Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help

by ArmageddonIt on 12/8/2025, 7:44:00 PM

https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025/icons-in-menus/

Comments

by: Mikhail_Edoshin

Pictograms in the interface are not decoration. Their purpose is to convey information in limited space. (The information should be that could be conveyed this way.) Currently they are often used as decorations or these two uses are mixed up. This is a mistake.(It is interesting and saddening to see how years of UI research just went down the drain after Apple "resurrection". In my impression Apple was the first that started to lose their carefully collected UI expertise and replace it something that was original for the time, but that was all. E.g. I remember the very first ads after Jobs' comeback. They still had the beige Macintoshes, but their ads changed. Instead of a typical computer ad that showed a computer with a turned on screen and some desktop picture Apple's ads pictured turned off computers photographed from unusual angles or in unusual positions, like keyboard standing on its side leaning on the box, mouse hanging on its wire and so on. It was different, indeed, it stood out. Thing is, to always strive for that is harmful. Especially for user interface, where the motto is: do not make it original, make it right.)

12/9/2025, 6:24:26 AM

by: 0manrho

From an accessibility/localization stand point, icons+text everywhere seems to be ideal.Also, I disagree with:> This posture lends itself to a practice where designers have an attitude of “I need an icon to fill up this space”Sure, that does technically happen, but is in no way preventative or mutually exclusive with the follow on thought:> Does ... the cognitive load of parsing and understanding it, help or hurt how someone would use this menu system?That still happens, because if they mismatch an icon with text, that can result in far worse cognitive load/misunderstanding than if no icon was present at all. This becomes readily apparent in his follow on thought experiment where you show someone a menu with icons+text, but "censor" the text. Icons+text is also superior to [occasionally icons]+text in the same thought experiment. From my perspective, the author just argued against their own preference there.I'd argue that the thought process behind determining an appropriate icon is even more important and relevant when being consistent and enforcing icon+text everywhere, not diminished. It also has the broadest possible appeal (to the visual/graphically focused, to the literary focused, to those who either may not speak the language, and/or to those who are viewing the menu with a condensed/restrictive viewport that doesn't have room for the full text). Now, if the argument is predicated on "We aren't willing to pay a designer for this" then yeah, they have a point. Except they used Apple as an example so, doubt that was the premise.

12/9/2025, 12:13:18 AM

by: michaelevensen

Designer here. I agree that sometimes there is an over-emphasis of sticking to the rule of icon - title (if it's already been defined) and finding icons for features that are very hard to describe through a simple pictogram, thus leading to non-helpful visual cues for menus and menu items. But, icons to me has never been about being a perfect encapsulation of the meaning of the feature, it's more of a visual anchor, eg even the examples in this article without icons require me a couple more milliseconds to scan just to find the menu item I'm looking for. It's a visual anchor first, a descriptor second.

12/9/2025, 8:08:36 AM

by: dexwiz

I always thought menus had icons so they could be matched to the same functionality on the toolbar. If a menu lacks an icon, then it's probably not on the toolbar. This falls apart when there is no toolbar. But I have definitely found an action in the menu, looked at the icon, and matched it to a a button elsewhere.

12/8/2025, 10:32:23 PM

by: ndespres

I agree with the author. I understand many of the reasons others give here for why icons could be beneficial- localization, literacy, vision issues, etc. all are great reasons to supplement text with icons, theoretically. But I disagree that these icons, I mean those shown as examples in the Apple menu, Safari menu, or Google Docs menus- actually convey anything useful and really do prove the authors point that they’re poorly implemented.I realize it may be generational and privilege based, as I can read English and have a good deal of computer literacy. To my eyes the icon trend of flat, minimal icons paradoxically ask a user to possess a higher degree of computer fluency to successfully parse the artistic intent of the icon and map it to its function. When these icons don’t accurately convey their function (the Paste icon is a blank clipboard. What’s that do?) and when the design language is inconsistent within the same application and OS (do cogs mean Preferences? Services? you’re building a very confusing world for most of the user group types you claim to be helping.

12/9/2025, 4:32:59 AM

by: daemin

My biggest design peeve of the examples posted is the inconsistent indentation of each section of the menu. Where if any single item in the section has an icon it gets indented, but if none do it doesn't, and seeing them next to each other is jarring. I feel this is especially inconsistent design because if a menu item has a check mark it indents all menu items in the whole menu. I would have thought Apple would have the taste to keep things more consistent across the whole menu than that, as it seems sloppy.

12/9/2025, 12:31:38 AM

by: hinkley

There was a comic artist I used to follow when I was doing more front end work, who would blog about his craft. One of the things he said that really hit me was talking about silhouettes. The visual noise in certain eras of comics make them very unapproachable. If you repainted your strip by flood filling everything with black, would people have any clue what's going on?One of the things I'm seeing in some of these examples is icons with the same silhouette doing nothing or less than nothing for scannability. This is the same problem AWS has. Their dashboard is just noise, because the icons are neither visually distinct nor descriptive of the project.I've also seen some of this same problem with card and board games as well. You can see that some designers care about accessibility. This type has both a distinct color AND shape so colorblind people can see it, all the icons are big enough that people can make them out sitting upside down in front of the person across the table from them, even if they're over 40.His first example, Google Sheets, does well by this metric IMO, but the next few are kinda bad.

12/8/2025, 11:40:58 PM

by: Timwi

> Hey, unless you can articulate a really good reason to add this, maybe our default posture should be no icons in menus?Challenge accepted. If a user (esp. one whose cognition generally prefers visual media) uses a menu item frequently, they can remember its icon and that makes it easier to find in the future.(Doesn't apply to me personally though because I'll instead remember the underlined letter and press it next time. My pet peeve in menus is not icons, but missing or clashing hotkeys.)

12/9/2025, 1:20:10 AM

by: usaphp

I actually like the icons from his example of Google Docs, it makes it easy for me to locate an action type I’m looking for (add/delete etc) without reading the labels, then once I narrowed it down - I can read the label to find the precise action I want.

12/9/2025, 12:24:24 AM

by: kevin061

Very cool analysis, I never thought of that. I was actually in the camp of "icons everywhere" because it seemed inconsistent to have icons only sometimes, but I never stopped to look at indentation especially when mixing in checkmarks, thanks for sharing!

12/9/2025, 9:04:12 AM

by: socalgal2

Not sure I agree. It's much easier for me to find the link icon than "Insert Link" in the Google Docs example. It's seem pretty close to a standard icon so, for me at least, it's helpful to find it. Same wit some of the others like increase indent, decrease indent, left, right, center justification, and lots of others.I can also be helpful for non-English (or non-language of your choice) when you haven't had time to localize or don't have perfect localization. Let's assume the user has Japanese as their second language. It's much easier to find the option you want with icons than without

12/8/2025, 11:43:21 PM

by: fireflash38

When only some things have icons, it's almost like a flag that these things are more special/useful/used. I think that is by far more useful than everything having an icon that you have to think about (or see the text next to it) to understand

12/8/2025, 11:18:30 PM

by: arcbyte

This a really interesting and persuasive read for me. I've been thinking about this topic as part of brainstorming a simple design system and I had come to the conclusion that the inconsistency of not having icons for every menu item was a big annoyance. After seeing how descriptive the icons are in older menu examples compared to the abstract blobs in newer menus, I have to admit I might be wrong. At the very least, ensuring that the icons themselves are as illustrative as possible about the intended outcome of its selection is necessary.It also makes me think about the classic Save icon: the floppy disk. That was certainly descriptive at its origination, but is it still so? In the age of natively storing documents in the cloud or copying to a USB drive, it seems like we might want more than one save menu or an appropriate icon for where the file resides on the single Save menu item. Microsoft Office has the Autosave toggle switch that serves some of this purpose, but it could definitely be better.I also think about the Zune UI where sometimes a menu consisted only of the icons. How do you enable unique menu designs like Zune without icons for everything?

12/8/2025, 10:31:41 PM

by: DeathRay2K

I changed the UX in my mobile app from text only to icon + text by default in menus, buttons, and links.There are several reasons I made the switch, but the primary reason is that it makes it easier to build a kind of muscle memory for navigating and performing particular actions. In essence, the text is there for new users and the icons are there for experienced users.

12/8/2025, 10:33:35 PM

by: nusl

I don't feel that this is clutter. It's actually helpful to quickly locate the spot you're looking for, or understand the purpose of something better without having to know exactly what it does. Listing text with separators and nothing else makes the experience worse unless it's already obvious where's-what.In terms of accessibility, too, icons are a win. Colors on top of this also help with that.

12/9/2025, 8:48:12 AM

by: nvader

I think this is an example of the emojification of communication. I suspect that trend is being sustained, at least, by LLMs who are prone to abusing vapid emojis everywhere.I think that to a certain superficial level of analysis, a matched set of icons looks "complete" and indeed impressive. Designers and implementers of the interface can fool themselves through customary use that they're creating a language of ideograms. Their users, who interact with their product only a few hours per week, only perceive visual noise and clutter.

12/8/2025, 10:46:12 PM

by: iamcalledrob

I'm bracing myself for losing ellipses in Apple's menus too.At least based on the trajectory of macOS's design decline.For those who might not be aware, a long-standing design pattern on macOS is for menu item labels to have a "..." at the end when a click will take you somewhere, rather than taking immediate action. So you can click more confidently.It's an example of the subtle quality and attention to detail you get with native UI, that gets lost when you build a web app and re-invent the wheel.Most "web" UIs don't include this detail, as evidences by the screenshots in the article.

12/9/2025, 8:00:55 AM

by: crabmusket

I think there's a serious related issue which is that icon packs (font awesome, feather, material icons, whatever you prefer) encourage you to just pick the "closest" icon for a given menu item, rather than an icon that is actually what you want.At work we do sometimes design custom icons for specific things, but that's very rare and relatively costly. Most developers on our team don't have that capability, and we are left trawling through Google's admittedly-large icon library to find something that seems plausible.

12/9/2025, 4:12:03 AM

by: sixtyj

Have you seen any specialized software, e.g. AutoCAD by Autodesk?In the top ribbon menu there are icons only. And not any familiar ones at all.Icons, text representations of the action behind the menu items…It's a designer hell in which you have no chance to please everyone. Like someone using a vim editor for 20 years... some people are using icons, other want text and the third group wants combination of both.

12/8/2025, 10:52:27 PM

by: PunchyHamster

100% disagree. They make finding a group of commands very quickly and it's not like horizontal space in menu is at the premium

12/8/2025, 11:47:45 PM

by: linguae

I wonder if part of the problem is the lack of color in these examples? I remember Microsoft Office 97 and 2000, which had icons in their menus (albeit only for a few actions, not for every action). However, those icons were colored and appeared visually distinct from each other.Yesterday I booted my 350MHz Power Mac G4 for the first time in 13 years. I booted into Mac OS 9.2.2. I remember the Apple menu having icons for every item. Once again, though, every icon was in color.

12/9/2025, 12:35:44 AM

by: BaudouinVH

mixed bag of reactions :- the part where the reader is invited to guess what a menu item does based on the icon alone was very interesting- how come the floppy disk survived as as "save" icon when floppy disk use is not the default save medium ?- has there been any global study (dis)proving that icons and emojis are truly understood and carry the same meaning everywhere on the planet ?

12/9/2025, 8:27:34 AM

by: eviks

The general point holds - there is no universal solution, to some people some icons will be noise, to some the same icons will be instant visual parsing replacing reading, so the solution is obvious - easy user customization (ideally at an OS level where every single File-Open menu action can only be renamed/icon-added/removed / keyboard shortcut changed). But that's just a dream

12/9/2025, 7:21:00 AM

by: kevin_thibedeau

It's extra noise because of the fad for samey B&W icons (instigated by the ease of implementing dark mode). With judicious use of color, there can be more visual distinction where the menus guide you to the intended target by visual memory without having to process the text.

12/9/2025, 2:35:22 AM

by: PlunderBunny

Two extensions/patches I'd like to see for macOS:1. Remove all icons from menus.2. Make mouse-over do nothing - I should be able to move the mouse anywhere on the screen, and nothing should change colour/pop out etc.

12/8/2025, 10:36:23 PM

by: markbao

Just right-click any file in VSCode/Cursor to see how absolutely chaotic and tedious a long menu is without icons. Now imagine that Google Docs example without icons.It’s much easier to recognize the funnel icon to make a filter, than to skim all that text.

12/8/2025, 11:56:15 PM

by: yard2010

Off topic but I could use some help here - what icon would you use for "prevent screen for sleeping" toggle button? I thought about an eye (open or closed if it's on or off), but I think there's a better option I can't see

12/9/2025, 6:53:11 AM

by: thn-gap

The real test would have been to use some software that the author uses frequently, and see if there's any decrease in speed when removing all the icons. I'm pretty sure, even when not pleasant, they work as heavy visual cues to find the item quicker.Icons are also very useful if you're trying to use software in a language that you're learning, becoming the common language bridge.

12/9/2025, 5:52:44 AM

by: zzo38computer

I agree that there should not be icons in menus (with the exception of those indicating the status, like is shown in the 2005 guidelines). (Arrangements, shapes, etc might also sometimes be useful to indicate, but these should be separate from status indicators if they are present, and should be a part of the text instead in the few cases where they are applicable; in most cases they should not be needed.)Showing a check mark for if something is active can make sense, and other status indicators, but then it should also indicate if the status is currently absent. (On Windows, some menu items can have a check mark, but if there isn't, it does not tell you if it is one that could have a check mark or not. Indicating this could be useful.)Another thing that the menus do have, and which they should have because it is good to have, is specifying which keys are used to operate those commands. Windows also has one underlined letter so that you can select it when the menu is displayed, which can also be useful (especially since not all commands have keys assigned normally, so using the keys to activate the menus can be used in this case).My own programs with menus do not use icons (and do not usually use icons outside of menus either).

12/9/2025, 12:59:41 AM

by: foobarbecue

You're lucky they still have text labels!

12/9/2025, 7:37:15 AM

by: remyp

Over the years I've noticed something unusual about myself: I don't even see these icons. My brain goes directly to the text. This applies to all visual material, but is most evident in printed advertising.Apparently other people notice the hot girl and the puppy and the fried chicken sandwich first. Meanwhile, I've already read all the fine print.No idea why I'm like this.

12/8/2025, 11:19:47 PM

by: onetom

In earlier versions of Apple OSes, you could edit the menus yourself, with the officially supplied resource file editor app and there was nothing really special about it.There are `ibtool` and `plutil` CLI commands built-in to macOS these days too, but to get some graphical editor, u would need to download 3GB of Xcode and u would invalidate the code signatures, etc...Plus there is a huge churn in the application versions, so any customizations would need to be applied repeatedly to newer app versions.Sad, really...

12/9/2025, 2:57:06 AM

by: etothet

From the article: "What I find really interesting about this change on Apple’s part is how it seemingly goes against their own previous human interface guidelines..."Welcome to Apple of the last decade. As an avid user of many Apple products, this has been extremely frustrating to experience. Hopefully Alan Dye's departure will see at least partial return to obeying Apple's own HIG.

12/8/2025, 10:49:12 PM

by: ChadMoran

Interesting take. As a low vision person, the icons help me scan menus like this.

12/9/2025, 12:43:28 AM

by: whstl

People at Apple is gonna read this and they will do a man-month’s worth of meetings but the designer and PM will never agree in whether to remove some or add more, the developers are too busy adding icons to other random places to get a promotion and the QA is filling about missing icons after finally getting around to check Tahoe.People are saying they miss Steve Jobs but they probably just miss the product having actual direction.

12/9/2025, 6:14:47 AM

by: zuminator

Seems like something that could be a UI setting per user.Only text/Only icons/Only icons (with tooltips)/Some icons with text

12/9/2025, 5:54:20 AM

by: heavyset_go

Disagree entirely, pictographs are easier to recognize than text descriptions of features and functions.

12/9/2025, 5:42:45 AM

by: oidar

I think the key in apples guidelines is the word arbitrary. A lot/ most of the icons in apples menus are purpose made for the menu item - so it’s not as big of an issue.

12/8/2025, 10:44:39 PM

by: iask

It has always been so since the dawn of modern desktops. I don’t see how/why this is noise. This is like a developer at a standup insisting we can make the app faster adding some micro services, flashy UX, and a few months of work while the - end user will still enter 20 order changes in an 8 hour day because that’s the environment.What will you gain from removing the icons?

12/9/2025, 12:02:33 AM

by:

12/9/2025, 7:45:30 AM

by: jFriedensreich

i hope this is a fringe opinion as im usually putting icons on every item and found it leads to reduced mental overload and fast item selections, for complex menus i would even go so far as making it colored to more senses can be used. the icons have to be meaningful though, apples guidelines specifically mention arbitrary icons not icons at all

12/9/2025, 4:23:39 AM

by: culebron21

If I remember Windows 95/98/XP correctly, these icons were in menus only if there was the same icon on the panel. This would let you see there's a shorter way to do the action.Right now icons indeed just add clutter.They also make you think how could the designer depict a concept.For example, why should "Save" button look like a diskette. What if it was Jesus, like the Christ Redeemer statue. That actually could be a funny game, like in the post, to invent icons.

12/9/2025, 5:53:39 AM

by: AceJohnny2

Somewhat tangential:> What I find really interesting about this change on Apple’s part is how it seemingly goes against their own previous human interface guidelines (as pointed out to me by Peter Gassner).> They have an entire section in their 2005 guidelines titled “Using Symbols in Menus”2005?? Guidelines evolve.

12/9/2025, 12:04:32 AM

by: coldtea

>For example, the “Settings” menu item (third from the top) has an icon. But the other item in its grouping “Privacy Report” does not. I wonder why?Isn't it obvious? Because compared to "Settings" it is a far less important infrequently used setting.

12/9/2025, 12:21:37 AM

by: zamalek

I think that icons hold value so long as they have mostly distinct colors (which none of his examples do, so his point stands). At least for me, colors make vastly superior landmark than words do (once i know the interface).

12/9/2025, 1:00:14 AM

by: anotheryou

I love it for quickly finding items.

12/8/2025, 11:07:13 PM

by: klysm

Don't agree with this take - it's quick to scan for the delete icon.

12/8/2025, 11:57:42 PM

by: ks2048

The examples he showed, I didn’t mind. From the title, I thought he might be referring to the emojis in READMEs. Those annoy me and don’t add anything. (I assume all vibe-coded)

12/9/2025, 12:49:58 AM

by: fakefish

The disagreement here is interesting. I'm with OP, icons increase cognitive load for me if overused but can help a lot if there are just a few distinct ones.I wonder how much variance is driven by zoom level (icons may be more distinct when bigger, text is easier to pattern match vs. read when small).

12/9/2025, 2:21:58 AM

by: pabs3

Probably this should be configurable, so people who want icons only or text only or both can make that choice. I like that KDE makes that possible.

12/9/2025, 12:00:58 AM

by: _acco

My best guess for the sparse icons in older MacOS versions: icons only for frequently-used menu items.

12/9/2025, 1:31:19 AM

by: shadowgovt

Former UI guy at Google here.The explanation for why they do it is pretty simple: localization hinting. From country to country, the text will change but the icon pictures won't. So if you find some how-tos or guidance online that has screenshots but wasn't made in your language, you can still follow along by lining up the icons.There are other reasons too but that's a big one.

12/9/2025, 12:53:01 AM

by: zeckalpha

Perhaps we are witnessing a early shift toward ideographic writing

12/9/2025, 1:22:27 AM

by: hastily3114

Even worse, Windows now has menus with only icons and no text.

12/9/2025, 1:11:58 AM

by:

12/9/2025, 7:39:40 AM

by: mock-possum

It really depends. If it works it works, if it doesn’t it doesn’t, like everything else.But I do feel like he’s hurting his case here:> You know what would be a fun game? Get a bunch of people in a room, show them menus where the textual labels are gone, and see who can get the most right.That’s an excellent example of how effective icons actually are! I can mostly read that menu at a glance with no text lables, because good use of iconography doesn’t assign “arbitrary” icons to options, jt fields well-known icons that are easily recognizeable. Take for instance the ‘save’ icon - everybody knows what the floppy disc means, even if they have never seen, touched, or used a floppy disc IRL. A 15 year old born in 2010 knows what the ‘save’ icon is. My nearly 70 year old mother knows what the ‘share’ curly arrow icon means.They’re not arbitrary at this point - they’re standard.

12/9/2025, 6:38:42 AM

by: adamq_q

Look how they massacred my boy

12/9/2025, 2:10:14 AM

by: itake

I think this is true, if you can read in the language.Its really difficult to help someone on tech issues if their device is configured for a language you don't understand. Simply changing the language is annoying, b/c then they can't understand the workflow I'm showing them in their language.

12/9/2025, 4:11:38 AM

by: gedy

I always took it as a plus for soft internationalization, e.g. we may not have translated or localized to the current user language, but icons area decent generic hint.

12/8/2025, 10:46:34 PM

by: d--b

Simply put: icons in menus are helpful to me.Deal with it.

12/9/2025, 3:33:43 AM

by: LordGrey

Hilarious: I looked at first two examples on the page, showing a menu and contextual menu, and I saw no problem. Icons? What icons?That's when I realized that, much like advertisements on a web page, my brain had utterly filtered them out.

12/9/2025, 12:22:23 AM

by: raincole

Wow. Icons in Menus are so useful that I absolutely didn't expect this article is to complain about them. They help me location the item I'm trying to click tremendously.Come on, could we get back to hating Cloudflare or something?

12/9/2025, 12:03:09 AM

by: cush

I like them

12/9/2025, 1:10:43 AM

by: mvdtnz

His example of great icons from Finder is stolen directly from the Rectangle app. Looks like Apple shamelessly took Rectangle's icons.

12/9/2025, 1:16:18 AM

by: diimdeep

Ё-моё, this is really bad, I am so glad that I never upgraded to Tahoe.Can we just stop endless design churn and resists urge to innovate in a fashion industry manner in software UI ? This is ridiculous.And f. the product managers that pushing for this, f. the SIP, lets reverse engineer the crap out of this and reverse all this changes with easy to use system level patch.

12/9/2025, 6:52:59 AM

by: rustystump

There are so many reasons to add icons as many have already stated here. One reason i didnt see is for multi lang help. Sometimes the icon is enough when i dont know the language used.However, i think what may be described here is that apps often deviate from a “universal” standard or reuse something to mean another. This defeats most of the benefits of using icons imo.

12/9/2025, 12:02:39 AM

by: rprend

I like it.

12/8/2025, 11:53:40 PM

by: chabska

Another article in the category of "I am an able-bodied anglophone silicon valley man and I think X should not exist because it doesn't serve ME". Ignoring and ignorant that there are 8 billion people out there, of varying ethnic and linguistic background, with different ableness, of different education and literacy levels.

12/9/2025, 1:19:49 AM

by: deadbabe

This is just rage bait or comment bait. Anyone who designs UI for the real world already knows people barely read text, and an icon is worth a thousand words. Also results in less cognitive fatigue.

12/9/2025, 1:25:06 AM

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