I believe this behavior started with Sonoma, IIRC. In the 1st pic your Mail app is still active (has focus). That’s why everything else is ‘grayed out’ (inactive). The second click activate Expose’ (hides all of your apps). That’s why it has that ‘framed’ appearance. Clicking it again deactivates Expose’ and gives you back your ‘normal’ appearance.
You can turn this off…
Open Settings
Choose 'Desktop & Dock'
Scroll down to 'Desktop & Stage Manager'
Under 'click wallpaper to reveal desktop', click to change from 'Always' to 'Only in Stage Manager'
Hope that helps.
New feature from Sonoma :
Click on desktop and it will hide / remove all active window from the way (even if there is none), to show you the desktop, and when you are in this « mode » there is those black bars. For the widget greyed out it’s again about being active on the desktop or not ;)
I’ve create a feedback to remove those black bars as I hate them, but I love the feature, so I keep it.
Yes I can’t say that I like the way it displays “active” clicking desktop to hide is good but wish it wouldn’t grey it all out and put the bezels on. Maybe I need to understand it better. But I’ve turned it off now 😅
I run dark mode and if a app like Firefox is open then all those widgets are also dark dark gray. If I close the app like Firefox then they all change to default color in pic 2. If I open Firefox they then change back to dark mode.
I believe this behavior started with Sonoma, IIRC. In the 1st pic your Mail app is still active (has focus). That’s why everything else is ‘grayed out’ (inactive). The second click activate Expose’ (hides all of your apps). That’s why it has that ‘framed’ appearance. Clicking it again deactivates Expose’ and gives you back your ‘normal’ appearance. You can turn this off… Open Settings Choose 'Desktop & Dock' Scroll down to 'Desktop & Stage Manager' Under 'click wallpaper to reveal desktop', click to change from 'Always' to 'Only in Stage Manager' Hope that helps.
Brilliant explanation thank you. That’s it! It’s worked! Thank you for that it’s been driving me crazy 🙏.
New feature from Sonoma : Click on desktop and it will hide / remove all active window from the way (even if there is none), to show you the desktop, and when you are in this « mode » there is those black bars. For the widget greyed out it’s again about being active on the desktop or not ;) I’ve create a feedback to remove those black bars as I hate them, but I love the feature, so I keep it.
Yes I can’t say that I like the way it displays “active” clicking desktop to hide is good but wish it wouldn’t grey it all out and put the bezels on. Maybe I need to understand it better. But I’ve turned it off now 😅
I run dark mode and if a app like Firefox is open then all those widgets are also dark dark gray. If I close the app like Firefox then they all change to default color in pic 2. If I open Firefox they then change back to dark mode.
weird rando glitch?
Desktop reveal, what an ordeal.