026 4:13 PM in response to Charles Belov

It's glitchy. Worked for my main user but not other users on the same computer.

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