Calmer In-App Notification Design
· by Kjell
Notifications got a redesign tonight. The old ones were fine, functionally, but they had that slightly-too-glossy feel that pulls your eye away from the track you're trying to listen to. I wanted something quieter - a look that sits alongside the album art rather than competing with it.
The new design is lower-contrast, uses the accent color more subtly, and scales its emphasis to how important the message is. A track change is a whisper. An enrichment finishing in the background is quieter still. Only something that actually needs your attention gets weight. That's how it should be.
On the system side, I throttled unnecessary notification center updates (macOS "now-playing" info). There were some background processes that were being chattier with macOS than they needed to be. Not that it was causing any issues, but it is just cleaner that way.