NotchMindmacOS 26 Tahoe brought Apple’s Liquid Glass design to the Mac: the menu bar, the Dock, sidebars, controls and notifications are made of a glassy material that bends and reflects what’s behind it.
Make it clearer or more tinted
In recent versions of Tahoe, System Settings → Appearance → Liquid Glass lets you choose Clear, which shows more of what’s behind, or Tinted, which adds contrast so text is easier to read.
Turn transparency down
If glass makes things hard to read, System Settings → Accessibility → Display → Reduce transparency replaces it with solid backgrounds everywhere. Increase contrast in the same place adds borders.
Liquid Glass in the notch
The notch itself stays black hardware, but notch apps can draw glass around it. NotchMind, which I make, offers Liquid Glass, Semi Liquid Glass and Dark Liquid Glass finishes alongside plain Black, with its own Clear-to-Tinted slider. On Tahoe they use Apple’s real Liquid Glass material; on macOS 15 they use a frosted blur. Glass costs a little more graphics work than black, so on older Macs Black is the lightest. See change the notch’s finish.