The Archive v2: A fresh look for 2026

ctietze

macOS 26 "Tahoe" brings a new and different default look to the whole system. (Ugh.)

The Archive needs a refresher for this new era. It hardly makes sense for our team of 1 developer (me) to maintain two styles for backward compatibility going forward, so when this releases, it'll be macOS 26 or newer, and not compatible with older macOS versions.

We planned an overhaul of the UI anyway in the summer, but now we actually need to embrace this much harder than expected.

The goals for the visual update are:

• Remove "UI chrome". Focus on the note contents and make the toolbar, tabs, etc. less prominent. That gels well with Tahoe's look, although the default is often rather broken. With this, we rethinking the saved search display and consider to get rid of the thick sidebar completely.
• Focus. Focus on the text, on the paragraph, on the part you're working on. Typewriter mode was an essential step 8 years ago, but we can do more with this and want to experiment with section/sentence/paragraph focus modes.
• Search and links. These are our means of navigation. Links were always a priority, but with a cleaned-up UI, we can play with new ways to make search work better and show more relevant context. I'm actually excited for this a bit because the sidebar, while serviceable, also got in the way at times.
• Responsiveness. The Archive started as a single-window application with one configuration, but grew into a multi-window, multi-tab application. There's potential in making it more nimble by adjusting the window contents to fit the space you give the app. macOS can do some basic tiling nowadays, so you can have 50:50 splits and such. In this world, we want to look at ways to make smaller side-windows more useful, so that you can work in a split setup to take notes while you read a website, for example. The current UI is too clunky for that.

I'll be sharing more of the process with you in the upcoming days and weeks as I prepare the app for the next stage.

amc

Exactly what I would have asked for, if I'd been asked – UI changes that lessen friction and add functionality. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

gtsimh

The first good news in 2026!! I really appreciate your hard work on maintaining The Archive and sharing nuggets about Zettelkasten. You guys have been doing such an amazing and formidable job for almost 10 years.

I can’t wait to purchase The Archive. Just Take My Money!

ctietze

So the first successful fresh internal build of the app on Tahoe is done. I haven't changed anything, but by default, the tabs move to the top, everything's much rounder, but otherwise it looks really similar to previous versions.

I actually like that window tabs move further up, because then the search/Omnibar is visually and hierarchically ordered below the windowing stuff.

What doesn't look as good is changing the window to a more modern style, with transparent title bars That needs work.

ctietze

I'm really saddened by macOS Tahoe's new app icon policy: all icons must be contained in a squircle shape. No fun shapes anymore, nothing 'sticking out'. It's all so bland!

Also I have a hard time finding things when I Cmd+Tab to switch apps. The Archive's current and new icon draft doesn't "register".

Screenshot of the Dock because I don't have enough fingers to screenshot the tab-switcher:

Even though this still sticks out hue-wise (most icons are cooler, e.g. blue), not having the boxy shape with the paper slips at the top will be missed.

Maybe I'll have to resort to trickery after all and exchange the icon with a Dock Tile while the app is running -- that's how you get animations and status displays in icons in the Dock. You can also use this to replace the uniform squircle icons with something more interesting: https://simonbs.dev/posts/how-to-bring-back-oddly-shaped-app-icons-on-macos-26-tahoe/

amc

Are you fixed on those background colours? To my eye they make the icon seem a bit hectic. The complementary colour to the archive box brown is #588CC6, which is a nice blue, and not the blue that tends to appear in Dock icons. Or the 'split complementary' colours are #58C3C6 and #5B58C6.

The detail of the original icon is sadly lost in the squircle format. I certainly can't make out the Kant reference ...

Marcus

@ctietze said:
Also I have a hard time finding things when I Cmd+Tab to switch apps. The Archive's current and new icon draft doesn't "register".

I‘m in love with https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/